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Kenya: Britain to Blame for Land Crisis
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
1 May 2008
Posted to the web 1 May 2008
Ayew Kwame Attiyey
As the standoff over the return of internal refugees to their homes persists, it is unfortunate that little attention is paid to the historical roots of the problem.
The unassailable fact is that there is a straight line trajectory between the blunders of colonialism and the current tragic Kenyan situation.
Is it not logical that the people who set the stage for this bitter harvest should bear some responsibility in resolving the mess? Why is there no mention of the need for some level of compensation to help address the challenge of land redistribution?
Many people who are conversant with the history of Kenya will attest that the country is grappling with the residues of the colonial approach to governance. The divide and rule policies adopted then; the incitement of ethnic rivalries; greedy and power-hungry political elite topped off by undemocratic processes in political institutions.
Poor land policies play a major role in fanning the current crisis.
Yet, what you'll never hear from Adam Wood is that the British set the stage for this disaster with a campaign of displacement and land grabbing that was epic even by their imperial standards. A walk down history tells its own story: The people who displaced many Kenyans from their traditional homes thus setting the stage for a cascading series of land injustices were the British.
In keeping with their colonial culture of exploitation, they made few apologies for this and instead ruthlessly turned their displaced subjects into slaves.
In the process, they upended the existing cultures they found, assimiliating their own values on Kenyans. This set the stage for the emergence of such sects as the Mungiki in later years whose partial objective was to restore their community's culture.
The injustices perpetrated in the Rift Valley were even more brazen, cruel and utterly contemptuous of the proud warrior communities that inhabited the land. Under the leadership of Koitalel arap Samoei, the Nandi waged a brave war of resistance between 1895 and 1905. But their leader was shot by a British soldier leaving the Nandi nation open for exploitation.
They were subdued, conquered and put under the thumb of brutal colonial rule. They lost 1,250 square miles of their land (the most fertile in Rift Valley) worth between Sh75 billion and Sh150 billion.
Their livestock were also plundered - a humiliating experience for a primarily pastoralist community. The cost in blood and treasure while facing the colonialists was terrible. Over 10,000 lives were lost. Their autonomy, culture, self-esteem, nationhood, institutions and dignity as a community were trampled underfoot.
They were not alone in paying a steep price for colonial misadventure. The colonial administration disrupted the Yaaku way of life by banning game hunting to avoid competition by the locals to commercial safari hunters. That was one of the many humiliating steps that truly set the community on the road to extinction. A similar fate befell the Maasai. The three first British governors manipulated the illiterate Maasai leaders into signing two 'treaties' (1904, 1911) that set the stage for the biggest land grab orchestrated in colonial Africa.
It also sowed the seeds of considerable political ferment in years to come. In 1962, the Maasai protested that the departing European settlers should leave the land in the highlands to them. This was not to be. The British conspired to leave power in the hands of an elite that would insure their narrow interests and those of their colonial settlers.
Just like they did in Zimbabwe, they failed to honour promises of paying for land redistribution. After Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and his cronies joined the government, a few Kenyans acquired vast lands leaving the poor to share the little that remained. This can explain the land clashes that eventually rocked in 1992, 1997 and 2008.
The tragic situation in the nation is a culmination of the long night of repression engendered by colonialism.
It is time Kenyans and other Africans appreciated the backdrop of oppression that set the stage for the continent's many problems. They must consequently learn to forge a path of their own choosing rather than perennially relying on self-interested Western patrons.
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The writer is a South Africa-based scholar and commentator on African issues.
Old land issues was just a pretence and not the reason for the after elections chaos.
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