UasinGishu Post

Now that indeed Hon.Ruto seems to be ahead in the pack and now belongs to Kenyans,what can the larger Kalenjin constituency do to tame him and ensure the community benefits from his national stature.More often ,when a leader gains national stature,his local constituency suffers because the perceived satisfaction from the priviledge of having their own at the top is ultimate.We have to own him and thus the need to have a check and balance by constant constructive crititism and allowing other leaders a space to grow and therefore keep the top on its toes.We need not overemphasise the ills of absolute power of an individual over a community.

 

The K24 visit to Eldoret for a public debate on issues on Uasin Gishu County afforded the residents to talk freely on issues close to their hearts.The two aspirants Mrs Vespa Kangogo and Dr. Bottok declared their interest in the post of Governor for this great county.The vetting starts with a background check for the two candidates particularly on the intergrity and moreso their independence.Could they be projects that finally they will be blackmailed when in office by the powers that be.We need independent candidates.Let the people decide.We ought to be cautious when nominating candidates in euphoric party of the time in that the candidate who wins is likely to win in the general elections.See to it that democracy and fairness is assured in our primaries.Otherwise we will live to regret when cronies get positions just the way the Mayor Eldoret has killed our city.

Eldoret: the Future Los Angeles of Kenya?

Eldoret: the Future Los Angeles of Kenya?

eCentury Reporter
Eldoret is indeed the economic, political, social and cultural epicentre of the North Rift. It is the only town in Rift Valley province with an international airport; was the second town after Nairobi to have a state university-Moi University in1984.

It was also the only town after Nairobi to have a national referral hospital. The Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital has enhanced the status of Eldoret in every way. It serves Nyanza, Western, Uganda and Sudan. One of the notable surgeries ever performed in Kenya was done at this facility. The surgery involved rare breast growth abnormality and was performed by a team of surgeons from Kenya and Egypt led by Dr Philip Parklea in 2001.

The Eldoret International Airport is yet another facility that has made Eldoret a city in the making. Given proper support Eldoret International Airport may in the long run make the town the Frankfurt of Kenya. The airport was envisioned to spur tourism and horticulture in North Rift and Western Kenya.

A local Kalenjin prophecy attributed to a Nandi prophet known as Mong’o had predicted in pre-colonial era about Ntaboi nemi Kapseret meaning the mystery of Kapseret. The mystery is now believed to be the Eldoret International Airport. The presence of the international airport is a fulfilment of a prophecy by a Nandi seer.
Eldoret is emerging as an intellectual capital development centre. Other universities apart from Moi have pitched tent in Eldoret. The include Mt.Kenya University, Kabarak University, Baraton and Catholic University of East Africa on Eldoret-Kisumu road. Middle colleges too are taking the town by storm. They include International African College, Danian, Elgonview College, and Alphax along Eldoret-Iten road.

The Central Business District of Eldoret is slowly becoming educational centre. The tall buildings are housing colleges and universities. Kiptagich house for example has Moi University and Eldoret Aviation College.

Among the tallest buildings are KVDA Plaza, White Castle, and Kiptagich.
Eldoret emerged naturally as caravan post for explorers in pre-colonial era. Most explorers to Uganda passed through Eldoret. It is thus a town which is a central nervous system for Kenya and neighbouring countries.

Major roads from other parts of the country and other nations converge in Eldoret. Eldoret also forms a natural economic triangle connecting Western and Nyanza provinces. It is brings regions and communities together.

Eldoret is the district headquarters of the greater Uasin Gishu districts; it is a commercial centre for a huge economic block. Other towns which depend on Eldoret are Kitale, Kapenguria, Kapsowar, Kapsabet and Iten.

Eldoret was founded by white settlers particularly the Boers or Afrikaans who first settled in Uasin Gishu district in 1908. Boer families numbering about 58 trekked to Eldoret from Nakuru followed by 60 others in 1911 from South Africa.

Eldoret was established as a colonial administrative centre in 1910.Before then it was called Farm 64. The town then was sixty four miles from Londiani, the nearest railway station. The Nandi community called it Sisibo. Eldoret comes from a Maa word “Endore” meaning a stony river. The white community coined the name Eldoret-a corruption of Endore.

The stony river is Sosiani, a river which dissects the town into two. Eldoret was first occupied by the Sirikwa, then by the Maasai and lastly by the Nandi.
Presently the population of the town is between 200,000 to 300,000. It is 2100m above the sea level.

The history of Eldoret is interesting. The railway line reached the town in 1924, and four years later the town was supplied with piped water from Sosiani river. In 1938 the town was connected to an electric generator by the East African Power Lighting CO.

Entrepreneurs are doing Eldoret proud. Athletes and other investors are investing their fortunes in the town. Ultramodern hotels and restaurants are emerging for example Red Bean, Sirikwa Hotel, Poa place, White Castle, and Wagon Wheel among others.

Eldoret has had her share of challenges, the latest and the most remembered was the post election violence. Eldoret’s suburbs like Langas, Kimumu, Maili Nne and Munyaka were devastated. Mansions and business malls were reduced to rubbles. Eldoret was the epicentre of the political upheaval that the country witnessed.

Eldoreans however have risen again with tools of peace and development. Colleges, schools and businesses are more vibrant than ever before. Eldoret is a town with high return for investment. Small businesses thrive to medium and then large-scale within no time.

Investors today include Kenyans in Diaspora: US, UK and other parts of the world. Eldoret is a hub of a huge market-Nandi, Uasin Gishu and Trans-Nzoia districts with over 3 million people. There is also a huge potential from neighbouring districts such as Keiyo, Marakwet, Baringo, Pokot and Turkana who have a population of over 2 million, making Eldoret the future San Francisco or Los Angeles of Kenya.

Famous athletes like Dr. Keino, Moses Kiptanui among others have invested massively in real estate. Kiptanui’s Komora House is a land mark demonstrating the power of professional athletics. It is an icon and a symbol for every upcoming athlete. With Kipchoge High School recently launched by International Olympic Committee president, the school will soon churn out top-class sports gurus.

Eldoret town to host Uasin Gishu county offices

The County of Uasin Gishu will have its headquarters in Eldoret town. Leaders from the county, including three MPs, have endorsed the decision to have the county offices and county assembly at the Eldoret West DC’s office in Eldoret town.

Rift Valley deputy PC Wanyama Musiambo chaired the meeting where leaders from the county agreed that Eldoret town is most suitable for the county headquarters because it is developed and is easily accessible by residents of the region. The DC’s office sits on a 12-acre piece of land which the leaders said is adequate for the setting up of required facilities.

Eldoret mayor William Rono, Wareng County Council chairman Paul Kiprop, Eldoret East MP Margaret Kamar and DCs Charles Mukele of Eldoret East and Alex Ngoiyo attended the meeting.

Former councillor Kipkorir Menjo proposed the location and he was supported by most of those present. Six grassroots leaders rejected the proposal and wanted the headquarters to be located near Moi Barracks.“It’s a good location because there is enough space for putting up more facilities including the county assembly and many people will easily access the location because they are used to it,” said Menjo.

Kamar told the leaders the county government will provide proper management structures but residents of the area should be ready to develop their own region.“We will need people with a clear vision and good planning to utilise the resources that are available and at the same time plan on how we can attract more investments,” said Kamar who is also an assistant minister for Environment.

The Star

A Zionist Night Shelter in Africa

One of the more strange little counterfactual might-have-been’s is if, in 1905, the Zionist Congress had decided to accept the formal offer made by Joseph Chamberlain in 1903 — then British colonial secretary  — to charter a Jewish colony in British East Africa.

It’s an interesting story: the offer was made in 1903 for a colonial charter of a six thousand square mile tract of land in the Uasin Gishu plateau, where present day Eldoret is located (see left). Uasin Gishu was then occupied by the Turkana, Nandi, and Pökoot peoples — in the borderlands between British East Africa and Uganda — but as pastoralists, their claims to the land were completely negligible, judged to be the sort of people who could simply be moved. The British sometimes treated the land-claims of settled, agricultural peoples — like the Gikuyu — with a certain minimal respect — and legislation required any land taken from settled natives had to be paid for (though such laws were often not enforced — but that rule simply didn’t apply to pastoral peoples, whose land was simply declared empty and open for colonization by immigrants from elsewhere.

And so, in 1903, the Foreign office dispatched this letter to the Jewish Colonial Trust, ltd:

It was not a particularly desirable concession, though — which the expedition sent in 1904 to look at it quickly realized — and in 1905, the Zionist Congress voted it down. A few years later, British East Africa would make it the site for settling a group of Afrikaner emigrants from South African (a group the British also regarded as somewhat undesirable), who would found the town of Eldoret in the center of their settlement.

Theodor Herzl was the primary proponent of the scheme. In a collection of documents from the ‘Uganda Controversy,” as it was called, Michael Heymann sets the scene:

When, in the summer of 1902, Herzl realized that his attempts to obtain a “Charter” for Palestine from the Turks had failed, at least for the time being, he directed his efforts towards acquiring a region outside the Sultan’s realm for Jewish settlement. Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Landsdowne, the British Colonial and Foreign Secretary respectively, perhaps not unmindful of their own problem of alien immigration, were sympathetic. The prospect of settlement in an area under British control, the Egyptian Sinai peninsula — not quite, but almost, Palestine, and there acceptable to any true “Lover of Zion” — awoke high hopes, which turned to keen disappointment when the British backed down and pronounced this so-called El-Arish scheme impracticable. By this time, May 1903, the Kishinev pogrom had just taken place. Overcome by a sense of urgency and fearing another wave of unorganized mass migration to the no longer uniformly hospitable Western countries, Herzl did not feel himself able to reject out of hand Chamberlain’s offer for a settlement in East Africa. Thus was born the East Africa — or as it was then commonly called, the Uganda — Project.

For Joseph Chamberlain in 1903, settling Jews in Africa would have seemed like it could solve several problems. One was that — as Heymann delicately suggests — genteel anti-Semites like Chamberlain and Landsdowne shared with Herzl a desire to discourage the mass migration of East European Jews into Western Europe. For Herzl, the fear was assimilation, and though it was the reverse fear for men like Chamberlain — non-assimilable Jews immigrating into Britain! Horrors! — they had in common the desire to find some other place for those migrants than Europe. And as pogroms in East Europe worsened — increasing the number of emigrating Jews even as the prospects of building a Jewish homeland in Palestine looked increasingly dim, Africa suddenly popped up as a possibility.

Of course, why anyone in Britain thought settling Europeans in East Africa was a good idea is an interesting story in itself, and worth a digression. It began with economics: the British had just completed a debt-financed railroad line connecting the East African coast to the Ugandan interior, and discovered, on doing so, that they had nothing to ship on it, and thus no way of making it pay back the massive debt it had built up in the construction. They had originally started building it for geopolitical reasons: in the 1890’s, they thought they needed it to solidify their hold on Uganda and protect it from German expansion — Uganda was the headwaters of the Nile, and thus, considered to be important for holding on to Egypt (and therefore India) — but the German threat diminished and the region would turn out not to have any meaningful mineral deposits (as did Rhodesia and South Africa), leaving the British to wake up one day with a pointless railroad to nowhere. Nothing that was grown or produced by Africans in the region was particularly viable as an export commodity, nor were Africans particularly interested in selling to export markets anyway, so the railroad deserved the name that was given to it, the “Lunatic Line.” As a solution to that problem, then, Britain tried to develop some kind of export-economy in their newly acquired territory in East Africa by sending settlers interested in developing commercial agriculture, and in 1903, it seemed plausible that resettled Eastern-European farmers might be part of that: interested only in making the railroad and the colony pay, any kind of settlers would do for men like Chamberlain. There was talk of settling Indians in East Africa, Afrikaners from South Africa made up much of the first wave, and Jews from Eastern Europe would have done just as nicely.

Charles Eliot, the commissioner who oversaw the beginnings of the settlement project, was of a different opinion, as was the political lobby of the aristocratic white settlers whose settlement he worked to prioritize. For these people, British East Africa was to be a “White Man’s Country,” and neither Indians nor Jews were any part of that vision. As soon as Lord Delamere — the settler leader — discovered that plans were afoot to settle Jews in the colony, they organized against it:

When word of Chamberlain’s offer reached East Africa there was immediate opposition from the settlers. Lord Delamere sent a telegram to The Times and a meeting was convened in Nairobi at which the Revd PA Bennett maintained that missionaries violently opposed the scheme. Some speakers at the meeting objected to the poverty of the Jews and their supposed lack of agricultural knowledge. Delamere wrote a pamphlet, Lord Hindlip joined the protests, and the African Standard waged a virulent anti-Semitic campaign.

Charles Eliot was subtler, though, and it was he who most effectively scuttled the project by choosing a truly undesirable piece of land to offer to the Zionists. While it all might have seemed the same to Chamberlain in London, Eliot would have understood quite well that that the Uasin Gishu was not only isolated and unserviced by the railway (64 miles away, in fact), but the native peoples were also sufficiently “unpacified” in 1903 to make its colonization seem a risky proposition. And so, when the Zionist expedition got a look at what they were being offered, they came to exactly the conclusion that Eliot had hoped they would come to: this was a pretty shitty offer.

In his 1914 book Zionism, Richard Gottheil recalls the deliberations over the offer:

The commission which went out to East Africa in December, 1903, made its report to the Central Committee in May, 1904. The territory examined and delimited by the British Government at Herzl’s request comprised an area covering some six thousand square miles, and was known as the Guas Ngishu Plateau. Although the members of the commission did not agree upon all points, the general view seemed to be that the territory would be insufficient for any large number of Jewish settlers, and that the ground was fit rather for grazing than for agriculture. In addition, a strong opposition to the grant had developed in the East African Protectorate itself. Telegrams from Lord Delamere, the High Commissioner of British East Africa, from Lord Hindlipp, and from Sir H. H. Johnston arrived at the Foreign Office couched in terms that showed the difficulties such a settlement would have had to encounter.” All this was meat for the Palestinian enthusiasts.

It would have taken a lot to sway the members of the Zionist Congress who insisted on Palestine, and this was not very much. And so, after hearing the commission’s report, the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905 voted the proposition down.

In retrospect, it’s unclear how seriously they ever actually took the notion, or if there was ever any chance of it being accepted. Even Herzl might not have been solidly in favor; he died before the issue really came up for debate, and he surely calculated that failing to even consider the offer might jeopardize future negotiations with the British over more desirable territories. And Gottheil suggests that it might also have been a political tactic: since “negotiations which [Herzl] had been conducting in Constantinople seemed to have reached a blind alley…[t]he offers made to him by the Sultan at various times were such as he could not accept,” it might be possible to use the offer as a bargaining tool, to “perhaps open the eye of the Sultan to the fact that places other than Palestine were possible for a Jewish ‘home.’” Finally, in his appeal to the Central Committee, (Gottheil writes) Herzl “tried to make it clear that this was not an alternative for Palestine, that East Africa could not be Zion.” His associate Max Nordau even coined the expression Nachtasyl — “night shelter” — to emphasize that the settlement would simply be a way station, a temporary refuge on the way to Zion. And when the Congress rejected the proposition in 1905 — after Herzl’s death the year earlier — leadership passed ever more securely into the branch of the movement which would see the Jewish state only in Palestine.

WHO OWNS THE LAND?

BLOOD AND SOIL ISSUES IN THE KENYAN RIFT VALLEY

PART 1:

The passion with which millions of citizens valued their presidential vote in the stolen 2007 presidential elections can be reflected in scenes of the bloody post-election clashes today that engulfed Rift Valley, Nyanza, Coast, Nairobi, Western and to a less extent in other parts of the country. Nakuru was the latest epicentre of inter ethnic murders. The violent reactions to rigged elections may reflect the pain of deep and historically rooted injustices some of which pre-date Kenya’s independence in 1963.

They are in fact motivated and exacerbated by landlessness, joblessness, and poverty believed to be heavily contributed towards by the prevailing political status quo that has dominated Kenya since independence. This is a system that has continuously perpetrated, in successive fashion, socio-economic injustices that have been seamlessly transferred from one power regime to the next.

The Land issue

With a fast growing population in Kenya, limited resources including land and jobs, have severely been put in extreme pressure. Responsive political operatives cognizant of this reality have appreciated the importance of incorporating progressive policies that seek to aggressively address poverty, landlessness, unequal distribution of resources and unemployment, as a matter of priority (in their party manifestos) if any social stability is to be maintained in Kenya.

Without doubt, the opposition party ODM sold an attractive campaign package that sought to address historic land injustices, unemployment, inequitable resource sharing and poverty through a radical constitutional transformation, under the framework of the people-tailored Bomas Constitution Draft. ODM proposed to tackle the land problem through clauses in the Bomas draft, captured under devolution and land chapters, with specific plans to form a National Land Commission to address the issue of landlessness and historic injustices of expropriation of native land by colonial and post-colonial powers. The roots of the land conflicts in Rift Valley land lie with the former colonial power, Britain, post-independence land policies by the Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Moi and Mwai Kibaki administrations; and the tendency for ethnic favouritism and patronage by power wielders.

Colonial expropriation of native lands in Rift Valley and Coast

In a nutshell, the British settlers literally grabbed native Maasai and Kalenjin lands in Rift Valley and Miji-Kenda, Taita and Taveta land at the Coast. At the Coast, there was also the added grabbing hand of the Middle-East Sultans who lay claim to another Coastal strip. Millions of voters from these
communities (now deeply affected by landlessness and poverty) are today largely drawn towards ODM’s reform policies that seek to address these INJUSTICES.

Long before Independence, vast arable tracts of the Rift Valley were designated as White Highlands, reserved for European settlers. The pastoralist communities, mainly Kalenjin and Maasai, were simply moved away.

The 1904 and 1911 Anglo-Maasai land “Agreements” details the unjust grabbing of Maasai lands in Laikipia, Naivasha, Ngong, Karen, and tracts along the Uganda Railway line whereby uneducated Maasai Laibons either friendly to, or fearful of the British (christened Paramount Chiefs) like Lenana
Ole Mbatian, were cajoled and intimidated into giving away native fertile Maasai land to the colonialists.

The words in the “Agreements” read like ……”we the undersigned, being the Laibons of clans of Maasai, have of our own free will, decided that it is for OUR best interests to REMOVE OUR PEOPLE, FLOCKS, AND HERDS into definite reservations away from the Railway line and away from European settlements…..” and “…..In conclusion, we wish to state that we are quite satisfied with the foregoing arrangement, and we bind ourselves and our successors, as well as OUR PEOPLE, to observe them as long as the Maasai as a race shall exist..”

The next thing we knew was that the Maasai were crumbled into arid portions of present day Kajiado and Narok districts. Grazing fields, and the very pastoral lifestyle of the Maasai instantly became threatened and continues to do so as we speak, without any restitution, compensation or pro-active
rehabilitation into another life.

100 years later, when asked to address this burning Maasai land issue, former Lands Minister appointed by Mwai Kibaki, Mr. Amos Kimunya (now Finance Minister), once told the Maasai that there was nothing to address since the wise Maasai forefathers had given away their land to the British in a BINDING AGREEMENT which continues to apply to date.

Well, similar horrid but true stories applied in Kalenjin lands of Rift Valley and at the Coast too. Before independence, Kenyan political parties argued over whether the native land should be returned to the indigenous population under a federalist system of government or kept firmly under the control of a
centralised state. Needless to add, those who favoured the latter option, in the form of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), which went on to form a government under Jomo Kenyatta, prevailed.

PART 2: 1963 - Independence, enter Jomo Kenyatta and GEMA Landbuying companies. Trouble is, we had a majimbo constitution at independence

Jennifer Widner explained in her 1992 book, The Rise of A Party-State in Kenya: From "Harambee!" to "Nyayo!" that KANU urged central control of all regions in an effort to forestall local majimbo legislation restricting land transfer to those born in the area, and to maintain the foothold of the party's Kikuyu supporters in the Rift Valley land market".

Many settlers were returning to Britain. Kenyatta and his cronies quickly formed the Settlement Transfer Fund Schemes (STFS) and asked the British for a loan to the Kenyan government, to buy off land from colonial settlers returning to Britain. Good idea up to this point.

Britain, having been reassured by Kenyatta that those settlers still wishing to stay on in Kenya would not have their land repossessed, advanced the money. This money was used to buy settler land which was officially sold into the Kenyatta initiated Settlement Transfer Fund Schemes (STFS).

Next, Kenyatta began to give away and sell for peanuts, these government (STFS)-acquired, former colonial land parcels, to himself, his family and cronies around 1964 and 1965. This is the point when the rain started beating Kenya.

Kenyatta’s then Vice President, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, cried foul and rejected these acts of wanton land grabbing. The opportunity to choose nationalism and selflessness over greed and ethnic tendencies was lost. Rather than address this land issue once and for all, Kenyatta opted to
REPLACE the settler colonialist in land they had initially grabbed from natives. We have began harvesting the seeds of the mustard sown by Kenyatta in the 1960s. It will not be sweet at all.

The Seroneys and other Nandi and Kipsigis leaders immediately cried foul when Kenyatta ensued in his land grabbing tendencies. So were many Maasai and Miji-Kenda leaders like Ronald Ngala. Their cries were feeble and over run. Today and tomorrow, their descendants will demand justice and
restitution in an exercise that threatens to tear apart Kenya’s social fabric.

Who will shoulder the burden of the fruits enjoyed by Kenyatta and his cronies, Moi and his cronies, and Kibaki and his latter day cronies? Will it be the poor Kenyan taxpayer taking the bill in form of blood, and more taxes?

Going back....down memory lane..... in the immediate post-independence era, the moment, the Seroneys and Ogingas started crying foul, and nothing was done, we entered a dangerous phase of our nation’s socio-political path.

The political leadership of Kenya began carving out into two distinct groups. The pro-Kenyatta land beneficiaries, sycophants and apologists were Tom Mboya, Daniel Moi, Paul Ngei and others. Another force resisting the greedy post-Independence governance by Kenyatta was led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and included several former KADU operatives like Ronald Ngala, Jean Marie Seroney, Masinde Muliro, Martin Shikuku and others.

Kenyatta soldiered on with his grabbing. He concurrently went ahead with the help of Tom Mboya to change the constitution to give immense imperial powers to the Presidency. He further began using such powers to allocate more land to his cronies and sycophants.

His salivating appetite for Rift Valley land largely motivated his choice of Rift Valley natives as Vice President after Oginga Odinga. First he chose a Maasai, Joseph Murumbi, who read the scheme of land-betrayal on his people and resigned in a huff.

Then Kenyatta selected Daniel Arap Moi, a Tugen not drawn in the Nandi and Kipsigis land battles, as his next loyal VP. He then descended upon grabbing Rift Valley and Coastal land in a business as usual and “mtafanya nini” attitude that Kibaki is trying to emulate today.

Kenyatta cronies including Mbiyu Koinange, Njoroge Mungai and others devised a clever scheme to further benefit themselves from the land transferred from the colonialists. They formed land-buying companies through loans which were actually funded with tax-payer money.

At the height of land buying companies, most of the power brokers acquired huge chunks of land at the expense of the landless, who were meant to be the initial beneficiaries of the scheme.

According to Widner (in her book), by 1971, more than 60% large-scale farms around Nakuru and 40% of small scale settler farms, were held by Kikuyu, who fared very well from this arrangement, at the expense of other Kenyan communities.

Another scholar noted that "Using the political and economic leverage available to them during the Kenyatta regime, the Kikuyu, took advantage of the situation and formed many land-buying companies. These companies would, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, facilitate the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu in the Rift Valley," wrote Walter Oyugi in Politicised Ethnic Conflict in Kenya: A Periodic Phenomenon.

In 1969, Jean Marie Seroney, a leading Nandi politician and MP, issued the Nandi Hills Declaration, laying claim to all settlement land in the district for the Nandi. His demands went unheeded.

Aping the British, Kenyatta government used a policy of divide-and-rule to neutralise such opposition by parcelling out land to other ethnic groups and thus winning their allegiance. Daniel arap Moi, the then Tugen vice-president was allocated the settler farms of the Lembus Forest and the Essageri Salient to divide the Tugen from the Nandi like Seroney.

PART 3: The Grabbers of the Rift Valley
Most of the power brokers in the Kenyatta regime who formed land-buying companies established huge farms in the Rift Valley either jointly or on their own. They included Njenga Karume, the then Chairman of Gema Holdings, who acquired 20,000 acres in Molo where he is growing tea, coffee, pyrethrum and potatoes and 16,000 acres in Naivasha.

GG Kariuki acquired his 5,000 acres at Rumuruti, Laikipia Division, while former Attoney-General Charles Njonjo bought into the 100,000 acre Solio Ranch. Don’t forget, grabbing of settler land in Central by many colonial collaborators, at the expense of the Mau Mau fighters, was part of the
scheme.

Senior Chief Munyinge from Muiga took 400 acres. Initially, senior chief Munyinge was allocated only 70 acres but with time he managed to acquire 330 more acres.

Mwai Kibaki acquired 20,000 acres in Nanyuki. Former MP the late Munene Kairu has 32,000 acres at Rumuruti.

Mr Isaiah Mathenge, the former powerful Provincial Commissioner under Kenyatta and an MP under Moi, is arguably the largest land owner in Nyeri municipality. He owns Seremwai Estate, which is 10,000 acres.

Kibaki’s friend, Kim Ngatende, a former government engineer, has 500 acres too. Mathenge also owns - jointly with former Provincial Commissioner Lukas Daudi Galgalo - the 10, 000-acre Manyagalo Ranch in Meru.

Back in Rift Valley, as Jaramogi and the rest of Kenyans were saying, Not Yet Uhuru, it was land grabbing business as usual. Land-buying companies were heisting big. The result was big acquisitions, for instance, Munyeki Farm - which stands for Murang’a, Nyeri, Kiambu - (4,000 acres), Wamuini Farm (6,000 acres), Amuka Farm (2,000 acres), Gituaraba Farm and Githatha Farm
(1,000 acres each) and GEMA Holdings 12,000 acres. A few of them are being utilized, today with the owners growing various crops ranging from coffee, tea, maize and dairy keeping.

The other big farms include Chepchomo Farm (18, 000 acres), owned by the former Provincial Commissioner Ishmael Chelang’a. The family of the late Peter Kinyanjui, who was a close friend of President Mwai Kibaki and a former DP Chairman in Trans Nzoia between 1998 and 1999 owns 1,800 acres.

In Nakuru, several politically connected individuals have acquired many acres of prime land within the town - they include lawyer Mutula Kilonzo, who owns an 800-acre farm for dairy farming. The immediate former Auditor General, D. G. Njoroge, owns 500 acres, while Biwott’s Canadian son-in-law & coowner of Safaricom (Mobitelea) a Mr. Charles Field-Marsham, boasts a 100- acre piece where he is growing roses.

D. G. Njoroge also owns the extensive Kelelwa Ranch in Koibatek, is less than 10km from Kabarak, where he rears cattle and goats. The 10,000 acre Gitomwa Farm - acronym for Gichuru, Tony and Mwaura - is owned by the family of the former Kenya Power and Lighting Company Limited (KPLC)
managing director, Samuel Gichuru. Tony and Mwaura are his sons.

Another 10,000 acre farm in Mau Narok belongs to the family of the late Mbiyu Koinange, Kenyatta’s side-kick and powerful minister of state in the Office of the President. His Muthera Farm (4,000ha) is leased to different people to grow wheat, while a group of squatters is demanding a piece of it. The owners are yet to clear the Sh7 million Settlement Transfer Fund loan.

Ford-People leader Simeon Nyachae’s Kabansora Holdings owns 4,000ha in the area. Former Rongai MP Willy Komen’s family owns 10,000 acres - 5,000ha adjacent to Moi’s Kabarak Farm and another 4,800ha near Ngata in Njoro.

Coast Province was not spared. Kenyatta family owns almost 15% the prime resort land in the province, besides a huge sisal plantation spanning both Taita and Taveta districts, safely watched by his son-in-law and former MP Marsden Madoka, and another close friend to Uhuru Kenyatta, and current Minister in Kibaki’s Coalition Government, Naomi Shaban.

PART 4: Kenyatta’s Land holdings

Kenya’s two former First Families and the family of President Mwai Kibaki are among the biggest landowners in the country. The extended Kenyatta family alone owns an estimated 500,000 acres - approximately the size of Nyanza Province - according to estimates by independent surveyors and Ministry of Lands officials. (This report first appeared in the Standard Newspaper report by Mr. Otsieno Namwaya).

The Kibaki and Moi families also own large tracts, most held in the names of sons and daughters and other close family members, all concentrated within the 17.2 % of Kenya that is arable or valued. Remember that 80 per cent of all land in Kenya is mostly arid and semi arid land.

According to the Kenya Land Alliance, more than a 65% of all arable land in Kenya is in the hands of only 20 per cent of the 35 million Kenyans. That has left millions absolutely landless while another 67 per cent on average own less than an acre per person.

The building land crises in the country, experts say, will be difficult to solve because the most powerful people in the country are also among its biggest landowners. The tracts of land under the Kenyatta family are so widely distributed within the numerous members in various parts of the country that it is an almost impossible task to locate all of them and establish their exact sizes.

During Kenyatta’s 15-year tenure in State House, he used the elaborate STFS scheme funded by the World Bank and the British Government, to acquired large pieces of land all over the country. Other tracts, he easily allocated to his family.

Among the best-known parcels owned by Kenyatta’s family, for instance, are the 24, 000 acres in Taveta sub-district adjacent to the 74, 000 acres owned by former MP Basil Criticos, whereby the title deeds are grabbed by a bank.

Others are 50, 000 acres in Taita that is currently under Mrs Beth Mugo, an Assistant minister of Education and niece of Kenyatta. 29, 000 acres in Kahawa Sukari along the Nairobi - Thika highway, the 10, 000 acre Gichea Farm in Gatundu, 5, 000 acres in Thika, 9,000 acres in Kasarani and the 5,
000-acre Muthaita Farm.

These are beside others such as Brookside Farm, Green Lee Estate, Njagu Farm in Juja, a quarry in Dandora in Nairobi and a 10, 000-acre ranch in Naivasha. There is another 200 acres in Mombasa, and 250 acres in Malindi.

Other pieces of land owned by the Kenyatta family include the 52,000-acre farm in Nakuru and a 20,000-acre one, also known as Gichea Farm, in Bahati under Kenyatta’s daughter, Margaret. Besides, Mama Ngina Kenyatta, widow of the former President, owns another 10, 000 acres in Rumuruti while a close relative of the Kenyatta family, a Mrs Kamau, has 40,000 acres in Endebes in
the Rift Valley Province.

Uhuru owns 5,000 acres in Eldoret, 3,000 acres in Rongai and 12,000 acres in Naivasha, 100 acres in Karen, and 200 acres in Dagoretti. A 1,000-acre farm in Dagoretti is owned by Kenyatta’s first wife Wahu.

It is also understood that part of the land on which Kenyatta and Jomo Kenyatta Universities are constructed initially belonged the Criticos family. The government bought the land from him in 1972 under the Settlement Transfer Fund Scheme and transferred to the Kenyatta family the same day
Criticos sold it to the government. Land for the two universities was subsequently sold partly and a portion donated by the family.

PART 5: Kibaki’s and Moi’s Land Grabbing

One of President Kibaki’s earliest grabs is the 1,200-acre Gingalily Farm along the Nakuru-Solai road. And in the 1970s, Kibaki, who was then the minister for Finance under Kenyatta, via STFS transferred to himself, 10,000 acres in Bahati from the then Agriculture minister Bruce Mckenzie.

Kibaki also owns another 10,000 acres at Igwamiti in Laikipia and 10,000 acres in Rumuruti in Naivasha. These are in addition to the 1,600 acre Ruare Ranch.

Just next to Kibaki’s Bahati land are Moi’s 20,000 acres although his best known piece of land is the 1,600 Kabarak Farm on which he has retired. It is one of the most well utilised farms in the area, with wheat, maize and dairy cattle.

The former President owns another 20,000 acres in Olenguruoni in Rift Valley, on which he is growing tea and has also built the Kiptakich Tea Factory (torched early 2008 Post election violence).

He also has some 20, 000 acres in Molo. He also has another 3, 000-acre farm in Bahati on both sides of the Nakuru/Nyahururu road where he grows coffee and some 400 acres in Nakuru on which he was initially growing coffee.

The former President also owns the controversy ridden 50, 000 acre Ol Pajeta Farm - part of which has Ol Pajeta ranch in Rumuruti, Laikipia. Some time in 2004, Moi put out an advert in the press warning the public that some unknown people were sub-dividing and selling it.

Can solutions be found to address these land problems?

This is clearly a socio-political problem that requires a political solution. It involves digging up the archives, consulting experts, policy makers, local politicians and community elders to find a comprehensive solution.

Such formulated blueprints can then be sold to Kenyans of all creed, race, religion and ethnicity in a publicity campaign that seeks to draw in as many supporters as possible. A responsive political party genuinely keen to tackle this tough problem can actually sell a comprehensive and just land reform
policy as part of its manifesto.

These must be cognizant of the constitutional implications concerned in addressing past and present land issues.

What we are witnessing in Rift Valley may just escalate to new heights considering the fundamental weight of the underlying blood and soil issue of land.

The appointment of the county commisioners by the President is an outright onslaught on democracy as it is meant to water down any gains that the devolution is expected to bring by giving the central government a headstart in setting up structures.The Governors will later come in to only fit in an established structure with all power already established in the central government structure.I think someone is setting this country for a revolution.This kind of impunity should be dealt with before it takes root.