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'We
refuse to give up hoping.' Ogiek man, 2000
The Nairobi High Court
was packed to the roof. Behind the row of advocates in their wigs
and gowns sat the representatives of the Ogiek community of
forest-dwellers and honey-gatherers, also formally dressed in fur
cloaks and head-dresses decorated with cowrie shells. Around them
were people from other Ogiek communities, there out of solidarity,
and dressed in what is nowadays their everyday wear: the
Euro-American hand-me-downs of the African poor. The crowd of
other people present – the journalists, human rights observers,
and members of the Kenyan public – showed how much interest this
case had aroused.
Together we waited for
the final judgement on a lawsuit that has been going on since May
1999: was the Kenyan Government within its rights in evicting
5,000 Ogiek tribespeople from Tinet Forest? Tinet, about 250
kilometres west of Nairobi, is part of the much larger Mau Forest,
ancestral home of the Ogiek people.
The advocates for the
Ogiek had argued that Tinet was the ancestral land of the
community; that nine years ago the government had agreed that they
should remain there and granted them each a five-acre plot; and
that depriving them of access to the forest and its products
infringed their right to life and livelihood. Survival supporters
and others had written from all over the world on their behalf.
But – when they
finally appeared – judges Samuel Oguk and Richard Kuloba
dismissed the Ogiek's case and found that they had no right
whatever to continue living in Tinet. The tone of the judgment was
harsh and contemptuous, as though the judges were determined not
only to deny the title of the Tinet Ogiek, but to frighten off any
other group of people who might try to make a similar claim.
The judges both
dismissed the claim of the Ogiek to be indigenous to Tinet, and
denied the fact that tracts of land have already been given to
powerful non-Ogiek individuals. The authorities, they said, had
belatedly recognised that Tinet is a water catchment area as well
as a gazetted forest and conservation area, and so had lawfully
revoked their earlier plan to let the Ogiek remain.
The judgement climaxed
in an outburst of environmental rhetoric clearly aimed at
enlisting the support of the green lobby. 'The
eviction is for the purpose of saving the whole of Kenya from a
possible environmental disaster.' The Ogiek, the judges
alleged, had engaged in 'massive developments' which disqualify
them from living in the forest. One would think that they had
constructed vast shopping malls rather than scattered wooden
schoolhouses and little one-room stores, and that these were the
principal threat to Kenya's environment.
Nothing was said about
the real threats – the huge logging operations which are still
destroying other parts of the Mau forest in defiance of the
logging ban recently imposed by the government, the tea
plantations owned by a company belonging to President Moi, or the
intensive cultivation of flowers for export. There was no mention
of the handsome house and large estate owned by Zakayo Cheruiyot,
Permanent Secretary for Provincial Administration and Internal
Security in the Office of the President. Nobody has proposed to
evict him. Observers have little doubt that interests like these
are the real forces behind the judgment.
The Ogiek have had a
severe blow. Some women were in tears. But the community remain
defiant. They are appealing against the judgment. One man said, 'We
refuse to give up hoping – Tinet is still our home.'
Link : http://www.survival-international.org/ogiek_000323.htm
Samuel Oguk
, one of the two green-smokescreen ruling judges, who nearly
brought the Ogiek to their knees, was thereafter himself brought
before the High Courts of Kenya and lost his job.
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