Kenya - Land inquiry must delve back into settler history

By: Barrack Muluka
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[ Posted On: 2008-03-21 ]

Isaak Denisen, also known as Karen Blixen, begins her world famous story, Out of Africa, with a description of the mammoth farm she once owned in Kenya.

!B>She says: "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."

She reports that she experimented with coffee growing, besides sundry rural activities on the farm.

She goes on: "I had six thousand acres of land, and had thus got much spare land besides the coffee plantation. Part of the farm was native forest, and about one thousand acres were squatters' land, what they called their shambas.

"The squatters are the Natives, who with their families hold a few acres on a white man's farm, and in return have to work for him a certain number of days in the year. My squatters, I think, saw the relationship in a different light, for many of them were born on the farm, and their fathers before them, and they very likely regarded me as a sort of superior squatter on the estates."

There are diverse views on Karen Blixen's story of her adventures in Africa and of the Oscar award winning movie that they crafted out of the story.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o in an essay 'Her cook and her dog' describes Blixen as a woman gifted with words in a dangerous way. He particularly takes umbrage with the passage where she writes of her cook in the following terms: "He stuck to the maize cobs of his fathers. Here, even his intelligence sometimes failed him. He came and offered me a Kikuyu delicacy — a roasted sweet potato or a lump of sheep's fat – as even a civilised dog that has lived with people, will place a bone on the floor before you, as a present."

Out of Africa is a capsule of the origins of what Kenyans will be addressing in the coming weeks, as they come to terms with what are being called 'historical injustices'. When they arrived in Africa, European explorers, settlers and allied adventurers did not recognise the humanity of the people they found here. They did not therefore recognise their right to the things and instruments that support life. They pretended to 'discover' rivers, mountains, lakes and other relief features that had been there from creation day. This was a deliberate ploy to rob the African of his natural heritage. For if you were discovering land, a lake or a river, you could very well own it and do with it as you pleased.

It appears that the chickens are coming home to roost, in the aftermath of the December 2007 elections. But can both the country and the international community pluck the courage to look at the Kenyan problem in the eye and call it what it is?

The land question has featured prominently in the post- electoral violence in the country. I see that a commission is to be set up to address this question, beginning from 1963, when we attained independence.

But one would have thought that you cannot address the Kenyan land problem without going back to the colonial period – indeed going back to the British East Africa Protectorate period.

Gideon S Were and Derek A Wilson have, among other things, recorded the following: "The British Commissioner from 1900 – 1904, Charles Eliot, despised the Maasai and planned to give their land to European settlers."

Were and Wilson go on to recount how through a combination of persuasion, blackmail, bribery and intimidation, Eliot got Laibon Lenana to sign away Maasailand to British settlers in 1904 and 1911.

The agreements were supposed to last 100 years each. Although the first one lapsed in 2004, this land still remains in the hands of European settler families. So, too, is more than a quarter a million acres given to British soldiers after World War II.

Besides, the Crown Land Ordinance of 1902 gave away hundreds of thousands of hectares of Kikuyu, Nandi and Maasai land to European settlers. Much of this remains in settler hands.

The prompting of land alienation was often both selfish and sinister. Eliot recorded in his diary in 1904: "The Maasai and many other tribes must go under. Maasaidom is a beastly, bloody system." (East Africa Through A Thousand Years, Pg 133).

If the coming of independence was expected to resolve the land problem, it did not. The Kenyan politicians who attended the Lancaster House talks signed an agreement that they would not meddle with European settler land rights. But beyond this, a handful of the Lancaster House gentlemen went on to appropriate hundreds of thousands of acres of land for themselves.

President Jomo Kenyatta ordered for resettlement of Kikuyu squatters on insignificant parcels of land in settlement schemes in the Rift Valley. Elsewhere, there sprung up a myriad of land buying companies that at the very best served the interests of the directors of the companies.

Whatever alliance President Kibaki and Prime Minister designate Raila Odinga come up with, they will need to remember that land matters have been cooking for 100 years. Together with the international community, they must stretch that far back in seeking a permanent solution.

If they should smother over things and consider the settler zone a no-go territory, then Kenyans shall still kill each other over land, even as they go the Zimbabwe way. The time for honest dialogue and reparations is now.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Barrack Muluka is a publishing editor and a media consultant with Mvule Africa Publishers. okwaromuluka@yahoo.com

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