Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi

by Kenda Mutongi

Drive the streets of Nairobi, and you are sure to see many matatus—colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket detailing. They can be stately black or extravagantly colored, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present.
           
As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto the socioeconomic and political conditions of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs, they reflect multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life—including, for example, rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, and popular culture—at once embodying Kenya’s staggering social problems as well as the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu and explore the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 2017

Reviews

[Navaneethan Santhanam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could a bunch of rag-tag, foul-mouthed, wisecracking minibus operators have sparked a movement that ended nearly 25 years of autocracy in Kenya?

Probably not, but they did help. But how? And what role did they play in shaping city and country?

Ever wonder what happens when a rapidly-growing city in the developing world doesn't invest in itself? For most (if not all) cities, enabling physical mobility is critical to improving economic and social development. However, this rarely seems to be prioritised by the postcolonial elite. Consequently, the task falls to individual entrepreneurs who put together the bare minimum they need to serve the populace.

What happens next is the story of attempted (and failed) governmental regulation, self-regulation, gang violence, ride-pimping, and political turmoil.

I wasn't initially too taken with this book - I have no familiarity with Nairobi or Kenya - but my interests in self-organising systems and urban transport prevailed and I'm glad they did!

[Tristan Eagling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matatu is more than a history of the matatu. For me as an uniformed European immigrant, it’s a history of Nairobi, and even a contemporary history of Kenya, told through the lense of Nairobi’s most visible profession.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

really interesting but also profoundly uncritical of liberalism

[Mae Lynds · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books succeeds as a historical account of the politics of mobilization in post-colonial Nairobi, especially in addressing how transportation industries are involved in the creation of political subjects. However, the author fails (largely because she is not an anthropologist) to provide enough grounded insight on the tensions of the industry and matatu riders’ experiences. It lacks analysis on the relations between the matatu, as a cultural product and intensely representative of social grievances, and the community from which it was created.

[cynthia lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fascinating exploration of the ways in which transportation and matatus influenced the development of post-colonial nairobi and kenya

mutongi does include rhetoric that neoliberal economic policies also drove democratization; i wish there were a little more nuance in that regard

overall a great read - i had no idea what matatus were prior to this! i learned a lot

[Jim Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and Informative

This is a history of the transportation industry in Nairobi that amazingly reads like a novel. I thought I would find it hard to keep my interest but I found myself reading one more page every time I started to set the book down.
I always had an interest in how business is done in Africa. Having read this book I have a much deeper understanding.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Sociologist Asef Bayaf writes in Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East that social non-movements are “collective actions of non-collective actors; they embody shared practices of large numbers of ordinary people whose fragmented but similar acts trigger much social change, even though these practices are rarely guided by an ideology or recognizable leadership and organization. The term movement implies that social non-movements enjoy significant, consequential elements of social movements, yet they constitute distinct entities” (Bayat 14). The Africanist Historian Kenda Mutongi’s monograph called Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi on the private, mass transit vehicles popular in Kenya known as Matatus, seems to suggest the idea that Matatus were and maybe still are a social non-movement. Mutongi writes of Matatus that “before long, interactions on these vibrant, modernized matatus began to alter the forms of class and respectability in Nairobi, and perhaps even more significantly, these interactions began to increase political awareness. Eventually, the young reformers took to the streets - often in the same matatus in which they rode or worked - to challenge the government and call for multiparty elections and economic change” (Mutongi 10). The Matatu workers in Mutongi’s monograph are presented as a social non-movement, as illustrated by the Sociologist Asef Bayat. Simply by pursuing their own economic well-being, Mutongi showed that Matatu workers had a great impact on Kenya both socially and politically.