The Africa Policy Institute, a Kenya based independent think tank has released a report titled The Lie of the land: Evictions and Kenya's crisis.
It argues that while Kenya, like other former British white settler
colonies such as South Africa and Zimbabwe have yet to decisively deal
with the legacy of colonial and post-colonial injustices relating to
land ownership, the link between the on-going systematic
evictions in the Rift Valley and Western Kenya and “post-colonial
injustices” relating to land is very tenuous. A much more plausible explanation is that Kenya is reeling under a
deadly intra-elite power game that has come to characterise multi-party politics here.
The
think tank opines that contrary to what has so often been posited as an
irrefutable fact, the eviction of non-indigenous ommunities from the
Rift Valley has had nothing to do with the so-called ‘land question’. This systematic on-going violence is not about remedying of past
injustices, land scarcity, growing impoverishment of the Kalenjin or
protests against the outcome of the flawed December 2007 General
election.
To keep repeating that the Gikuyu got to the Rift Valley through presidential favour fails to
explain
how the Kambas, Luhyas and Kisiis, who have never produced a president,
became land owners and flourished in the Rift Valley. And if indeed it
is the declaration of Mwai Kibaki as president that is the offending
spark, then why have non-Gikuyus been under just as vicious attack?
Further, if
this violence is about the pressure or scarcity of land, these issues
would not wait to crop up in every election year. Does it take one five
years to realize that they have a neighbour whose presence prevents
them from tilling a larger piece of land or using that land to pursue
some other profitable business? Given the vast state machinery that
former President Daniel Arap Moi had at his disposal from the end of 1978 he would
long have righted purported land injustices against the Kalenjin who enjoyed state patronage in numerous other ways. That
the inequity in land distribution, if any, this 'land question' was only picked up at the onset of multiparty
politics in 1991 indicates that the motivation was never simply the
restitution of land to the Kalenjin. Rather the clashes were instigated
for political expediency.
More evidence that the evictions have little if anything to do with land distribution, according to the The Lie of the land: Evictions and Kenya's crisis
is that the largest tracts of the most productive agricultural land are in the
hands of elite Kalenjins, a select caucus of the political class across
the ethnic divide, non-Kenyan multinationals and Kenyan white and
Indian farmers who have never been the target of land invasions or the calls for fairer distribution. Genuine pressure for land would not be so selective in
choosing the enemy. Indeed, pressure for land would not lead a Kalenjin
man to drive out his Gikuyu wife as has happened in the current crisis.
Fourth,
in the on-going crisis the Gikuyus, Kisiis and Luhyas (on the
Kapsabet-Vihiga border) who have been targeted for eviction have been
given no notice to vacate. Were it simply about land, one would have
expected the matter to stop upon their expulsion. That the Kalenjin
warriors have designed an elaborate mechanism for vetting and
going to great lengths to conduct checks and then exterminate fleeing Kikuyu and Kisii people at roadblocks (especially in the North Rift) signals that their goal
is not the simple take-over of land.
Further, the aggressors
have gone so far as to follow victims who have already deserted the
land and taken refuge in churches and police stations, and even crossed the border to follow refugees into Uganda,here to drown them in a river and here to poison them in a camp. The burning of these sacred sites
and the inhuman killing of those who had taken refuge therein raises
urgent questions about the moral ethos driving the Kalenjin community.
This incisive report is a highly recommended read and can be downloadedfor your consideration here .
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I also fail to understand how some people believe that the last five years certain tribes have been granted land, even if they have lived in a specific part of the country e.g. Rift Valley for decades.