The new lands minister, Mr Orengo, has been in the news making some controversial statements about leases and size of land people can own. The thing that got me thinking was an advert in the Nation a few weeks ago where owners of land which are 10 acres or more in the area 70km around Nairobi or 40km around Nakuru, Mombasa or Kisumu, were asked to tender in to a certain ministry for cooperation in developing housing estates. This got me thinking about WHO actually owns such land around the cities mentioned. No surprises here mostly politicians or sons and a few white Kenyans.
I then started researching land issues and came up with the chart at the bottom of this text. What it shows is the connection between politics, land and tribes. I hope it will explain why we have clashes in the Rift Valley. I know most people do not know that Majimbo was dreamt up by white settlers when independence became inevitable in the hope of becoming a protected minority tribe thus keeping control over the land they already owned. They managed to convince some tribes...mostly the Kalenjin to join them in their cause. Majimbo was supported by the Somalis who wanted to succeed and join up with Somalia and the Coast peoples though one has to differentiate between the coastal mainland (Mijikenda, Giriama etc. and the Island. Their politicians have never and do not see eye to eye on many issues.
Something else which most people do not know is that the Luhya's, represented by Muliro, were for Majimbo but pulled out of the group when Kitale was put in Rift Valley province. At that time many whites of South African decent (anyone remember Bruce Mackenzie?) were settled in Kitale and they did want to stay on over there. They did not want Kitale to be part of North Nyanza district as western province was called then thus become dominated by the Luhya's who were politically active along with the Luo's. On the other hand, the Luhya's did not want to be dominated by the Kalenjin's but lost to the whites.
Another issue that came up were the Sabaot. They wanted to be part of Rift Valley with their Kalenjin cousins but were put in now Western province...an offshoot of the current land clashes though crrently it seems to pit clan against clan.
To get back to the chart, it has a few spelling mistakes, some data is also missing and only shows the political arena till 1990. I will refer to this chart as r.c. version 1. I am working on a second part which explains Uhuru Kenyatta's dilemma of leading a pro-majimbo political party as a Kikuyu and why referendums will always kill majimboism.
The chart also shows how our politicians failed to build truly national structures. Tom Mboya had started building one but slowed down after KANU became the de-facto single party. Most of the politicians were afraid that the national party structures would be hijacked and used against them by their rivals or by some young up-coming politician.
Anyway I am looking forward to your feedback.
By the way the CC licence is also applicable all over the world! So please respect it. It was a lot of work piecing up the information.
Ethnicity Land & Politics in Kenya by Tengeza is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at tengeza.blogspot.com.
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Tengeza, this is very fascinating research that you have done, especially with the chart.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, that goes a long way to explaining the post election violence that took place early this year. It is amazing how this land issue keeps cropping up nearly in every corner of the continent.