Hundreds of Kenyan Bus Commuters Are Killed Each Year by ‘Matatu Madness’

One of the thousands of small commuter buses that careen about Kenya every day carries an appropriate bumper sticker: “You never know, heaven could be nearer than home.”

Authorities say the overcrowded, poorly maintained, wildly driven buses called matatus have contributed heavily to Kenya’s highway death toll of nearly 200 so far this year.

At that rate, the toll is roughly on pace with 1987 when 1,889 people died in traffic accidents--or one person killed for every 166 cars on Kenya’s roads. A similar rate in the United States would mean that annual highway fatalities, now fewer than 50,000, would reach more than 1 million.

The privately owned matatus carry such names as “Survival of the Fittest” and “Living Devil.”

Scary as it all may be, the poor people who use them have little choice.

The brightly colored vehicles are legally allowed to carry no more than 25 passengers. But usually matatu crews cram in twice that many or more to get more fares. Those who can’t fit inside climb onto the roof and cling to luggage as the buses lean into their high-speed turns.

Thirty-one people were killed Feb. 29 in a three-bus crash that incensed a nation already accustomed to headlines screaming of “horror smashes,” and “matatu madness.”

For days after the crash, newspapers printed pictures of victims strewn across the road.

Commentaries called for something to be done about matatus, and a road-safety program was reintroduced on the government’s Voice of Kenya television.

President Daniel Arap Moi, whose government in 1984 passed the first legislation aimed at controlling matatus, decided that they had become more “an agent of death and destruction than an asset to the commuter.”

Police began a crackdown, netting hundreds of unsafe and overcrowded vehicles. Matatu crews, as well as unseated passengers, were hit with heavy fines.

The Ministry of Transport issued a new and more stringent list of regulations and ordered all matatu drivers retested.

But the matatu industry retaliated with a strike that stranded hundreds of thousands of people. Moi rescinded the retesting order, and the matatus returned after a day off the roads.

Moi’s response to the strike underscored the matatu industry’s stranglehold on the nation’s transportation sector.

Less than 1% of Kenya’s 22 million people own cars and fewer than 600 buses are on the roads. The lack of vehicles leaves a demand for transportation met by the tens of thousands of matatus, which mostly are vans and minibuses, that travel even the most rural routes.

Matatus first appeared as pirate taxis in the mid-1950s when Kenya was a British colony and movement by the native population was restricted.

The industry burgeoned after independence in 1963 when people were allowed to move to the cities, swelling metropolitan populations and increasing the need for public transport.

The name matatu comes from the Kikuyu term mang’otore matatus, meaning 30 Kenyan cents, which at that time was the standard fare.

Today, the average fare around Nairobi is 3 shillings (about 19 cents) and routes are flexible.

To increase profits and their own $40 to $75 monthly salaries, matatu crews overload the buses, work overly long hours at the wheel and drive at high speeds in order to meet daily quotas.

At least 80% of the matatu crews work seven-day weeks and average 10 hours a day in vehicles that suffer most often from engine, brake or gear-box failure.