Slum tourism has become all the rage. There has been John Le Carré’s ‘The Constant Gardener’ that made Nairobi’s Kibera famous, Gregory David Robert’s semi-fiction, ‘Shantaram’, set in the slums of Mumbai and a host of others. Adam Parson’s ‘Mega-slumming’ joins the increasingly crowded market place of white people’s perspective of the growing conurbations of third world cities, this time back in Kibera.

‘This is a book’, writes Parsons, ‘about what it means to live in absolute poverty, excluded from any opportunities in the formal economy, and forgotten by all the politicians.’ The book is written engagingly, combining a kind of travel writing with moving stories from different shackdwellers about their daily lives, their experiences and their individual aspirations. Parsons provides a powerful description of the desperation faced by millions who find themselves in a life of insecurity, overcrowding, exploitation, grossly inadequate housing and the appallingly unsanitary conditions that prevail in slums like Kibera. The book provides an overview of the political context as well as a thumbsketch of the macro-economic conditions prevailing, which have influenced the growth of slums around Nairobi.

It is at one level a story about the lives of Kibera residents told through interviews that Parsons conducts with various individuals whom he forms friendships with. But at heart it is also – and perhaps too much – the story of Parsons’ own journey through slum-city. Written as it is for a largely Western audience, there may be the argument that there is an advantage to writing the book in such a way – perhaps enabling the Western reader to see the a different world from their own vantage point.

But that vantage point, I would argue, is one of the reinforcing prejudices that prevail in the West about Africans. One has only to look at the vast amount of literature and publicity material emanating from the West to see how Africans are viewed: They are portrayed as objects of pity, for whom charity is needed. They are not actors or people who determine or influence their own destiny, they are not people who organise and engage in collective political action, they are not the doers, but the done to. And it is this view that prevails here. Littered throughout the book are pictures of children and people posing for a camera destined to evoke the reaction of pity. The book even ends on an appeal for charitable donations to a Dutch charity (I presume to donate to an organisation of shackdwellers would not be appropriate). To be fair, Parsons isn’t alone in portraying Africans in this way: View any of the television programmes and publicity put out by Comic Relief and you will see how the focus is on evoking, as Paulo Freire put it, ‘… False charity [that] constrains the fearful and subdued, the ‘rejects of life’, to extend their trembling hands.’

While it is true that Parsons diligently interviews and faithfully reproduces the voices of individuals he came across on his venture, why is it that he failed completely to meet with and interview members, for example, of Bunge la Mwanchi (people’s parliament) or Bunge’s Women Caucus, Muungano wa Wana Vijiji in Kenya (Kenya Homeless People's Federation) and other collectives who live and organise in Kibera? A little bit of research would, if he had been inclined, have revealed to him that residents of Kibera have organised politically, have given voice to their demands, fought battles to have the right to organise, organised meetings, demonstrations, produced plays, music, poetry and writings of protest. To have portrayed Kibera’s people thus would have, as a minimum, created a response of outrage amongst the readership, but might also have inspired solidarity actions that brought resources and actions directly to these organisations, rather that to some Western charity. To have done so would have broken a long tradition of patronising literature that has so dominated the writings from Western charitable institutions.

I would argue that to provoke only pity and charitable giving is a disservice not only to the residents of Kibera, but also to the reader who is genuinely concerned about the grinding impoverishment of humanity. It provides no guidance on the kind of political actions that could be taken in combination with the citizens of Kibera.

Contrast this book with the writings of Abahlali baseMjondola or the voices of the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Western Cape, and you realise how those who are organising to change their world sounds so different.

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* Firoze Manji is editor in chief of Pambazuka News.
* 'Mega-slumming: A journey through sub-Saharan Africa’s largest shanty-town' (2009) by Adam Parsons is publsihed by Share the World’s Resources.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.