Nairobi’s Matatu Men: Portrait of a Subculture by Mbũgua Wa Mũngai (review)

Most who have taken Kenya’s notorious public transportation vehicles, matatus, know they might encounter a quick-witted or even rude tout (the worker who takes the money upon boarding), a reckless and impatient driver weaving through standstill traffic, loud bass-filled music coming from amplified speakers, and a host of decorations, bumper stickers, and designs that contribute to various social topics. Matatus have been praised, as in Nazizi and Wyre’s song “Kenyan Boy, Kenyan Girl,” which names and celebrates matatu culture (and young love); they have also been the target of state intervention, like with the implementation of 2004 Michuki public transformation reforms. Mbũgua wa Mũngai’s Nairobi’s Matatu Men: Portrait of a Subculture investigates this very dynamic and, through an extensive discussion, the figure of the matatu man. Locating his study in Nairobi, Mũngai discusses how matatu men, either the driver of or worker aboard Kenya’s transportation minibuses, enact a masculinity that embodies contemporary social anxieties and debates around gender, class, labor, and social respectability. Mũngai examines how these men practice and formulate identities through their struggle with economic deprivation by employing innovative strategies when encountering the state and exercising recuperative and often sexist versions of masculinity.

Mũngai’s work elucidates the everyday politics of men who labor in lowerclass settings. Chapters one and two expand on his central argument, that matatu workers are both victims of a society built along economic hierarchies and instigators of problematic masculinity. “The macho body, vulgar and sexist expression and violence,” he states, “that are ingrained into [the matatu man’s] quotidian experience are the key parameters by which he establishes his broader sexualized identity …” (96). He illustrates how matatu men eschew normative Kenyan respectability that relegates them to the margins, while attempting to exert control over matatu economies and spaces to reclaim their humanity. The third chapter details how “matatu crews and their youth passengers innovate and maintain a space of unintelligibility that complements their subculture’s situatedness outside of strictures of regular mainstream surveillance …” (160). He details how workers use African American rappers and Kenyan artists, hip hop and reggae music, popular culture, and Sheng language to assist in crafting an identity located on the social margins. The fourth and fifth chapters address the workers’ relationships with the state, particularly amid the transportation reforms aimed at matatus. These reforms include forcing owners to paint their vehicles a solid color with a yellow stripe, install speed governors, and insisting that workers wear uniforms, among others. Mũngai’s study richly captures the dynamic methods they invent to negotiate the difficult conditions of being informal laborers. He demonstrates compellingly how these workers wrestle with deep inequalities not just to eke out a living, but also to cultivate fluid subjectivities, in a context where they are denied real access to political power and stable economic opportunities.

Alongside his thick analytical description, however, the reader would benefit from more profiles of these men. Mũngai writes in depth about the figure of the matatu man, without a lot of detail to these men’s actual lives in a comprehensive manner. Particularly in the first three chapters, profiles of these men (or a select few of them) would improve Mũngai’s rich theoretical interventions. This level of detail would also increase the sense of the individual agency of the individuals who are the subject of this ethnography. Another place this becomes important is in his chapter two discussion of Gikuyu culture. Mũngai contends, “Nairobi matatu culture’s core norms … [have been] significantly influenced by Gikuyu traditional lore and values” because Gikuyu have historically owned and driven matatus (103). Gikuyu circumcision rituals, Mungiki groups, and Mugithi music, he posits, inform the sexual and gendered composition of matatu culture. Mũngai could profile workers, cite instances, and give concrete examples so the reader can precisely understand these connections.

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