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Answers to land problems depends
on political will
February 10, 2008
EASTANDARD
By Gakuu Mathenge
Mzee Joseph Muroki, 66, a sorry shadow of his former self, walks
with stooped shoulders, a pair of glazed, haunted eyes shines in
their hollowed sockets on a face contoured with sweaty wrinkles.
Muroki was once a proud husband and a father of three daughters
and a son.
He once had his own fenced compound, ten head of cattle, a herd of
30 sheep and goats, and operated a transport business. He used to
ferry passengers, farm produce and inputs in Kinamba trading
centre, then the divisional headquarters of the Ng’arua division.
Life was good for the Muroki’s until the 1997 General Election
came.
He voted for the Democratic Party’s civic, parliamentary and
presidential candidates while most of his neighbours voted for
Kanu candidates.
DP, then led by Mr Mwai Kibaki, was predominantly associated with
members of one community, while Kanu, led by the then President
Daniel Moi, was predominantly the party of choice for nearly all
the communities dotting the expansive Rift Valley.
During the campaigns, the provincial administration and the police,
aware that the pastoralists supported Kanu, tended to look the
other way, when the other community complained that the herders
had invaded their farms with their livestock, or were grazing too
close to their crops.
By the time voting came and went the tension had exploded into
open hostilities, followed by bloody clashes, that left more than
a hundred people dead while thousands were injured and left
homeless.
Between December 1997 and February 1998, the Murokis considered
themselves lucky to be alive, but the family had been reduced to
destitute. They lived on handouts in displaced people’s camps,
shattered and traumatised.
Land Buying Company
"We had bought the land from the Laikipia Farmers Land Buying
Company. We settled here in 1980 from Nyahururu town. My husband
and I were working hard and we had high hopes for our children and
ourselves. Now we have nothing to show for all we did for 30 years.
After the 1998 clashes, life became difficult. Our daughters have
since dropped out of primary school and left home to fend for
themselves," Jane Muroki says, biting her lips to hold back tears.
Today, Muroki, his wife of 32 years, and their lastborn son eke
out a living from food-for-work programmes ran by the Ol Moran
Catholic Mission.
Occasionally, the Government, through the provincial
administration, also runs such programmes, and Muroki and his
family — or what is left of it — joins in to earn food.
It is apparent that Muroki is only hanging onto life courtesy of
his wife’s inspiration. At least for her; she answers most of the
questions her husband finds too bothersome.
The Murokis have been joined by other multitudes fleeing ethnic
violence in other parts of the Rift Valley — which like in 1998 is
mainly targeted at members of his community.
In 1998, it was easy for many to blame Kanu, and its leadership,
for perpetrating and abetting ethnic violence in the Rift Valley,
against so called ‘non’ indigenous communities — mainly those from
Central Kenya.
Today, Kanu is out of power and former leader of official
opposition, Mr Mwai Kibaki, is the Head of State.
"Serikali lazima ifanye kitu. Tunashindwa kwa nini imetuachilia
hivi na Kanu ilienda (The Government must do something. We wonder
why nothing has been done and yet Kanu left)," Jane says.
Many in the Rift Valley Province had hopes that all their problems
would be over with the departure of Kanu.
Those who thought Rift Valley problems were of Kanu’s making are
compelled to re-think their premise.
Rift Valley land problems are older than Kenyatta, Moi and
Kibaki’s reigns, and will not end unless some very deliberate
policy decisions are taken to settle the matter.
Successive governments have glossed over the issues, paying lip
service and simplistic attention to a deep-rooted historical issue,
which has been kept alive by successive generations of Rift Valley
politicians.
In 2004, former Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Francis ole
Kaparo, described one of the senior politicians as "a blood
thirsty hound". This was during a public altercation, over Maasai
land disputes, which seemed primed towards invasion of large-scale
commercial ranches.
It did not succeed, but could always be reincarnated with
arguments that the Maasai Land Agreements of 1904 had elapsed, and
therefore the land should revert back to the Maasai.
An attempt to start Eldoret-style mass evictions at Maai Mahiu was
halted with ruthless response from the police, who attacked
suspected raiders from the air.
At the National Archives, The Kenya Land Commission of 1933 — also
referred to as the Carter Commission — received hearings from
various groups opposed to confiscation of land by settlers. The
group also opposed confinement of communities into Native Reserves
and alienation and designation of the most arable lands as White
Highlands, for allocation to foreign settlers to set up homes and
commercial farming enterprises.
Land grabbing
Kenya, as a country, was forged on land brutality and brutal land
grabbing and impunity, first by Arabs at the Coast. They were
followed by the Imperial British East African Company (IBEA), a
private firm that later handed over the territory to the British
East Africa, which became a Protectorate and Colony by the time
the First World War (1914-1919) broke out.
As the British Empire consolidated its hold on the colony,
bringing in more and more settlers to take up the White Highlands
and establishing a central authority under a governor, the
communities never forgot they lost their land to the foreigners.
They kept on making demands for restitution, amid forceful
suppression.
Against this restlessness by the locals, the British Government
established the Kenya Land Commission in 1932 with the following
principle mandate, among others: "To determine the nature and
extent of claims and assertions by natives over land alienated by
non-natives and make recommendations for adequate settlement of
such claims whether by legislation or otherwise."
In the Rift Valley, communities that lodged claims for
consideration by the commission included: Uasin Gishu Maasai, The
Pokot (East Suk), The Njemps, the Nandi, North and South Lumbwa (Present
day Kipsigis districts of Bureti, Kipkelion, Kericho, Sotik), the
Kamasia (present day Tugen community of Baringo and Eldama Ravine
districts), and Dorobo, all of whom claimed ancestral ownership of
127 square miles of Churo plains on the Eastern Side of the
Laikipia Escarpment.
To date, Churo is among the hot spots and a battle zone between
communities in the Central Rift.
Determination of these historical claims to land has never been
easy, according to accounts cited in the 1933 report about Churo
in regard to Tugen (Kamasia) and Pokot claims:
"In the opinion of the district commissioner, the Kamasia claims
to the farms adjoining Ravine —including Uasin Gishu and the block
of farms between Eldama and Karasuria rivers — is in all
probability valid…"
However, the DC stated in his memorandum: "It’s extremely doubtful
Kamasia formerly occupied as large an area in the South as they do
now…before the arrival of the white man and settled government…"
The Church, the only voice sympathetic to the African plight,
struggling with a mighty imperial technological and military
monster determined to assert itself at any cost, spoke candidly
and loudly.
The Kenya Missionary Council, then bringing together the
protestant missionaries operating in Kenya, wrote in a memorandum
dated February 22 1933: "The root cause of trouble is the strange
failure by Government to make any inquiry into Native Land Tenure
systems before giving out land to other non-native races…it is
most unfortunate that when it became apparent that injuries had
been committed, no attempt was made to make reparations…"
The Memorandum, contained in the Kenya Land Commission Report,
further says in part:
"In most cases, natives were evicted, without knowing they had
legal claim to remain, or were compelled to come under the
provisions of the squatters ordinance thus forfeiting their
original status as occupiers under the 1915 ordinance…"
In conclusion, the Kenya Missionary Council submitted:
"We realise that in many cases it is impossible to reverse past
history; that settlers had come in at the invitation of the
Government, purchased land and developed it at considerable cost;
that to evict them would be unfair… and a great body of moderate
native opinion realises...the responsibility for past errors… a
definite obligation of honour… lies with the Government, to secure
a restitution of alienated land, or granting of other land, or
adequate monetary compensation for injustices done in the past…"
Insurgency
None of the mitigations had been implemented by the time the
colony got sucked into the World War Two (1939-1945) from which it
plunged into suppression of explosion of political agitation for
Uhuru (independence). A bloody and brutal campaign against the Mau
Mau insurgency and rebellion culminated in the country’s
independence in 1963.
However, at independence, two political groupings had emerged,
Kanu and Kadu, the former agitating for a unitary government and
the latter for a federal (Majimbo) government.
Majimbo proponents envisaged a country where all communities would
secure semi-autonomous control of land resources in their regions.
This was as a bulwark against what they perceived as a danger of
domination by bigger communities that had propelled and provided
leadership of the struggle for independence — most notable the
Kikuyu and the Luo.
Indeed, immediate former MP for Laikipia West, Mr G G Kariuki
writes in his 2003 book, Illusion of Power: "The emergence of
tribal animosity was a serious problem around this time. Kadu had
inherent fear of big tribes, mainly Gikuyu and Luo, who
principally formed Kanu…This fear was so ingrained that the Kanu
leadership started to lay foundations to evict all emigrants from
the white highlands so that the advent of the Majimbo
administrative structures, would find their enclaves devoid of
immigrants..."
The book continues: "One of the Kadu leaders, Mr William Murgor,
warned his tribesmen that he would ‘blow the whistle’ to signal
the start of fighting… one of the intelligence reports of the time
warned of a strategy to invade settlement schemes to evict
immigrants on Independence Day…"
Though the likes of Murgor schemes were stopped by the security
services before going too far, Kariuki, who documents his 50 years
political career in the book concludes that the Kenyatta
government mishandled and glossed over the land question badly
thus: "The plight of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, who had
been displaced by the white settlement in Central Kenya and the
Rift Valley (the White Highlands), and Arabs along the Coastal
strip, never received the consideration they deserved…"
During an interview about the way forward from the current crisis,
he says significant proportion of the Kenyan population has never
embraced the modern Kenyan Constitution and capitalistic concepts
like "willing buyer willing seller…they need a great deal of
education and persuasion. We needed a Referendum of the
Independence constitution that never happened."
For three generations up to the late 80s, the land question lay
buried deep in the graveyards of history, tightly suppressed by
the autocratic regimes.
Until 1991, when in a bid to counter the agitation for
multi-partyism, Rift Valley politicians, reincarnated the Majimbo
Ghosts, warning that those who supported multi-partyism had to
leave Rift Valley and go back to their ‘ancestral’ lands.
By the time the country went to the first multi-party election, in
December 1992, it was awash with blood of murdered, injured and
tears of thousands of displaced people targeting so called
‘non-indigenous’ communities in the Rift Valley.
Majimbo agenda
In a report on the violence titled "The Cursed Arrow, the National
Council of Churches, (NCCK), described the mayhem as having been
preceded by a pro-majimbo public rallies as a strategy to create
another reality aimed at forcing the Majimbo agenda.
"A critical analysis of these clashes were politically motivated,
the main objective behind the clashes was to achieve, through
violence, what was not achievable in the political platform i.e.
forcing Majimbo on the Kenyan people… the strategy being to create
a situation on the ground for possible political bargain in the
debate about the system of government in a future Kenya…" wrote
NCCK Secretary General, Rev Samuel Kobia.
The current spate of ethnic violence in the Rift Valley was also
preceded by an intense pro-Majimbo debate and public rallies.
The International Human Rights Watch, local civil society groups
and international media organisations have since published alleged
accounts of ‘elders’ having ‘blessed’ or given a greenlight to
youths to embark on mass evictions and burning of houses so as to
evict members of certain communities.
So much water has passed under the bridge, with more than 1,000
people dead, thousands still unaccounted for, more than a million
people put on the road, running for their safety or seeking state
protection in Internally Displaced Persons camps.
Muroki’s plight pales in significance, visibility and urgency in
the face of the current crisis.
Nevertheless, he and his wife still look forward to some relief
and, hopefully, a permanent and enduring settlement of the land
question in the Rift Valley.
During her testimony at the Witness Hearings at a Congressional
Committee in the US, Human Rights crusader and former nominated
MP, Ms Njoki Ndung’u recommended on Tuesday:
"The Government would have to purchase land from private
individuals and multinationals that own large tracts of arable
land and create new settlement schemes along the line of
post-independent land programmes…"
"Justice must also be done; in the past sale of land took place
between willing buyer, willing seller, and there can be no
justifiable excuse for the latter to evict the seller…"
Which sounds like the Kenya Missionary Council of 1933 that said
the colonial government had a responsibility, an obligation of
honour… to restore the dignity of Muroki’s of that time, and their
succeeding generations.
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