Nyumba Kumi

Was ‘Nyumba Kumi’ system a reactionary response of our security forces or was it a deliberate and viable yet unpopular policy that the government intended to use. On October 16 2012, coast province PC Samuel Kilele ordered security agents to cluster homes into groups of 10 or 12 and monitor them closely in a system he called ‘Nyumba Kumi’

Events around this period inform this stand of the government as Mombasa Republican Council posed the highest security threat to the country, mobilizing to make real their threat of secession. The MRC were mobilizing and for the government to get a hand on them and closely track their activities it needed to spy on them. So it was apparently logical to divide them into small clusters that could easily be assigned to officers for monitoring.

One year down the line the status quo has drastically changed. While it was mainly the MRC who were giving the Kibaki government a big headache, the new administration has come under overwhelming pressure left right and center. Skirmishes in Moyale, Samburu, Mombasa, Busia Tana River all exploded within weeks of each other. Mandera is in the constant grip of terror from Al Shabab infiltration and military apparatus response.

As a policy Nyumba Kumi was easily applicable in small containable areas due to logistics. Currently the Police force boasts of fewer than 50,000 police officers, a factor that makes the application of the policy as earlier envisioned impossible. With about 8.7 million households each officer will be assigned 180 household which coupled with geographical demography will not be tenable.

Last year the government envisioned an ambitious alternative, the mounting of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in 41 locations in Nairobi at a cost of KSh437 million (US$5 million), part of a KSh8.5 billion (US$98 million) loan from the government of China. A tender was issued to China’s ZTE Company but has since been caught in the web of red tape and counter accusations (legal or otherwise) between the government and the company. While this was a viable option to Nyumba Kumi in terms of incorporating technology in fighting crime and mass surveillance with minimal labour it has not come to fruition.

While the government was still undecided in security policies, the general state of insecurity went to the dogs. Armed gangs sprung into the fore and general security malaise spread in the countryside as reports after reports of civil strife flew into newsrooms. The government on most of these instances seemed to lack intelligence on the skirmishes preferring to heap a blanket claim of political instigation even to cases of outright conflict over natural resources.

Then came Westgate, a terrorist attack that apparently brought forth the complete breakdown of our security institutions from its highest echelons to the enforcing police and immigration officers. This opened up the security apparatus to scrutiny and exposed its rot in corruption incompetence and nepotism.

However the incident also provided a landing ground to the policy of Nyumba Kumi which the government must have been toying with for some time. The opportunity off selling the policy at this point would enable the government avoid cost implications and overwhelming number off households to monitor with limited police labour. It would also be less costly like the technological option that had stuck in the pipeline. It would also effectively bring back the state to the fold of intelligence it seemingly had lost.

Will it work?

Will it bridge the lack of ideological buy in as the terrorists-induced fear wanes? The model in China, Cuba, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda were informed by communist ideologies (save for Rwanda whose system is based on traditional colonial systems) to control populations. Our own largely unregulated policy might border on repression and loss of privacy. While in the communist countries it was given an ideological perception of fighting those who harboured dissenting views to the system lack of the same for our case might make the policy unpopular especially as the Westgate memory wanes.

Will it further swell our wage bill as incentive to the leaders becomes inevitable? The clusters of 10 houses are set to choose a person of ‘integrity’ and elect them as a leader who is supposed to inform the chief each morning on the state of affairs within his commune. Now based on this ‘cheap’ policy proposal, what incentive will they offer the leader? Plus in a capital economy will it be rational in towns given that everybody has different work schedules, and be damned if you show up late at work and your excuse is that you were filling a daily report with the chief. Note: in Eastlands where there are so many people it would take a whole day for the chief to actually file reports.

Will it run into a constitutional crisis; the gender, youth and people with disabilities rule or the very fact that the constitution protects individuals from being compelled to join or form an association in Article 36 (2).

If the government is shifting rails on how to administer the Nyumba Kumi policy based on the current status quo, then it should consider re-assessing the policy to make it less of a directive and more as activism. The enlightenment of Kenyans in the environment of liberal democratic thought might pose the greatest threat to an authoritarian policy that seeks to compel its citizens even for security reasons. While it is every government’s ‘unofficial’ role to spy on its citizens Kenya might aspire American like technological surveillance rather than ‘Face East’ on this one.