Business Daily (Nairobi)
John Kamau
10 November 2009
column
Senior politicians led by founding President Jomo Kenyatta, his successor Daniel Arap Moi, senators, MPs and civil servants were the top beneficiaries of 100-acre farms in settlement schemes meant for peasants.
The move by the Cabinet to approve the curving of the land plus a farm house angered the World Bank and the British government since they had given the funds for the settlements.
And when their orders to halt any further allocations reached Kenyatta, he ordered lands officials to continue sharing out the Z Plots, as they came to be known within government circles.
The Provincial administration appeared to have enormous authority in vetting the applicants and in April 1965, the area settlement controller for central province, R.B. Kirkwood, wrote a letter demanding a proper system to share out the plots, since the Cabinet-- or rather Kenyatta-- had not put one in place.
Documents indicate that by that time Cabinet was grappling with the question of how to accommodate the plots into the World Bank-funded million acre scheme and that a government position paper was being prepared proposing that the final choice of settlers on the project be transferred to the Lands minister denying the regional councils authority.
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