THE PLIGHT OF STATELESS KENYA MOZAMBIQUE CITIZEN

The sun is setting fast. Soon darkness will be here. Zuileta  Sumenya is worried about what is in store for her tonight. As she quickly gets home she is praying that the night will swiftly end without any crackdown for aliens by the police. 

60 years old Zulieta is one of the more than 40,000 migrants whose parents were brought in by white settlers from Mozambique in the early 1950s to work in sisal plantations and do not have Identity Cards.

“I was born and brought up in Kenya got married here and have children and grand children and know any other place to call home”, laments Zulieta  an elderly woman of the Makonde community at the South Coast of Kenya.

This community has continued to be discriminated by consequents government since independence as aliens because they lack any form of identification documents that can allow them be employed and live freely in the country.

They cannot own property or even operate bank accounts and have to do with informal manuals jobs to earn their living. They dig swallow holes to hide the little money they have. A risk practice as rats chew their  hard earned notes from time to time.

Although their children have gone to school and completed Form 4, they cannot pursue higher education nor get employment.

“I have completed Form 4 but whenever we go looking for jobs we are turned away because we did not have National ID cards”, said Lukas sauti at Makongeni in Msambweni Kwale County.

Zulieta says apart from lack of jobs they are frequently harassed by Police when they conducted raids to flush out aliens.

She continues to say most of the times they are arrested and taken to court and jailed. Thereafter they are taken to the migration post at Lungalunga to be deported.

Those like her who are luckily not deported remain at the Migration post and when they are finally released returned to their homes.

“Since we did not have any money we were forced to do odd jobs to get our fare back”, she says tears evident in her eyes.

Zulieta is now asking  the government to consider their plight and treat them as citizens and issue them with ID cards so that they could live normal lives.

A statement that was echoed by 76 years old Generali Daniel  who was among those brought in from Mozambique, now in his prime age pleads passionately with the government to issue their children with National Identity Cards.

“One is required to present an ID card of his parents in order to be registered as a Kenyan citizen”, said Daniel adding that it is impossible for their children to get identification cards now that they themselves were not issued with identity cards.

His plea to the government to be recognized as Kenyan citizens as they were promised by the founding father of the Nation Mzee Jomo Kenyatta at independence in 1963.

Daniel says he fears for his community at this time of worsening security environment in the country that they could be victimized during crackdown on aliens like it happened to Somali community at Eastleigh in Nairobi.