AFRICANEWS

Kenya

Indigenous community future threatened by land speculators

Land

A small Kenyan ethnic group, Ogiek, has sued the government over ownership of land they say is their ancestral home. The Ogiek argue that recent threats and orders by government officials are part of a wider scheme by the authorities to deny them what is rightfully theirs.

On a cool Sunday morning on November 26 of last year, police broke up a gathering, dispersing more than 600 Ogiek people dressed in traditional regalia. They were attending a cultural festival outside Chief Tiwas Cultural Resource Centre in Marioshoni, Mau Forest, in Kenya's western province of Rift Valley.

The old men and women who had reported as early as 9.00 am were taken aback when they met a contingent of more than 60 armed policemen who had been ordered not to allow the festival to get underway. "We have instructions from above not to allow this festival to go on. The president (Daniel arap Moi) is very bitter about the Ogiek�. I order this meeting illegal and you therefore disperse," said the police officer commanding the operation, Inspector Otundo, from the nearby Elburgon Police Station. True to his word, the festival never took place. Ironically, on the same day, President Moi was presiding over a similar festival in another town in western Kenya. "It is unfortunate that the law in this country is applied selectively," said an enraged Joseph Towett, the spokesman for the Ogiek, one of Kenya's smallest ethnic groups.

For the Ogiek, a community that survives on hunting and gathering wild honey, the disruption of their ceremony was the latest in a series of moves by government agents to further undermine their existence, which in the past was threatened by former British colonialists and is now endangered by well connected land speculators. These powerful forces are keen to take the Ogiek's fertile land.

Living in the Rift Valley's Mau Forest, in a 900 sq. km area, 200km northwest of Kenya's capital, Nairobi, the Ogiek have been waging a war of survival for nearly a century as successive government forces sought to seize their lands. It is struggle that a study released in July of this year by a Nairobi-based news agency, Rights Features Service (RFS), says began in the 19th century, when British colonialists arrived in the country and sought to occupy lands the Ogiek have lived on for centuries.

For the British settlers, the Ogiek land suited large-scale agriculture, an economic occupation that the Ogiek don't practice. Backed by the British Crown, the settlers carved substantial parts of the land and proceeded to settle there, says another report produced in the middle of this year by the Nairobi-based Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), a local human rights group. The KHRC report, titled We, the Ogiek, says that the colonial authorities crafted laws that consigned Africans in what they referred as 'Native Reserves' after being dispossessed of their lands.

The 'native reserves' were areas set aside for African communities and were later subdivided and given to individuals. On the other hand, the settlers received large tracts of land including the Mau area and were subsequently given title deeds to prove that they owned land, which formerly belonged to the Ogiek, says the KHRC report. What was devastating for the Ogiek, says the KHRC report, was not only the disruption of their communal life but the fact that there was no land set aside for them as a 'native-reserve.'

Whatever land remained for the Ogiek was gazetted as forestland that was to be retained as a water catchment area. The argument was that Ogiek land was not owned by anyone and it therefore belonged to the government. Under the traditional Ogiek land system, land is communally owned.

Matters didn't change even with the country's independence in 1963 as the successive governments of Presidents Jomo Kenyatta and Moi continued with the same agrarian policy, says the RFS study. Using the excuse that the Ogiek were illegally occupying land that is officially a forest zone, post-independence Kenyan governments insisted that Ogiekland was forest zone that was protected by the country's Forest Act. Henceforth, the Ogiek have had to live with demands they quit their homes near the forests.

According to RFS, the latest quit order was issued on July 6 this year by the new Rift Valley provincial Commissioner, Peter Raburu, who with the backing of the government's Chief Conservator of Government Forests, Joseph Mutie, and the province's Forest officer, Josephat Bundotich, demanded the Ogiek quit the forest. "We are going to flush out everybody residing and cultivating in the forests irrespective of who allowed them in," Raburu said moments after issuing the July vacate order.

Raburu further claimed that the Ogiek had to quit, since they had been allocated alternative land elsewhere but had abandoned it for the Mau Forest. Although the administrator did not mention the Ogiek community by name, it was clear that the main target was this forest-inhabiting community that has taken the government to court over the matter especially when the government indicated earlier that it would demarcate the forest.

In the case, filed in 1997 in the High Court in Nairobi, the Ogiek claim that the expansive Mau forestland is their ancestral home and that they have nowhere else to go. They argue that that the government has not been honest with its claims on environmental protection, but instead wants to give the land to its political supporters and greedy land speculators. On October 15, 1997, the court issued an order prohibiting any demarcation. But this injunction hasn't deterred government agents, and on January 12 this year, the Ogiek Welfare Council protested against the presence of government land surveyors in East Mau Forest who were there to start the demarcation of the forest.

During the January protest, the Ogiek argued that another intended degazettement of Mau Forest announced early this year shouldn't be allowed to proceed until the 1997 case had been heard and determined. The community argued that any degazettment would therefore be in contempt of the 1997 court order. Among other demands were a declaration by the court that their right to life had been violated by an earlier eviction from the Tinet Forest, which is part of the much larger Mau Forest. The 1997 case has yet to be concluded and is set for hearing on October 4 of this year. The Ogiek filed the case after getting nowhere with their pleadings with President Moi and other government officials that action be taken to protect them from powerful politicians and investors seeking to dispossess them of their lands.

With these powerful forces uncowed by the 1997 court order, the Ogiek, a community that has distant relations with President Moi's Kalenjin ethnic group, have warned that they would take the issue before the International Court of Justice at The Hague. This is especially if the Kenya High Court fails to address their plight in time and appropriately. "We, the Ogiek are left with the option of filing our suit in the International Court of Justice under rule 86 which is a form of permanent injunction. We shall be seeking the UNHRC to liase with the Kenyan authorities to investigate issues on the ground and make recommendations on the Ogiek plight," says Towett. Such threats could make sense as the Ogiek argue that at no time has the Kenyan authorities consulted the community when it undertakes decisions that affect the community's welfare.

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