Just A Car Guy: I'm ignorant of how a lot of the world does things, despite having been to 3 other continents, and 2 islands. So, maybe this is not unusual, or, perhaps it's quite strange, but Nairobi has some extremely independant transportation methods

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

I'm ignorant of how a lot of the world does things, despite having been to 3 other continents, and 2 islands. So, maybe this is not unusual, or, perhaps it's quite strange, but Nairobi has some extremely independant transportation methods

These are the BodaBoda motortaxi riders... they make it easy to see that they are advertising their uniqueness, and so it's simple to spot who is another commuter who wants to be ignored, and who is looking to pick up a fare and transport you to your destination.

matatus are privately owned, colorful, loud, locally made in neighborhood shops, buses that form the backbone of what passes for the country’s public transport system.

Last month, there was a govt ban on them from entering the Nairobi’s central business district (CBD), well, that upset the locals so much, they immediately changed the mind of the county governor, and he won't try anything that damn stupid again any time soon. Unless he decides suicide by mob seems a great way to end the morning.

Matatus are the unholy offspring of local attempts at entrepreneuring around colonial design, and post-colonial state failure.

Nairobi, the official capital of Kenya, was another stupid idea of segregation, and that led to the private ownership of vehicles, but no public transportation system that could separate the colonists from the natives.

As a result, the majority of poor natives have always walked. It wasn’t until the 50s that the Kenya Bus Services, which had an exclusive franchise of carrying fare paying passengers in and around Nairobi, expanded this service to cater to the Eastern parts of the city where poor Africans lived.

With the limits of that bus service, a lot of private buses popped up, just like the Jitney's in San Francisco https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-first-known-jitney-in-us-started-in.html and when Kenya achieved independence, the number of matatus grew quickly, providing a way for Africans to ferry goods and people from the rural areas surrounding the city to the African quarter within it.

The lifting of the racist restrictions on Africans living in Nairobi following independence in 1963 sparked a massive influx into the capital and a corresponding explosion in the number of the illegal “dilapidated pirate taxis often pursued by the police” in the words of Kenda Mutongi, author of the book Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi.

Within a decade, and despite the depredations of the state, the matatus had become firmly established and in 1973, then President Jomo Kenyatta freed them from licensing restrictions “allowing the owners to explore the limits of laissez-faire capitalism,” as Mutongi writes.

The matatu industry now employs over 350,000 Kenyans. Mutongi identifies it as, “the only major business in Kenya that has continued to be almost entirely locally owned and controlled.”

Complicating things, because they are independent, anyone can own or operate a matatu bus, and that means even local govt officials have, including the former minister of transportation, senior police officers, government ministers and legislators, are also matatu owners. This showed how corrupt the transportation minister was, when he made a law about speed governors and seat belts. Seems logical, for public safety, but he'd already bought a shipment of seatbelts and speed governors, and then was selling them to the other bus owners.