Matatu : : a history of popular transportation in Nairobi / / Kenda Mutongi.

• VerfasserIn: Mutongi, Kenda,
• Place / Publishing House: Chicago, Illinois ;, London, [England] : : The University of Chicago Press,, 2017.; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (350 pages) :; illustrations, maps

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- PART ONE. Background -- INTRODUCTION. Matatu -- ONE. “The Only Way to Get There Was on Foot” -- PART TWO. Moving People, Building the Nation, 1960–73 -- TWO. “It Is a Difficult System to Beat” -- THREE. “We Are Making a Living by Constitutional Means” -- PART THREE. Deregulation, 1973– 84 -- FOUR. Kenyatta’s Decree, 1973 -- FIVE. “Jump In, Squeeze, Jump Out—Quickly!” -- PART FOUR. Government Regulation, 1984– 88 -- SIX. The Matatu Bill of 1984 -- SEVEN. “Only Those Who Are Afraid Use Force” -- PART FIVE. Organized Crime? 1988–2014 -- EIGHT. KANU Youth Wingers -- NINE. Mungiki: Fighting a Phantom? -- PART SIX. Generation Matatu, Politics, and Popular Culture, 1990– 2014 -- TEN. Music, Politics, and Profit -- ELEVEN. “Pimp” My Ride -- PART SEVEN. Self- Regulation, 2003– 14 -- TWELVE. The Michuki Rules -- CONCLUSION. Making It in Nairobi -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index