Photo courtesy of the Centre for Community Initiatives. Felistas Komba, or Mama Komba as she is commonly referred to, worked for 18 years as the local government elected chair of Kurasini Street in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She no longer works for the local government but Mama Komba remembers when, in 2006, the Tanzanian government carried out an expansion of the Dar es Salaam port. There had been a large increase in the goods handled by the city’s port – which is in the same area as the Kurasini Ward, an informally occupied area.
That year, Tanzania’s government demolished 7,351 houses in Kurasini to expand the port, leaving about 36,000 people evicted with their homes destroyed.
