Stateless Shona people in Kenya hope for light at the end of the tunnel

The 3,500-strong stateless Shona community has been in Kenya for more than 50 years. Many of them were born and raised here, but they are not recognized as Kenyan nationals and have no official status in Zimbabwe, where they arrived from in the 1960s.

The Shona community in Kenya is part of a group of around 100 missionaries, who came to establish the Gospel of God Church. When they arrived they were met and welcomed by the first post-independence president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.

Despite the meeting, and receiving the blessing of the president to establish a church, the Shona could not be registered. Under the first post-independence constitution, there was no provision for people not of Kenyan descent to be registered as citizens.

Zephaniah Muungani, a member of the community and a carpenter by profession, said as a community they have gone through many challenges, and they live in fear of being arrested because of the many arrests they faced in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Our children have grown facing stiff difficulties in accessing education. This has really slowed development of all Shonas in Kenya. As a result, we have been forced to train our children in weaving, crocheting, carpentry and masonry. Something which our children nearly detest us for, for not encouraging them to take the path of formal education," Muungani said.

He added even though they are a hard-working community and sometimes make reasonable amounts of money they can keep for the future, they cannot save money because they cannot open bank accounts.

"We do not have access to many public facilities such as hospitals, universities and banks. Nowadays even having a simple thing like a mobile phone needs an identity card, which we do not have. We have to get someone with an identity card to register our mobile lines for us," Muungani said. "Businesswise we have to get someone with an identity card to register our businesses. This is very tricky because you have to identify someone whom you can truly trust to do so. However as the saying goes, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’ We have managed to survive the tough life through the help of some good Samaritans who have always been ready to help us."

According to a report titled "Understanding the Socioeconomic Profile Of the Shona Community in Kenya" released in July, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said the incidence of poverty is higher among the Shona population in Kenya. The report found on average, more than half the Shona population lives below the national poverty line.

"Kenyans in urban areas are twice as likely to attend secondary school as their Shona counterparts. For Shona children of secondary school age, the net secondary school attendance rate is 28 percent, compared to 50 percent among urban Kenyans," the report reads.

According to Muungani, the Shona community’s journey to attain legal status has been arduous. He says initially all they could do was to persuade immigration officials to accommodate them, but often they would grant them work and residence permits which would expire after a short period.

"The Kenya Human Rights Commission has been instrumental in building our capacity and has stood with us in our quest for identity. They have been working closely with the UNHCR. The recognition of our community from the Kiambu County government affirmed and emboldened us. We met the county governor and several members of parliament under the Kenya Citizenship Caucus, who in turn took our plight to the cabinet secretary responsible for citizenship matters," Muungani said.

"In both 2019 and 2020 we assembled a sizeable number of Shona members to plead for citizenship. We prepared a community register which we filed with the taskforce on statelessness. This served as evidence we are no longer hiding and are ready to be counted. KHRC offered us legal representation, while the department of immigration provided the needed affirmation we are not illegally in Kenya."

In August last year, the Kenyan government announced it will start issuing birth certificates to the Shona community, a development that was welcomed across the board.

"The issuance of birth certificates to our children raised the hopes of all the members of the Shona community. We felt at last the government had heard our plea and was now responding positively. The government of Kenya needs to register the Shona community as citizens of this country and issue them certificates of citizenship and national identity cards," Muungani said.