Kenya’s issues are old and complex

‘History despite the wrenching pain cannot be unlived,
but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.’ (Maya Angelou)

Allow me, if you may, to comment on the article by Isaac Newton Kinity.

Kinity alleges that Moi should be ‘arrested and prosecuted’. Let me take him through a historical journey that might well serve to enlighten the likes of Kinity. Emotions should never be allowed to override intellectual discourse at the expense of public good. We desire peace in our country, and by allowing articles of Kinity’s nature to be published only heightens the situation.

Of course Moi, like the Kenyatta and Kibaki governments, is not blameless. Most Kenyans are living in self-denial, trying to wish away the past corruption by the Kenyatta regime. While it is possible to be optimistic about the return of sanity to Kenya’s deeply cleft socio-political fabric, it is realistic to expect the damage done by Kenyatta regime to take much longer to repair.

The issues before us are diverse and divisive. They are old and complex. They go beyond the Mau issues. The poll and the violence in 2007 are symptoms of deeper national problems and are not exactly the problems themselves.

The nation can very easily deceive itself with cosmetic and palliative solutions that cannot withstand the taste of times.

The chaos that spread following Kenya’s contested elections unmasked historical disputes over land. It is a symptom of failing to face up to history.

Traditionally, the Kikuyu had inhabited the region around Mount Kenya. But because this happened to be some of the best land, the British acquired it in the 1900s.

By 1964, after independence, the Queen’s powers were transferred to the Kenyan government, which – through the Commissioner of Land – could now dispose of the land without recourse to anybody else.

Many of ordinary Kenyans, had hoped that with independence, the Kenyatta government would facilitate the return of their land.

But this was not to be, yet the British Government had offered funds to help Kenyans buy back the land that was once theirs.

This system of ‘Buy Back’ was administered under the ‘Settlement Fund Trustee’ (SFT), a state corporation that was supposed to buy the land held by British settlers and offer it to the community on the agreed understanding that the latter were to repay agreed sums of money on easy terms.

Today, there is a whole body of literature showing that the SFT aided the Kenyatta cronies and his community to resettle its own people.

Whether Kenyatta handled the resettlement scheme well, or whether it respected the land rights other communities held before the advent of British rule in the country, is debatable.

Some of the resettlement schemes in Kilifi district were open to Kikuyu despite the fact that there were many landless people among the Miji Kenda.

Those who have been questioning the occupation of land by the Kikuyu in places away from Central Kenya have – unconsciously – been asking not just how the Kenyatta government handled the resettlement in the immediate post-independence period. They have also been asking the very justification the same government had to assume the legal powers hitherto held by the Queen of England.

By buying off or grabbing the land offered for sale by departing British settlers in Central Kenya, the Kikuyu political elite – in a way – continued the process of disinheriting their own people.

One can therefore conclude that these displaced Kikuyus might argue that they had no option but to occupy lands in the vast Rift Valley.

Did the displaced Kikuyus have their land in Central Province that had been alienated from them? Was Rift Valley the best option to resettle them?

Most other communities were left out by the Kenyatta regime during the allocation of land soon after independence. Outsiders taken to other provinces were rewarded with large swathes. This was unfair.

There is no doubt that one community benefited a lot from the White Highlands formally owned by colonial settlers during the Kenyatta regime. This is evident by names given to huge tracts of land they own i.e. Kiambaa, Kimumu Rurigi, Rogoini, Nyakinyua, Kimuri, Yamumbi, Gitwamba etc.

Although it is community ancestral land, they should never ever take it for free. They should be ready to purchase it at a reasonable and fair price.

Historical injustices, perceived or real especially the question of land will always provide the fuel for the fire that threatens to consume us. Elections merely strike the match.

From South Africa to Liberia, to Chile to Argentina, people are refusing to allow history to be silenced. Succeeding generations refuse impunity and demand moral accountability for past injustices.

Kenya will be no different, and the longer we leave our issues unresolved, the more complicated they would become.

There are those who caution us not to reopen old wounds. But we must open them up if they did not heal properly, to let the pus out.

‘Forgive and forget,’ is the famous mantra of the morally lazy. As our recent experience has shown, memories can return with a vengeance unless they are redeemed and become a way of transforming the future.

There are several underlying factors on top of them land that the GOK never addresses.

It is becoming clear that communities in regions are evidently suspicious of each of other before General Election.

The Kalenjins ‘strongly believed that president Moi failed to return the farms’ to their community when he was in power, a claim that partly explains why they ignored his advice to vote for president Kibaki during the election campaign.

And as the GOK seeks a solution to the Mau crisis, it is paramount that land is given priority if tribal animosity is to be resolved.

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.

Kibaki is an insider of the elite club that has ruled Kenya since independence. In his first five years, he showed a determination not to interfere with the status quo, opting instead to do business with the elite of the previous regime.

The challenge is that the land, which he is being called upon to redistribute, is in the hands of a significant number of the former powerful ruling elites that he has protected over his first five years.

Under Kenyatta, individuals formed land-buying companies, which assisted in resettlement in the Rift Valley. There were murmurs even then as the resettlement was being undertaken.

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 toward 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.

At the National Archives, The Kenya Land Commission of 1933 (Carter Commission) received hearings from various groups from Rift Valley opposed to confiscation of land by settlers. The groups 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.

Kenya as Country was forged on land brutality and brutal land grabbing. First was 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 WWI (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 in Rift Valley, 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 in the Rift Valley 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 settlements 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 district of Bureti, Kipkelion, Kericho, Sotik), The Kamasia (Present day Tugen community of Baringo District) 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 Rift Valley. Determination of these historical claims by the Kalenjin cannot be wished away.

‘In the opinion of the District Commissioner, the Kamasia claims to the land adjoining Ravine – including Uasin Gishu and the block of land between Eldama and Karasuria rivers – is in all probability valid…’

The Church, the only voice sympathetic then, to the African plight, struggling with an imperial military monster spoke candidly and loudly.

The Kenya Missionary Council wrote in a memorandum dated 22 February 1933 thus:

‘The root cause of trouble is the strange failure by Government to make any enquiry into Native Land Tenure systems before giving out land to non-native races… it is most unfortunate that when it became apparent that injuries had been committed, no attempt was made to make reparations…’. In most cases, natives were evicted, without knowing they had legal claim to remain.

None of the above mitigation had been implemented by the time the colony got sucked into WWII

I hope this summary is useful to enable us look at the whole picture and not a subjective issue.

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* When not perusing Pambazuka, Arap Rotich is a pensions benefits practitioner based in Nairobi. He welcomes rejoinders to this article.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.