How Moi plunged Kenya into drought

President Mwai Kibaki
Prime Minister Raila Odinga
The Director, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)

RE: IT IS EITHER GRABBING THE WATER CATCHMENTS OR WAR

Sad as it is, corruption in Kenya has taken on the most dreadful and awful dimension. The premeditated corruption by the former Moi administration continues to haunt Kenyan water catchments, depriving Kenya of the rains that would save the nation from continuous drought. Before 1985, the controversial Mau Forest had both indigenous forest and large acres of trees planted for commercial purpose. On maturity, those trees were sold for the manufacture of papers, guns, buildings and furniture. Once the trees were sold they were replaced with young seedlings. The sold trees earned Kenya millions of shillings every year. There were more than thirty forest stations, each with 15,000 Kenyans in and around Mau Forest. The parents of those families were employed to plant and to look after the young trees, weeding out unnecessary vegetation which tended to interrupt the proper growth of the trees and they pruned the bigger ones to improve their qualities. In total, all the inhabitants of those forest stations were 450,000, most of who were the Kikuyus. There were a few Kisiis, Luhyas and Luos. There were no Kalenjins working in those forest stations.

In 1985, all those who worked in those stations were dismissed from employment and were evicted. Most of the children from those families died out of disease and hunger, while some of their parents also died out of diseases and depression. Soon after, all the Mau Forest land, worth thousands of acres, was illegally divided among the Kalenjin community. All those trees worth millions of shillings were divided among the Kalenjins who cut and sold them. Mau forest was a source of many rivers, some of which drained into Lake Nakuru. After those trees were cleared, most rivers started drying up and drought also started to hit Kenya. Since 1987, Kenya has had several situations of drought and hunger as a result.

Efforts by the Kenya government to evict those now occupying the forest, has been met with extreme resistance. The members of parliament from the Kalenjin community have stood firm to resist the eviction of their communities from the water catchments zone, knowing so well that the forest in controversy was once government land grabbed by the Moi regime purposely for the settlement of their community, most of whom had large masses of land elsewhere before.

On Thursday 23 July 2009, the Kenya Standard newspaper quoted cabinet ministers and members of parliament from the Kalenjin community, having fought over resettlement efforts even as President Kibaki received reports of declining water resources. Eighteen Rift Valley members of parliament led by cabinet ministers William Ruto, Franklin Bett and Helen Sambili, all from the Kalenjin community, told off the environmental minister John Michuki over his order for eviction of Mau forest settlers. They demanded for Ksh38 billion compensation.

As if Minister William Ruto would not remember the previous evictions of thousands of Kikuyus, Kisiis, Luhyas and Luos from different parts of the Rift Valley since 1991 when he [Ruto] was the leader of KANU 92. He was quoted in the Standard newspaper of the 22 July 2009 as having said that, ‘It is against the rules of natural justice to evict people from their settlements even if they were squatters’. Since Moi took leadership from Kenyatta in 1978, the Kalenjins [Moi’s tribe] have been behaving as though they have been above the law. They have been terrorising and killing the Kikuyus any time and moment they feel like doing so.

In 1991, they killed over 800 Kikuyus and nothing was done to them. From 1992 to 1998, they terrorised and killed the Kikuyus year after year and nothing was done and no arrests were made. From the year 2003 to 2008 they continued with the killings year after year with impunity. While other members of parliament from other communities protect and defend their communities, the members of parliament from the Kikuyu community have remained silent over the entire period of suffering and agony of their community in the hands of the Kalenjins.

For the Kikuyus, it was as good as having no members of parliament from their community. The entire world, which has always been aware that the Kikuyu community has since 1991 been targeted for elimination by the Kalenjin community, has never publicly admitted so. No one from either Kenya or the international community has ever condemned the Kalenjins for their continued murdererous behaviour since 1991. Kenyans and the international community have shied from doing so as if the Kalenjins have legal supremacy over other tribes in Kenya.

It is time the entire international community publicly admits that the Kalenjin community in Kenya has been targeting the Kikuyu community for elimination in the Rift Valley. It is time for all Kenyans and the entire international community admit that former President Moi started this notorious exercise of senseless killings and evictions in 1991, two years after his warnings, that war and chaos would erupt once multiparty politics was allowed in Kenya.

Why are Kenyans and the international community hiding the truth? The Kikuyus are hated by a few other communities in Kenya, because they are a very hard working and industrious community, a community that has survived under very odd situations in the last two and a half decades. All the thousands of Kikuyus evicted from the Rift Valley from 1991 to 1998, had bought their land from the colonialists with their own money, earned through their own sweat. At independence in 1963 the Kalenjins who now claim to own Rift Valley, were about 1 million in population. They only occupied a small area of Kericho, Kitale and Marakwett districts. Seven-eighths of the Rift Valley was covered with thick natural forest until the white settlers went to Kenya and cleared the forests for farming and grazing. Although the Masai community in Kenya lived in a small area of the Rift Valley called Narok, they grazed their cattle in most other areas of the Rift Valley and this is why most towns in the Rift Valley are called after the Masai names and not under the Kalenjin names.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga should identify those evicted from the forest stations in 1985 and the 2008 post election violence IDPs as the first recipients of compensation and thereafter the Kikuyus who were evicted from their homes between the years 1991 to 1997 before addressing any issue of the Mau Forest settlers, thanks to minister for agriculture Mr William Ruto for his recent discovery, that even squatters should not be evicted from their settlements. Before evaluating the Mau forest settlers situation, the Kenya government is obligated to denounce the eviction of thousands of Kenyans from the forest stations in 1985 without notice and compensate them. The Mau Forest was about 450,000 acres with an estimate of 180,000,000 trees ready for harvest, which would have fetched billions of shillings for Kenyans. And before any of the current Mau settlers is compensated, a thorough investigation should be carried out to establish who benefited from the sale of those trees in 1985 because some of them do not deserve any compensation as they earned millions of Kenya shillings from the trees they sold. Former President Moi should also be arrested and prosecuted for annexing and dividing the Mau Forest to his own tribe, with the full knowledge that he was interfering with an important catchments area, which was not only important to Kenya but to other nations like Israel and the Arab world who benefit from various rivers which originate there.

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* Isaac Newton Kinity is the former secretary general of the Kenya Civil Servants Union and chairman of the Kikimo Foundation for corruption and poverty eradication.
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