ANOTHER EXPLOSIVE LAND DISPUTE BETWEEN KALENJIN AND THE GOVERNMENT IS ON THE OFFING AS THE NANDIS LAUNCH DEMANDS TO BE GIVEN SHARES IN THE TEA ESTATES.

Writes Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.

Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 5:22 PM

THE prolonged agitation and politicking over the on-going government eviction exercise against illegal squatters in the controversial Mau Forest Complex has rekindled other thorny issues involving the Kalenjin community.

This time around, the latest development has come from the North Rift, where three sub-clans of the Nandi sub-tribe of the larger Kalenjin ethnic community have issued an ultimatum to the government, demanding that their members be given shares in the various tea plantations and factories located in Nandi Hills, arguing that their ancestors were forcefully evicted from those lands at gun point by the British colonialists, who in turn allocated the land to the white settlers for tea plantation.

The three sub-clans are Kapchepkendi, Kapsumbeywo and Kapmelilo. After their forceful removal from their ancestral land, they were settled in marginalized areas of Kabiyet. They said they were consigned to live in an area, which has no better land for cash crops, and have been suffering ever since 1906.

The Kapchepkendi sub-clans were the rightful owners of areas where the tea estates and factories like Kibabet, Kapchorwa, Kipchamo,and Siret Tea Estates and factories stand today.

The sub-clans also lost the prime agricultural land at Koisagat, Chepmartin and Kipkoimet areas of the Nandi Hills. The places are now under the foreign owned multinational tea Companies.

The other sub-clan, Kapsumbeywo had settled in the Kimwani areas, covering Songhor, Kopere and Chemelil. These areas were exclusively preserved for the community grazing field, and when the British soldiers moved in 1906 and 1907, the community lost close to 47,00 herds of cattle, seized by the British soldiers..

During the colonial period, Kimwani farm was owned by a Mr. Roderick Macleod, whose younger brother at one time served as the Colonial Secretary in years close to Kenya’s achievement of political independence in 1963. Mr. Macleod also owned Jolly-Farmers Hotel in Molo, which the government later bought and turned into a GSU camp.

His large scale farm was taken over by the Agricultural Development Corporation[ADC}, which has since sold some of it to a Nyanza politician, Dr. William Odongo Omamo, and a Nandi KANU politician and a former nominated MP, Ezekiel Bargetuny and others. Omamo later dished out part of the farm running to 3 acres to the former Chemelil Managing Director, Mr Aaron Tuikong, who has since built a palatial home on the farm.

Other beneficiaries included former director of CID, Noah ArapToo, former Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President In charge of PR, Nicholas K Biwott {100 acres} and his friends got close to 400 acres, Bargetuny and his family close to 700 acres. Next to it is a 3,000 acres farm, previously owned by another former PS in the Office of the President, the late Ezekiah N.Oyugi, which he bought from former Chemelil Sisal Estates.

It is who is who in the Moi administration as regards to the beneficiaries of Kimwani ADC farm, which is located in the foot of Nandi Hills escarpment. Some parts were even dished out to Moi’s security. And the Ndung’u Report had mentioned nothing in regards to Kimwani ADC farm.

The Nandis sub-clans claimed they also lost Songhor, Chemelil, Kibigori, Chepsweta, Kopere along the Nandi Escarpment, which was the most suitable land for the community’s open grazing field.

Strangely, when the post Independence government of Kenya settled the landless people or opened the area for new settlers, it did not consider the area’s original owners of the land, whose ancestors were forced out by the British colonialists.

The spokesman, who requested for his anonymity, said the Nandis did not want to drive the new owners of the farms out, but wanted the foreigners either to sell to them shares and stakes in the lucrative tea industry, or ”Alternatively, they must sell these farms back to us on a willing buyer willing seller basis and pack and go home”, he said.

Kapsumbeywo and Kapchemelilo sub-clans also at one time owned parts of Kano plains, leave alone Muhoroni and Songhor areas.

The seizure of the sub-clans prime land came about in around 1906, soon immediately after the Colonialist had tricked their Orkoiyot {Laibon} Koitalel Arap Samoei. He was betrayed and tricked to attend a stage managed peace meeting, where a British Officer shot him dead. The incident sent his rug-tug forces of Nandi warriors in disarray. And when the peace finally came in 1906, the three sub-clans were forcefully removed and sent to the semi-arid Kibiyet areas in Mosop constituency.

The areas is so dry that no cash crop can grow. Others were given land in the Uasin Gishu plains, on which the Uasin Gishu Maasai sub-clan had also been forced out to give way for white settlers.

The Nandis now want injustices of the past addressed. “These are some of the contentious issues which the late John Marie Seroney, the former fierce Mp for Tinderet, had tried to force the government to sort out in the late 1960s, and caused him detention and other problems.

Hon Henry Kosgey, the ODM national chairman and MP for Tinderet, who is also the Minister for Industrialization, could not be reached for his immediate comments. But observers and political pundits in Kapsabet were quick in blaming the government for having taken too long, while politicking about the Mau eviction programme, arousing awareness of other communities with long standing land grievances.

Ends

leooderaomolo@yahoo.com