Saturday, February 19, 2011
Building a case for historical land injustices in Nandi: Need for a knowledgeable Governor
Koitalel Samoei, Supreme Orkoiyot of the Nandi, prophesied that 'a black snake would tear through Nandiland and it would be spitting fire and would make its way into peoples' life'.
The construction of the railway saw this as a fulfilment of this prophecy.
By 1900 virtually the whole Nandi tribe was united again behind Koitalel. The British, determined to build the Kenya-Uganda railway line and reeling from the Nandi resistance, tricked Orkoiyot Koitalel arap Samoei into a meeting for an agreement, where Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen and his troops callously shot and killed Samoei and 23 other members of the family and community during the conference.
There was one survivor who managed to escape and narrate what had happened.
The British examined these events in detail by conducting three separate military courts of inquiry after protests were received from other officers concerning the disgraceful and treacherous nature of Meinertzhagen’s behaviour. He was however acquitted, eventually transferred elsewhere. He went on to become Chief Intelligence Officer of the British Army during the second World War and decorated by the Queen.
The fall-out and consequences of the killing of Samoei for the future of the Nandi people were profound and have not been fully resolved even today. After he was killed, the Nandi people were so divided afterwards and until today, the Nandi people still remember that their spiritual leader played an important role in the unity of his people.
During the colonial times the British not only persecuted the Talai clan but made sure that they put under house arrest and in detention.
They were dispersed as squatters all over Kenya, from the outskirts of Eldoret in Uasin Gishu, to Tinderet, to Maralal, to Gwasi, to Meru, to Lamu and Songhor, to name but just a few of the places. Today, the Talai clan’s lineage is to be found not only amongst the Kalenjin but also other Kenyan tribes.
The case is excerpted from a from a study by Jacqueline M Klopp ‘Can Moral Ethnicity Trump Political Tribalism’ (2002 ), illustrating how Moi personally benefited from political tribalism while cheating the land-starved Nandi out of EATEC/LONRHO land in Uasin Gishu.
EATEC Land in the Colonial & Early Post Independence Period (direct excerpt from JM Klopp's research).
As in the rest of the Rift Valley, most colonial settler farms in Uasin Gishu produced cash crops such as sisal, tea, coffee, and wattle. The crops covered 89,100 acres of Uasin Gishu settler land and involved 17,700African labourers and around 3,500 squatters without homes in the reserve.
Wattle, used to produce an extract for tanning hides, was the predominant cash crop covering 68,100 acres (Colony and Protectorate of Kenya 1961). Many settlers belonged to a wattle farmer’s co-operative, Plateau Wattle Co. Ltd until the East African Tanning Extract Company (EATEC) absorbed it.
At the time, Plateau Wattle Company sold land to EATEC for the Ksh 250 per acre as set by the Colonial Central Agricultural Board.
Eventually, in 1969 EATEC was taken over by the British Multi-national Lonrho.
Lonrho, along with many other multi-nationals in the 1960s, forged relationships with the Kenyan government in order to guarantee political protection and benefits. Part of this strategy was to appoint key members of Kenya’s ruling circle to senior positions. Early on, President Kenyatta’s son-in-law Gecaga was appointed managing director of Lonrho, East Africa.
Under Moi, nominated MP and close Moi associate (some say his son) Mark arap Too was appointed deputy chairman and later chairman (Kareithi 1991:203–204). Not surprisingly, in 1971 EATEC/Lonrho acquired land at government-controlled prices.
In 1994, when Lonrho wanted to sell off its 40,000 acre EATEC farm, large chunks of land were transferred under a front company called Kenmosa to wealthy patronage bosses of the Moi regime, including the president himself.
They were then free to sell it at market prices that most local people could simply not afford. One large piece of EATEC land was opaquely sold to a private company associated with young KANU operatives, which then sold it back to the government at a highly inflated price for the construction of the Eldoret airport (Republic of Kenya 1999: 16–20).
These EATEC land sales were carried out in a context of local land hunger. After independence, despite settlement schemes, land holdings in Uasin Gishu District remained highly skewed.
In 1980, under Moi for example, the district still had 525 large settler farms covering 84 percent of the total land area (Kanyinga 1998: 209). Even taking into account the subdivision of some of these farms into smaller holdings, the figures suggest that “relatively little land was turned over to land hungry peasants and that the reform did not solve the problem of high levels of landlessness that characterised the district from the colonial period” (Kanyinga 1998: 213).
Hundreds of squatter families of former labourers lived on parts of EATEC land. While some of these squatters were migrants from neighbouring areas who came to work in Uasin Gishu, most of the squatters were Nandi. Today, such squatters make up a substantial part of the landless rural poor in the district (Republic of Kenya 1994–1996:74).
Trouble began when EATEC chairman Mark arap Too attempted to secure all the lucrative land for his patron, the president, and his clients and, in the process, tried to evict the former labourers engaged in subsistence farming on various parts of the EATEC farm. EATEC was not the only piece of land in the area provoking a deepening of the factional dispute within KANU in the region, but it appeared to be the last straw.
Since the early 1990s, as in the rest of the country, the region had been experiencing an acceleration in the irregular privatisation of public land. For example, small-scale farmers accused Biwott of cheating them out of Goetzee farm. In another dispute, in the neighbouring Trans Nzoia district, an Agricultural Development Corporation (government) farm was in the process of being given to prominent people, once again linked to Biwott. Another issue involved the Nyayo Tea Zones, which were being sub-divided and distributed to the well-connected (Weekly Review 20 June 1997).
Local resentment over the exclusionary nature of these opaque land transactions, fuelled by the plight of the EATEC “squatters”, created the basis for a local nationalist movement focused on resisting the highest echelons of power in the Kenyan state.
The EATEC land sale provoked a series of rallies which brought together Nandi squatters, young men, elders, clergy and local MPs. Youthful Nandi MP Kipruto arap Kirwa, a former Biwott client from Cherengany Constituency in neighbouring Trans Nzoia District, became the unlikely leader of this nationalist movement.
At a well-attended meeting in Eldoret called to discuss EATEC land, Nandi elders told the crowd: “We have been abused to an extent we can no longer bear. Nandis shall not accept to be part of the Kalenjin coalition of sub-tribes if our role is to be used politically and then dumped without even being given our basic rights.” (The People 8 March 2000).
While “prominent politicians, including Moi, asserted and invigorated the integrity of Kalenjin identity, claiming there was no such identity as Nandi, Tugen and Kipsigis … only Kalenjin” (Ndegwa1997: 609), these dissident Nandi refused to give Moi “the power of ethnic naming”. (Worby 1994: 376) To do so would have affirmed Moi, Biwott and Too as “insiders”, who, by allocating land and doling it out to their clients, were benefiting the local land hungry community through “trickle down” effects.
In the multi-party context, the claims and grievances of the EATEC squatters and Nandi land-poor became a central election issue. This issue generated a fractious break within KANU between accumulators of EATEC land, the president and his most powerful Kalenjin political allies, and younger MPs from the area, particularly Kirwa but also MP John Sambu from Mosop Constituency in Nandi District.
The public pressure on the EATEC issue was so strong that the conformist Nandi clients of Biwott were afraid to openly criticise the nationalists for fear of losing support.
As one journalist wrote: “So emotive has the issue of EATEC land become that even compliant Nandi members of parliament such as the MP for Tinderet Mr. Henry Kosgey, the MP for Emgwen Mr. Joseph Leting, the MP for Aldai Mr. Kiptum Choge and the MP for Eldoret South Mr. Jesse Maiz, have not been willing to come into the open to criticise the crusade by Kirwa and his comrades to have a piece of land alienated for the settling of squatters from the Nandi community.” (Weekly Review 1998).
The Nandi MPs took up the EATEC squatters’ plight as a cause ce´le`bre. Kirwa told the pro-establishment journal the Weekly Review (23 August 1996): What I know is that the land was owned by Lonrho on a 99-year leasehold. Lonrho has not renewed this lease and the land should revert back to the government. Is this company (Kenmosa) now selling government land. Who owns shares in Kenmosa?”
A number of Nandi elders who met with the MPs and their constituents over this issue continued to assert community rights to the land based on patrimonial logics.
For example, at one meeting a Nandi elder told the audience that “during Kenyatta’s time his people benefited from such things [land]. This should have been our time, but surprisingly, our own people whose days are numbered in the government have kept on undermining us.”
(The People 26 February 2000) MP Sambu also expressed his displeasure in the familiar language of patrimonial politics (Weekly Review 20 June 1997):
In 1992 we were promised many goodies if we only stayed solidly behind President Moi and the ruling party. We were told if opposition tribes took over, the Kalenjin would be wiped out. The promises have not been fulfilled and the future looks bleak for us if we maintain this notion of Kalenjin solidarity against other tribes. If the government will allow EATEC to speculate with its land, the Nandi will also speculate with their votes. It is as simple as that.
In contrast, Kirwa, who became the de facto leader of this local resistance movement, articulated a Nandi nationalism nuanced in class as opposed to these purely patrimonial logics. At the meeting with the Nandi elders, for example, Kirwa countered the “language of the belly” by saying that what they wanted was a fair price for their land and that “ Nandis and their neighbours must be given priority and not any other rich individuals who had all along been exploiting poor Kenyans ” (The People 26 February 2000).
By taking a cut of the land and staying silently out of the path of the powerful Biwott faction, Kirwa could have behaved like a proper lower level client.
Instead, strong pressures from below in the form of rebuke and censure, including potential electoral defeat made more salient by the presence of opposition parties, helped push Kirwa and other former lower level clients to rebel and take an alternative path. The nationalists used these popular pressures as a tool in their struggle against the immensely powerful Moi-Biwott-Too faction.
By taking up the land issue these maverick nationalists around Kirwa solidified their support from mostly KANU voters and wielded this against the patronage hierarchy. This hierarchy still needed to win elections, and the presence of a popular dissident in their stronghold made this task harder. The fact that Kirwa refused to leave KANU complicated the picture as he was key to bringing crucial votes to the party.
Unsurprisingly, Nandi squatters were some of the most vocal proponents of a local nationalism that centered on resisting the exclusionary EATEC land sales. They resorted to claims that EATEC was on “ancestral land” and further that they had entered into a moral contract with the company when they agreed to provide the labour on the farm. Here is how Henry Maiyo, a squatter leader fromKampi Nandi, an EATEC settlement of about ten kilometres from Eldoret viewed the situation in a protest letter, interestingly to the British High Commission (reproduced in slightly altered form in the Release Political Prisoners newsletter Mtetezi 1 (10):6):
Our ancestors lived at Kampi-Nandi as early as 1920s and they were later turned into labourers on their own farms by the British colonial regime… Thus the remains of our ancestors have been buried here. Likewise we shall be buried on the same land.
Labourers and their male offsprings (aged above sixteen) were required to supply labour to the land owners for at least a hundred and eighty days per year. In return they were paid a nominal fee and allowed to farm and graze at the pleasure of the land owner… This was the arrangement that was maintained in the early 1950swhen EATEC took possession of the land on which we lived and worked. In 1984 EATEC unilaterally decided to move us into labour camps hitherto occupied by labourers who had come here to work from outside. We declined… The determination by EATEC to evict us has only been matched by our determination not to be evicted. We have nowhere to go!
The squatters viewed themselves as the deserving poor who laboured according to law. The graves of the ancestors on the land underscored their inter-generational commitment to the “contract” as well as the validity of their claims to “ancestral land”. They also appealed to principles of equity and their right to subsistence as landless people in the letter:
The plight of Kampi Nandi squatters has not been unique as landlessness is rampant among the Nandi. Also experienced in Kenya now is the land grabbing mania. In 1990s EATEC offered 40,000 acres for sale, requiring people to register for shs 5,000 (non refundable) fee.
Nearly 10,000 people responded to this noble opportunity.
Yet the outcome of this proposal has been totally disheartening. Whereas the exercise has been completed there is an instance where ten houses-holds [sic] ended up on one acre, while senior government officials have acquired substantial holdings in more than one such scheme!
We squatters detest collusion between EATEC and our predator government. The area of Kampi Nandi is targeted for sale but there is collusion to bring in wealthy outsiders, instead of resolving our plight.
We know, for example, that President Moi himself has acquired part of EATEC land (LR. NO 77339/16-Original No. 7739/2/2 18.88 hectares (dated 30–11–93)). Mark Too LR. No. 774–1756 Hectares (dated6–5–82) [sic] and is pressurising for his own Tugen and neighbouring Keiyo people to be brought from as far as fifty and a hundred miles, even though they are not landless (or squatters) to be settled here .
While the letter emphasises the encroachment of “outsiders”, it also draws attention to the fact that they are wealthy. Class awareness is wrapped within the ethnic language. The problem of landlessness is not a problem of the squatter families alone but of the wider imagined Nandi community against wealthy outsiders who were not landless. However, this problem was viewed as part of the “land grabbing mania” affecting the Kenyan nation as a whole. (For further information, see Klopp 2000.)The squatters at Kampi Nandi did not deny the right to land of the multi-ethnic squatters in a Northern labour camp. In fact, they sympathised with their plight as landless people like themselves. However, they protested the attempt to place both groups together, diluting the Kampi Nandi claims to “ancestral land”.
Indeed, the Kampi Nandi squatters also included a number of Luhya and Turkana, who were for all intents and purposes part of the Nandi community and whose claims to land were respected. Interestingly, the well-heeled EATEC Chairman Too, born and raised in the area and speaking the local dialect, was depicted as an “outsider”.
Local Nandi chose to emphasise the Tugen strand of Mark Too’s lineage to portray him as part of Moi’s group which, along with Biwott’s Keiyo sub-group, were seen to be encroaching on land in the area through opaque transactions supervised by the administration and outside of local control (Kanyinga 1998: 230).
In an interview a squatter leader, who had been actively networking with Nairobi human rights organisations and no doubt was influenced by this encounter, made the class distinctions quite clear. Below is part of the transcript of an interview done in Nairobi on 30 June 1998:
Squatter Leader (S.L.): Moi wants to grab for his people not for his community. It is for he, himself and his people.
Klopp: When you say “his people” you mean?
S.L.: Ministers who are protecting him, his family-not his community.
K: Not even the Tugen community?
S.L.: Yes, when we come to his community, there are people like Juma Kiplenge (A prominent Nakuru-based lawyer and land rights activist). He is a Tugen, and he is fighting against Moi.
Even though much of the rhetoric around the mobilizations to protect Nandi “ancestral land” stayed within the idioms of community pitted against community, a closer look shows how this struggle was not only about ethnic domains. It was also part of a class-based struggle pitting land accumulators, including the president himself, against a primarily Nandi underclass.
This class dimension facilitated the recognition of the claims of the Turkana and Luhya squatters at Kampi Nandi as genuine landless. Nandi nationalism involved appropriating the past for use in a highly unequal struggle in which liberal rights, entitlements of national citizenship, are too often masked as hollow promise.
The Kampi Nandi squatters, for example, tried to use the courts and Kituo cha Sheria, the legal aid organisation in Nairobi offering assistance in suing EATEC. However, when squatter activist Henry Maiyo went to the Land Registry to place a caveat on the land, he was told he was in violation of legal procedure, that the “land already belonged to somebody else” (interview with squatter activist, Nairobi, June 1998).
This emerging cleavage around land was set to benefit the opposition, and many opposition MPs enthusiastically backed the renegade MPs and their stance on EATEC land. However, this was more than sheer opportunism for many opposition MPs who were struggling to attend rallies against persisting violence and threats of violence to their dissident constituents and supporters in the Rift Valley.
At the same time Nandi squatters and their leaders were reaching out to the national arena for alliances, support and recognition for their struggle.
Indeed, EATEC squatters from Kampi Nandi sent representatives to Nairobi to consult with human rights organisations, including the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the legal aid organisation Kituo cha Sheria, and Release Political Prisoners (RPP).
MP Kirwa’s campaign for Nandi rights did not appear to contradict his deliberate attempt to court voters from all ethnic identifications. Indeed, his popularity in the multi-ethnic Cherengany constituency soared, where the Luhya, Kalenjin, and a mixture of Kikuyu, Kisii and Turkana voters each represent about a third of the vote.
While Kirwa’s well-connected KANU rival John Kittony, remarked, “for him to start campaigning along ethnic lines in a multi-ethnic constituency like Cherengani is a big political blunder” (WeeklyReview 27 June 1997), Kirwa won the 1997 election with a comfortable 63.43per cent of the vote.
While promoting Nandi nationalism around the EATEC issue, the MP made a deliberate and electorally successful policy of campaigning against irregular land allocations more generally, recognising the rights of the landless from other communities, and promoting a tolerant cosmopolitanism.
This strategy led KANU critics to call him an “opposition mole”. He countered by suggesting his criticisms of the patronage hierarchy had a “principled foundation” (Weekly Review 27 June 1997). When the president on tour in the area depicted the nationalists as “enemies within KANU”, they told him to “stick to the issues they had been raising” (Weekly Review 12 June 1998).
Most critically, in January 1998 in the aftermath of the December 1997 election, the Biwott faction of KANU started to once again advocate violence against Kikuyu farmers and traders in the Rift Valley.
This time, they used the threat of violence against Kikuyu farmers as a means to threaten Mwai Kibaki of the Democratic Party, the Kikuyu presidential runner-up in the elections. As we noted at the very beginning, Kibaki was in the process of challenging the results of the election on seventy five different grounds through a High Court petition against the president and the Electoral Commission.
Biwott warned in an address to his constituents that “ Kibaki’s petition was being viewed as an affront not just to Moi, but to the entire Kalenjin community” and underscored it would directly affect relations with the Kikuyu (Economic Review 2–8 February 1998).
The same day a group of Biwott’s Nandi clients, including EATEC chairman Too, met in Nandi Hills to threaten tribal warfare if Kibaki proceeded with the petition. Shortly after this “ethnic clashes” occurred: organised and well-armed raiders began a series of violent attacks against Kikuyu farming communities in Laikipia and Njoro in the Rift Valley.
Most of the victims had voted for Kibaki in the last election. As most migrants were from Kibaki’s Nyeri home, the message of this violence was not lost on many local observers.
This time, however, the violence was not met by silence within the Nandi community. The renegade nationalist leaders refused to let the Biwott faction speak on behalf of the community as a whole. Shattering the carefully crafted image of a united and belligerent “Kalenjin community”, the Nandi nationalists issued a strong condemnation captured in this 28 January 1998 press release (reproduced in Economic Review 2–8 February):
Let it be clear at the onset that the Nandi community leaders have not held a meeting for noble causes like sorting out land messes in the area and fighting a fast creeping poverty bedevilling the society, let alone drum war songs. Election grievances are best addressed through petition courts, which have the requisite machinery to deal with such matters….
John K. Sambu, MP Mosop Jackson Kibor, National Co-ordinator Ford-K Kipkorir Menjo, Chairman Ford-K Eldoret North Paul Birech, KANU Assistant Secretary, Uasin Gishu Kipruto arap Kirwa, MP Cherengany.
The scenario and the aftermath of the 1991 clashes are still fresh in the minds of many, and anybody can seize the opportunity of such careless statements to precipitate a political disaster. History attests to the fact that the Nandis, though militant, never jump on any bandwagon of inciters.
Logic has it that violence begets violence, and violence is not a wedding dance. We will therefore not allow anybody to misuse the name of the community for any parochial or selfish purposes. As Nandi leaders we care about the welfare of our people both in Nandi and the diaspora. We have to think of what to bequeath to future generations…. We are not by any stretch of the imagination condoning insults targeted at any elected leader—the courts, not rallies, are meant to address exactly that.
We strongly condemn the utterances of leaders who met in Nandi hills and totally disassociate members of our communities from any form of violence. Nandi land cannot be allowed to become a battleground. And we wish to assure all communities living among the Nandi that we shall not allow our people to be misused. Mutual and peaceful co-existence is what we advocate.…. Unity in diversity is paramount for stability and progress in this nation.
Reflected in this statement is a potential counter-politics to political tribalism. In this resistance politics, fashioned as a kind of local nationalism, the saliency of ethnic community is wholly recognised. However, the moral universe of the local community is extended to recognise the rights of migrants from other communities.
As events unfolded, this trans-ethnic politics of cooperation over EATEC expanded. Two Kikuyu municipal councilors from Eldoret, Peterson Mwangi and Paul Gicheru, issued a declaration that “the Kikuyu community would be risking too much if they went ahead and bought the EATEC farms without approval of the Nandi community” (The People 6 March 2000).
While the experience of being targets of violence prompted this statement, it was also the beginning of a reciprocal politics of recognition that local land rights should be negotiated and based on publicly accepted transactions.
This declaration came after a Democratic Party legislator Chege Mbutiru brought in a bus full of wealthy prospective Kikuyu buyers to look at EATEC land. This provoked a hasty response from local Kikuyu community representatives who distanced themselves from the wealthy outsiders by saying “some people are trying to joke around with the sale of land and that is why we felt the need to let the local community buy the farms, and we, therefore, advise our people to keep off meanwhile” (The People 6 March 2000).
It did not appear that Kibaki and the party as a whole supported the move by wealthy DP supporters to buy EATEC land and the renegade Nandi MPs joined Kibaki at an opposition rally in neighbouring Trans Nzoia district where they spoke out against the EATEC land sale. By June 2000 the Uasin Gishu Democratic Party held an Eldoret press conference to state their position on EATEC.
They said that “events around the sale were worrying” and urged the government “to take charge if the lease between it and Lonrho (East Africa) had expired”. Appealing into the class dimension of Nandi nationalist rhetoric, they asked for “the plight of the landless in Uasin Gishu District” to be addressed urgently “regardless of community” (The Daily Nation 16 June 2000).
Moi, Biwott and Too tried to counter this rising tide of multi-ethnic opposition to the EATEC sale based on Nandi nationalist claims by turning from majimboism to liberal language. They said that private property rights needed to be protected, and that the price of land would be determined on a “willing seller, willing buyer” basis. (See the exchange between Biwott and Kirwa in parliament in Daily Nation 15 June 2000).
They presented the privatisation of the farm as part of the mechanical working of a free market. On 24 February 2000, amidst much contention swirling around the land sales, EATEC manager Jeremy Humes announced that plots on “Nandi District Estates” would go on sale and that “market prices would dictate prices in all transactions”. Thus, he expected that the five acre plots would be sold for KSh 150,000/acre in prime areas and KSh 60,000/acre in the interior areas (The People 26 February 2000).
On 2 March 2000, clearly directed to ‘problematic’ Nandi squatters when opening the Eldoret Agricultural Show, Moi backed up the EATEC management, chaired by his own client Too, with the rhetoric of upholding private property rights and the constitution protecting these rights:
“Some people think there is free land in Kenya. This EATEC land is legally owned by the company and I have no powers to interfere if they have decided to sell it on a willing-buyer-willing seller basis.” (The People 3 March 2000).
The Land Registry showed otherwise. Mark Too had 1,756 hectares to his name as early as 1982, with payment made through exchange with another piece of land, no doubt of much lesser value. The squatters at Kampi Nandi discovered that none other than President Moi himself had been allocated the land they were living on. In 1993 he had received a 957 year lease for 18.85 hectares of EATEC land, including Kampi Nandi (Eldoret Land Registry entry for LR 7739/6) for a total of Kshs 56,000. This was definitely not a market rate as this land was being sold at between KSh 60,000 and 150,000 per acre.
Moi acted to counter the threat that Nandi nationalism posed to his accumulation and the majimbo politics of divide and rule. Using then provincial administration security, Moi ensured that all the squatters were evicted, except for the vocal Kampi Nandi squatters who were granted two acres of EATEC land per family (Interview with Kampi Nandi, Nairobi November 2000).
After Kirwa attended a large political rally in Eldoret and, in a potent symbolic gesture, held arms with a multi-ethnic group of opposition leaders as they marched through the streets, the president intensified a vicious campaign against the MP. Kirwa’s meetings with constituents, including meetings with “harambees” or fund-raisers, were brutally dispersed by armed police and, in February 2001, Moi warned potential Kirwa allies: “From today, I will keep my eyes open and if any leader who says he talks to him basi (that’s it).” (Daily Nation 4 February 2001).
At the same time, Moi ordered majimboist ministers to hold fundraisers in the Cherengany Constituency to undermine Kirwa. Biwott began the tour by helping raise Ksh 1.8 million [US$ 22,500] for a local high school where the headmaster had been dismissed, allegedly for supporting the Nandi nationalists (Daily Nation 25 February 2001).
By pumping money into the area in this manner, while at the same time using the administration to bar Kirwa’s meetings on the grounds of “insecurity”, Moi, Biwott, and their lower level majimboists were actively trying to crush, with the old “politics of the belly”, Kirwa’s grassroots support and the cosmopolitan resistance movement within Nandi politics of which it is part.
Conclusion
Will the cosmopolitan vision of politics articulated by Kirwa and the Kampi Nandi squatters overcome the Moi cabal’s increasingly violent “politics of the belly”? “Or does the dividing power of political tribalism still hold the trumps?”(Lonsdale 2000a: 14).
In many ways, this is the key question to Kenya’s future.
Many local movements like that of the Nandi nationalists are increasingly defining civic virtue as a willingness to combat unaccountable land accumulation from the centre.
This accumulation of land has increasingly encroached on national forests, schools, court compounds and other public spaces through which the Kenyan nation is experienced at a local level (Klopp 2000, 2001a).
The profoundly exclusionary nature of much of this accumulation, which leaves the majority of Kenyans from all communities out of both decision-making and benefits, is provoking the sense that “these allocations are killing the nation”(The People 3 February 1999) or that “land grabbers have no sense of belonging to this nation” (Daily Nation 12 November 1998). The contradictions between this private accumulation and politics based on customary notions of land as communal territory are, as in the EATEC struggle, coming to the fore.
The construction of the railway saw this as a fulfilment of this prophecy.
By 1900 virtually the whole Nandi tribe was united again behind Koitalel. The British, determined to build the Kenya-Uganda railway line and reeling from the Nandi resistance, tricked Orkoiyot Koitalel arap Samoei into a meeting for an agreement, where Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen and his troops callously shot and killed Samoei and 23 other members of the family and community during the conference.
There was one survivor who managed to escape and narrate what had happened.
The British examined these events in detail by conducting three separate military courts of inquiry after protests were received from other officers concerning the disgraceful and treacherous nature of Meinertzhagen’s behaviour. He was however acquitted, eventually transferred elsewhere. He went on to become Chief Intelligence Officer of the British Army during the second World War and decorated by the Queen.
The fall-out and consequences of the killing of Samoei for the future of the Nandi people were profound and have not been fully resolved even today. After he was killed, the Nandi people were so divided afterwards and until today, the Nandi people still remember that their spiritual leader played an important role in the unity of his people.
During the colonial times the British not only persecuted the Talai clan but made sure that they put under house arrest and in detention.
They were dispersed as squatters all over Kenya, from the outskirts of Eldoret in Uasin Gishu, to Tinderet, to Maralal, to Gwasi, to Meru, to Lamu and Songhor, to name but just a few of the places. Today, the Talai clan’s lineage is to be found not only amongst the Kalenjin but also other Kenyan tribes.
The case is excerpted from a from a study by Jacqueline M Klopp ‘Can Moral Ethnicity Trump Political Tribalism’ (2002 ), illustrating how Moi personally benefited from political tribalism while cheating the land-starved Nandi out of EATEC/LONRHO land in Uasin Gishu.
EATEC Land in the Colonial & Early Post Independence Period (direct excerpt from JM Klopp's research).
As in the rest of the Rift Valley, most colonial settler farms in Uasin Gishu produced cash crops such as sisal, tea, coffee, and wattle. The crops covered 89,100 acres of Uasin Gishu settler land and involved 17,700African labourers and around 3,500 squatters without homes in the reserve.
Wattle, used to produce an extract for tanning hides, was the predominant cash crop covering 68,100 acres (Colony and Protectorate of Kenya 1961). Many settlers belonged to a wattle farmer’s co-operative, Plateau Wattle Co. Ltd until the East African Tanning Extract Company (EATEC) absorbed it.
At the time, Plateau Wattle Company sold land to EATEC for the Ksh 250 per acre as set by the Colonial Central Agricultural Board.
Eventually, in 1969 EATEC was taken over by the British Multi-national Lonrho.
Lonrho, along with many other multi-nationals in the 1960s, forged relationships with the Kenyan government in order to guarantee political protection and benefits. Part of this strategy was to appoint key members of Kenya’s ruling circle to senior positions. Early on, President Kenyatta’s son-in-law Gecaga was appointed managing director of Lonrho, East Africa.
Under Moi, nominated MP and close Moi associate (some say his son) Mark arap Too was appointed deputy chairman and later chairman (Kareithi 1991:203–204). Not surprisingly, in 1971 EATEC/Lonrho acquired land at government-controlled prices.
In 1994, when Lonrho wanted to sell off its 40,000 acre EATEC farm, large chunks of land were transferred under a front company called Kenmosa to wealthy patronage bosses of the Moi regime, including the president himself.
They were then free to sell it at market prices that most local people could simply not afford. One large piece of EATEC land was opaquely sold to a private company associated with young KANU operatives, which then sold it back to the government at a highly inflated price for the construction of the Eldoret airport (Republic of Kenya 1999: 16–20).
These EATEC land sales were carried out in a context of local land hunger. After independence, despite settlement schemes, land holdings in Uasin Gishu District remained highly skewed.
In 1980, under Moi for example, the district still had 525 large settler farms covering 84 percent of the total land area (Kanyinga 1998: 209). Even taking into account the subdivision of some of these farms into smaller holdings, the figures suggest that “relatively little land was turned over to land hungry peasants and that the reform did not solve the problem of high levels of landlessness that characterised the district from the colonial period” (Kanyinga 1998: 213).
Hundreds of squatter families of former labourers lived on parts of EATEC land. While some of these squatters were migrants from neighbouring areas who came to work in Uasin Gishu, most of the squatters were Nandi. Today, such squatters make up a substantial part of the landless rural poor in the district (Republic of Kenya 1994–1996:74).
Trouble began when EATEC chairman Mark arap Too attempted to secure all the lucrative land for his patron, the president, and his clients and, in the process, tried to evict the former labourers engaged in subsistence farming on various parts of the EATEC farm. EATEC was not the only piece of land in the area provoking a deepening of the factional dispute within KANU in the region, but it appeared to be the last straw.
Since the early 1990s, as in the rest of the country, the region had been experiencing an acceleration in the irregular privatisation of public land. For example, small-scale farmers accused Biwott of cheating them out of Goetzee farm. In another dispute, in the neighbouring Trans Nzoia district, an Agricultural Development Corporation (government) farm was in the process of being given to prominent people, once again linked to Biwott. Another issue involved the Nyayo Tea Zones, which were being sub-divided and distributed to the well-connected (Weekly Review 20 June 1997).
Local resentment over the exclusionary nature of these opaque land transactions, fuelled by the plight of the EATEC “squatters”, created the basis for a local nationalist movement focused on resisting the highest echelons of power in the Kenyan state.
The EATEC land sale provoked a series of rallies which brought together Nandi squatters, young men, elders, clergy and local MPs. Youthful Nandi MP Kipruto arap Kirwa, a former Biwott client from Cherengany Constituency in neighbouring Trans Nzoia District, became the unlikely leader of this nationalist movement.
At a well-attended meeting in Eldoret called to discuss EATEC land, Nandi elders told the crowd: “We have been abused to an extent we can no longer bear. Nandis shall not accept to be part of the Kalenjin coalition of sub-tribes if our role is to be used politically and then dumped without even being given our basic rights.” (The People 8 March 2000).
While “prominent politicians, including Moi, asserted and invigorated the integrity of Kalenjin identity, claiming there was no such identity as Nandi, Tugen and Kipsigis … only Kalenjin” (Ndegwa1997: 609), these dissident Nandi refused to give Moi “the power of ethnic naming”. (Worby 1994: 376) To do so would have affirmed Moi, Biwott and Too as “insiders”, who, by allocating land and doling it out to their clients, were benefiting the local land hungry community through “trickle down” effects.
In the multi-party context, the claims and grievances of the EATEC squatters and Nandi land-poor became a central election issue. This issue generated a fractious break within KANU between accumulators of EATEC land, the president and his most powerful Kalenjin political allies, and younger MPs from the area, particularly Kirwa but also MP John Sambu from Mosop Constituency in Nandi District.
The public pressure on the EATEC issue was so strong that the conformist Nandi clients of Biwott were afraid to openly criticise the nationalists for fear of losing support.
As one journalist wrote: “So emotive has the issue of EATEC land become that even compliant Nandi members of parliament such as the MP for Tinderet Mr. Henry Kosgey, the MP for Emgwen Mr. Joseph Leting, the MP for Aldai Mr. Kiptum Choge and the MP for Eldoret South Mr. Jesse Maiz, have not been willing to come into the open to criticise the crusade by Kirwa and his comrades to have a piece of land alienated for the settling of squatters from the Nandi community.” (Weekly Review 1998).
The Nandi MPs took up the EATEC squatters’ plight as a cause ce´le`bre. Kirwa told the pro-establishment journal the Weekly Review (23 August 1996): What I know is that the land was owned by Lonrho on a 99-year leasehold. Lonrho has not renewed this lease and the land should revert back to the government. Is this company (Kenmosa) now selling government land. Who owns shares in Kenmosa?”
A number of Nandi elders who met with the MPs and their constituents over this issue continued to assert community rights to the land based on patrimonial logics.
For example, at one meeting a Nandi elder told the audience that “during Kenyatta’s time his people benefited from such things [land]. This should have been our time, but surprisingly, our own people whose days are numbered in the government have kept on undermining us.”
(The People 26 February 2000) MP Sambu also expressed his displeasure in the familiar language of patrimonial politics (Weekly Review 20 June 1997):
In 1992 we were promised many goodies if we only stayed solidly behind President Moi and the ruling party. We were told if opposition tribes took over, the Kalenjin would be wiped out. The promises have not been fulfilled and the future looks bleak for us if we maintain this notion of Kalenjin solidarity against other tribes. If the government will allow EATEC to speculate with its land, the Nandi will also speculate with their votes. It is as simple as that.
In contrast, Kirwa, who became the de facto leader of this local resistance movement, articulated a Nandi nationalism nuanced in class as opposed to these purely patrimonial logics. At the meeting with the Nandi elders, for example, Kirwa countered the “language of the belly” by saying that what they wanted was a fair price for their land and that “ Nandis and their neighbours must be given priority and not any other rich individuals who had all along been exploiting poor Kenyans ” (The People 26 February 2000).
By taking a cut of the land and staying silently out of the path of the powerful Biwott faction, Kirwa could have behaved like a proper lower level client.
Instead, strong pressures from below in the form of rebuke and censure, including potential electoral defeat made more salient by the presence of opposition parties, helped push Kirwa and other former lower level clients to rebel and take an alternative path. The nationalists used these popular pressures as a tool in their struggle against the immensely powerful Moi-Biwott-Too faction.
By taking up the land issue these maverick nationalists around Kirwa solidified their support from mostly KANU voters and wielded this against the patronage hierarchy. This hierarchy still needed to win elections, and the presence of a popular dissident in their stronghold made this task harder. The fact that Kirwa refused to leave KANU complicated the picture as he was key to bringing crucial votes to the party.
Unsurprisingly, Nandi squatters were some of the most vocal proponents of a local nationalism that centered on resisting the exclusionary EATEC land sales. They resorted to claims that EATEC was on “ancestral land” and further that they had entered into a moral contract with the company when they agreed to provide the labour on the farm. Here is how Henry Maiyo, a squatter leader fromKampi Nandi, an EATEC settlement of about ten kilometres from Eldoret viewed the situation in a protest letter, interestingly to the British High Commission (reproduced in slightly altered form in the Release Political Prisoners newsletter Mtetezi 1 (10):6):
Our ancestors lived at Kampi-Nandi as early as 1920s and they were later turned into labourers on their own farms by the British colonial regime… Thus the remains of our ancestors have been buried here. Likewise we shall be buried on the same land.
Labourers and their male offsprings (aged above sixteen) were required to supply labour to the land owners for at least a hundred and eighty days per year. In return they were paid a nominal fee and allowed to farm and graze at the pleasure of the land owner… This was the arrangement that was maintained in the early 1950swhen EATEC took possession of the land on which we lived and worked. In 1984 EATEC unilaterally decided to move us into labour camps hitherto occupied by labourers who had come here to work from outside. We declined… The determination by EATEC to evict us has only been matched by our determination not to be evicted. We have nowhere to go!
The squatters viewed themselves as the deserving poor who laboured according to law. The graves of the ancestors on the land underscored their inter-generational commitment to the “contract” as well as the validity of their claims to “ancestral land”. They also appealed to principles of equity and their right to subsistence as landless people in the letter:
The plight of Kampi Nandi squatters has not been unique as landlessness is rampant among the Nandi. Also experienced in Kenya now is the land grabbing mania. In 1990s EATEC offered 40,000 acres for sale, requiring people to register for shs 5,000 (non refundable) fee.
Nearly 10,000 people responded to this noble opportunity.
Yet the outcome of this proposal has been totally disheartening. Whereas the exercise has been completed there is an instance where ten houses-holds [sic] ended up on one acre, while senior government officials have acquired substantial holdings in more than one such scheme!
We squatters detest collusion between EATEC and our predator government. The area of Kampi Nandi is targeted for sale but there is collusion to bring in wealthy outsiders, instead of resolving our plight.
We know, for example, that President Moi himself has acquired part of EATEC land (LR. NO 77339/16-Original No. 7739/2/2 18.88 hectares (dated 30–11–93)). Mark Too LR. No. 774–1756 Hectares (dated6–5–82) [sic] and is pressurising for his own Tugen and neighbouring Keiyo people to be brought from as far as fifty and a hundred miles, even though they are not landless (or squatters) to be settled here .
While the letter emphasises the encroachment of “outsiders”, it also draws attention to the fact that they are wealthy. Class awareness is wrapped within the ethnic language. The problem of landlessness is not a problem of the squatter families alone but of the wider imagined Nandi community against wealthy outsiders who were not landless. However, this problem was viewed as part of the “land grabbing mania” affecting the Kenyan nation as a whole. (For further information, see Klopp 2000.)The squatters at Kampi Nandi did not deny the right to land of the multi-ethnic squatters in a Northern labour camp. In fact, they sympathised with their plight as landless people like themselves. However, they protested the attempt to place both groups together, diluting the Kampi Nandi claims to “ancestral land”.
Indeed, the Kampi Nandi squatters also included a number of Luhya and Turkana, who were for all intents and purposes part of the Nandi community and whose claims to land were respected. Interestingly, the well-heeled EATEC Chairman Too, born and raised in the area and speaking the local dialect, was depicted as an “outsider”.
Local Nandi chose to emphasise the Tugen strand of Mark Too’s lineage to portray him as part of Moi’s group which, along with Biwott’s Keiyo sub-group, were seen to be encroaching on land in the area through opaque transactions supervised by the administration and outside of local control (Kanyinga 1998: 230).
In an interview a squatter leader, who had been actively networking with Nairobi human rights organisations and no doubt was influenced by this encounter, made the class distinctions quite clear. Below is part of the transcript of an interview done in Nairobi on 30 June 1998:
Squatter Leader (S.L.): Moi wants to grab for his people not for his community. It is for he, himself and his people.
Klopp: When you say “his people” you mean?
S.L.: Ministers who are protecting him, his family-not his community.
K: Not even the Tugen community?
S.L.: Yes, when we come to his community, there are people like Juma Kiplenge (A prominent Nakuru-based lawyer and land rights activist). He is a Tugen, and he is fighting against Moi.
Even though much of the rhetoric around the mobilizations to protect Nandi “ancestral land” stayed within the idioms of community pitted against community, a closer look shows how this struggle was not only about ethnic domains. It was also part of a class-based struggle pitting land accumulators, including the president himself, against a primarily Nandi underclass.
This class dimension facilitated the recognition of the claims of the Turkana and Luhya squatters at Kampi Nandi as genuine landless. Nandi nationalism involved appropriating the past for use in a highly unequal struggle in which liberal rights, entitlements of national citizenship, are too often masked as hollow promise.
The Kampi Nandi squatters, for example, tried to use the courts and Kituo cha Sheria, the legal aid organisation in Nairobi offering assistance in suing EATEC. However, when squatter activist Henry Maiyo went to the Land Registry to place a caveat on the land, he was told he was in violation of legal procedure, that the “land already belonged to somebody else” (interview with squatter activist, Nairobi, June 1998).
This emerging cleavage around land was set to benefit the opposition, and many opposition MPs enthusiastically backed the renegade MPs and their stance on EATEC land. However, this was more than sheer opportunism for many opposition MPs who were struggling to attend rallies against persisting violence and threats of violence to their dissident constituents and supporters in the Rift Valley.
At the same time Nandi squatters and their leaders were reaching out to the national arena for alliances, support and recognition for their struggle.
Indeed, EATEC squatters from Kampi Nandi sent representatives to Nairobi to consult with human rights organisations, including the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the legal aid organisation Kituo cha Sheria, and Release Political Prisoners (RPP).
MP Kirwa’s campaign for Nandi rights did not appear to contradict his deliberate attempt to court voters from all ethnic identifications. Indeed, his popularity in the multi-ethnic Cherengany constituency soared, where the Luhya, Kalenjin, and a mixture of Kikuyu, Kisii and Turkana voters each represent about a third of the vote.
While Kirwa’s well-connected KANU rival John Kittony, remarked, “for him to start campaigning along ethnic lines in a multi-ethnic constituency like Cherengani is a big political blunder” (WeeklyReview 27 June 1997), Kirwa won the 1997 election with a comfortable 63.43per cent of the vote.
While promoting Nandi nationalism around the EATEC issue, the MP made a deliberate and electorally successful policy of campaigning against irregular land allocations more generally, recognising the rights of the landless from other communities, and promoting a tolerant cosmopolitanism.
This strategy led KANU critics to call him an “opposition mole”. He countered by suggesting his criticisms of the patronage hierarchy had a “principled foundation” (Weekly Review 27 June 1997). When the president on tour in the area depicted the nationalists as “enemies within KANU”, they told him to “stick to the issues they had been raising” (Weekly Review 12 June 1998).
Most critically, in January 1998 in the aftermath of the December 1997 election, the Biwott faction of KANU started to once again advocate violence against Kikuyu farmers and traders in the Rift Valley.
This time, they used the threat of violence against Kikuyu farmers as a means to threaten Mwai Kibaki of the Democratic Party, the Kikuyu presidential runner-up in the elections. As we noted at the very beginning, Kibaki was in the process of challenging the results of the election on seventy five different grounds through a High Court petition against the president and the Electoral Commission.
Biwott warned in an address to his constituents that “ Kibaki’s petition was being viewed as an affront not just to Moi, but to the entire Kalenjin community” and underscored it would directly affect relations with the Kikuyu (Economic Review 2–8 February 1998).
The same day a group of Biwott’s Nandi clients, including EATEC chairman Too, met in Nandi Hills to threaten tribal warfare if Kibaki proceeded with the petition. Shortly after this “ethnic clashes” occurred: organised and well-armed raiders began a series of violent attacks against Kikuyu farming communities in Laikipia and Njoro in the Rift Valley.
Most of the victims had voted for Kibaki in the last election. As most migrants were from Kibaki’s Nyeri home, the message of this violence was not lost on many local observers.
This time, however, the violence was not met by silence within the Nandi community. The renegade nationalist leaders refused to let the Biwott faction speak on behalf of the community as a whole. Shattering the carefully crafted image of a united and belligerent “Kalenjin community”, the Nandi nationalists issued a strong condemnation captured in this 28 January 1998 press release (reproduced in Economic Review 2–8 February):
Let it be clear at the onset that the Nandi community leaders have not held a meeting for noble causes like sorting out land messes in the area and fighting a fast creeping poverty bedevilling the society, let alone drum war songs. Election grievances are best addressed through petition courts, which have the requisite machinery to deal with such matters….
John K. Sambu, MP Mosop Jackson Kibor, National Co-ordinator Ford-K Kipkorir Menjo, Chairman Ford-K Eldoret North Paul Birech, KANU Assistant Secretary, Uasin Gishu Kipruto arap Kirwa, MP Cherengany.
The scenario and the aftermath of the 1991 clashes are still fresh in the minds of many, and anybody can seize the opportunity of such careless statements to precipitate a political disaster. History attests to the fact that the Nandis, though militant, never jump on any bandwagon of inciters.
Logic has it that violence begets violence, and violence is not a wedding dance. We will therefore not allow anybody to misuse the name of the community for any parochial or selfish purposes. As Nandi leaders we care about the welfare of our people both in Nandi and the diaspora. We have to think of what to bequeath to future generations…. We are not by any stretch of the imagination condoning insults targeted at any elected leader—the courts, not rallies, are meant to address exactly that.
We strongly condemn the utterances of leaders who met in Nandi hills and totally disassociate members of our communities from any form of violence. Nandi land cannot be allowed to become a battleground. And we wish to assure all communities living among the Nandi that we shall not allow our people to be misused. Mutual and peaceful co-existence is what we advocate.…. Unity in diversity is paramount for stability and progress in this nation.
Reflected in this statement is a potential counter-politics to political tribalism. In this resistance politics, fashioned as a kind of local nationalism, the saliency of ethnic community is wholly recognised. However, the moral universe of the local community is extended to recognise the rights of migrants from other communities.
As events unfolded, this trans-ethnic politics of cooperation over EATEC expanded. Two Kikuyu municipal councilors from Eldoret, Peterson Mwangi and Paul Gicheru, issued a declaration that “the Kikuyu community would be risking too much if they went ahead and bought the EATEC farms without approval of the Nandi community” (The People 6 March 2000).
While the experience of being targets of violence prompted this statement, it was also the beginning of a reciprocal politics of recognition that local land rights should be negotiated and based on publicly accepted transactions.
This declaration came after a Democratic Party legislator Chege Mbutiru brought in a bus full of wealthy prospective Kikuyu buyers to look at EATEC land. This provoked a hasty response from local Kikuyu community representatives who distanced themselves from the wealthy outsiders by saying “some people are trying to joke around with the sale of land and that is why we felt the need to let the local community buy the farms, and we, therefore, advise our people to keep off meanwhile” (The People 6 March 2000).
It did not appear that Kibaki and the party as a whole supported the move by wealthy DP supporters to buy EATEC land and the renegade Nandi MPs joined Kibaki at an opposition rally in neighbouring Trans Nzoia district where they spoke out against the EATEC land sale. By June 2000 the Uasin Gishu Democratic Party held an Eldoret press conference to state their position on EATEC.
They said that “events around the sale were worrying” and urged the government “to take charge if the lease between it and Lonrho (East Africa) had expired”. Appealing into the class dimension of Nandi nationalist rhetoric, they asked for “the plight of the landless in Uasin Gishu District” to be addressed urgently “regardless of community” (The Daily Nation 16 June 2000).
Moi, Biwott and Too tried to counter this rising tide of multi-ethnic opposition to the EATEC sale based on Nandi nationalist claims by turning from majimboism to liberal language. They said that private property rights needed to be protected, and that the price of land would be determined on a “willing seller, willing buyer” basis. (See the exchange between Biwott and Kirwa in parliament in Daily Nation 15 June 2000).
They presented the privatisation of the farm as part of the mechanical working of a free market. On 24 February 2000, amidst much contention swirling around the land sales, EATEC manager Jeremy Humes announced that plots on “Nandi District Estates” would go on sale and that “market prices would dictate prices in all transactions”. Thus, he expected that the five acre plots would be sold for KSh 150,000/acre in prime areas and KSh 60,000/acre in the interior areas (The People 26 February 2000).
On 2 March 2000, clearly directed to ‘problematic’ Nandi squatters when opening the Eldoret Agricultural Show, Moi backed up the EATEC management, chaired by his own client Too, with the rhetoric of upholding private property rights and the constitution protecting these rights:
“Some people think there is free land in Kenya. This EATEC land is legally owned by the company and I have no powers to interfere if they have decided to sell it on a willing-buyer-willing seller basis.” (The People 3 March 2000).
The Land Registry showed otherwise. Mark Too had 1,756 hectares to his name as early as 1982, with payment made through exchange with another piece of land, no doubt of much lesser value. The squatters at Kampi Nandi discovered that none other than President Moi himself had been allocated the land they were living on. In 1993 he had received a 957 year lease for 18.85 hectares of EATEC land, including Kampi Nandi (Eldoret Land Registry entry for LR 7739/6) for a total of Kshs 56,000. This was definitely not a market rate as this land was being sold at between KSh 60,000 and 150,000 per acre.
Moi acted to counter the threat that Nandi nationalism posed to his accumulation and the majimbo politics of divide and rule. Using then provincial administration security, Moi ensured that all the squatters were evicted, except for the vocal Kampi Nandi squatters who were granted two acres of EATEC land per family (Interview with Kampi Nandi, Nairobi November 2000).
After Kirwa attended a large political rally in Eldoret and, in a potent symbolic gesture, held arms with a multi-ethnic group of opposition leaders as they marched through the streets, the president intensified a vicious campaign against the MP. Kirwa’s meetings with constituents, including meetings with “harambees” or fund-raisers, were brutally dispersed by armed police and, in February 2001, Moi warned potential Kirwa allies: “From today, I will keep my eyes open and if any leader who says he talks to him basi (that’s it).” (Daily Nation 4 February 2001).
At the same time, Moi ordered majimboist ministers to hold fundraisers in the Cherengany Constituency to undermine Kirwa. Biwott began the tour by helping raise Ksh 1.8 million [US$ 22,500] for a local high school where the headmaster had been dismissed, allegedly for supporting the Nandi nationalists (Daily Nation 25 February 2001).
By pumping money into the area in this manner, while at the same time using the administration to bar Kirwa’s meetings on the grounds of “insecurity”, Moi, Biwott, and their lower level majimboists were actively trying to crush, with the old “politics of the belly”, Kirwa’s grassroots support and the cosmopolitan resistance movement within Nandi politics of which it is part.
Conclusion
Will the cosmopolitan vision of politics articulated by Kirwa and the Kampi Nandi squatters overcome the Moi cabal’s increasingly violent “politics of the belly”? “Or does the dividing power of political tribalism still hold the trumps?”(Lonsdale 2000a: 14).
In many ways, this is the key question to Kenya’s future.
Many local movements like that of the Nandi nationalists are increasingly defining civic virtue as a willingness to combat unaccountable land accumulation from the centre.
This accumulation of land has increasingly encroached on national forests, schools, court compounds and other public spaces through which the Kenyan nation is experienced at a local level (Klopp 2000, 2001a).
The profoundly exclusionary nature of much of this accumulation, which leaves the majority of Kenyans from all communities out of both decision-making and benefits, is provoking the sense that “these allocations are killing the nation”(The People 3 February 1999) or that “land grabbers have no sense of belonging to this nation” (Daily Nation 12 November 1998). The contradictions between this private accumulation and politics based on customary notions of land as communal territory are, as in the EATEC struggle, coming to the fore.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Things are not always the way they are
Keep reading to the bottom of the page -- don't stop at the feet (You'll see).
Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a
wealthy family.
The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the
mansion's guest room.
Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement.
As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole
in the wall and repaired it.
When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied,
"Things aren't always what they seem."
The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but
very hospitable farmer and his wife.
After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels
sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest.
When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and
his wife in tears.
Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field.
The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel how could
you have let this happen?
The first man had everything, yet you helped him, she accused.
The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and
you let the cow die.
"Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied.
"When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was
gold stored in that hole in the wall.
Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his
good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it."
"Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death
came for his wife. I gave him the cow instead.
Things aren't always what they seem."
Sometimes that is exactly what happens when things don't turn out the
way they should. If you have faith, you just need to trust that every
out come is always to your advantage. You just might not know it until
some time later...
Oooo
Some people ( )
come into our lives ) /
and quickly go.. (_ /
oooO
( ) Some people
\ ( become friends
\_ ) and stay awhile...
leaving beautiful Oooo
footprints on our ( )
hearts... ) /
( _/
oooO
( ) and we are
\ ( never
\_ ) quite the same
because we have
made a good
friend!!
Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That's why it's called the present!
I think this is special...live and savor every
moment... This is not a dress rehearsal!
(\ /)
( \ __ / )
( \()/ )
( / \ ) TAKE THIS LITTLE ANGEL
( / \/ \ ) AND KEEP HER CLOSE TO YOU
/ \ SHE IS YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL
( ) SENT TO WATCH OVER YOU
____
THIS IS A SPECIAL GUARDIAN ANGEL.... YOU MUST
PASS THIS ON TO 5 PEOPLE WITHIN THE HOUR OF
RECEIVING HER..AFTER YOU DO MAKE A WISH....
IF YOU HAVE PASSED HER ON, YOUR WISH WILL
BE GRANTED AND SHE WILL WATCH OVER YOU FOREVER....
IF NOT..HER TEARS WILL FLOW AND NO WISHES
WILL BE GRANTED....
Now don't delete this message, because it comes
from a very special angel.
Right Now -
-somebody is thinking of you.
-somebody is caring about you.
-somebody misses you
-somebody wants to talk to you.
-somebody wants to be with you.
-somebody hopes you aren't in trouble.
-somebody is thankful for the support you have provided.
-somebody wants to hold your hand.
-somebody hopes everything turns out all right.
-somebody wants you to be happy.
-somebody wants you to find him/her.
-somebody is celebrating your successes.
-somebody wants to give you a gift.
-somebody thinks that you ARE a gift.
-somebody loves you.
-somebody admires your strength.
-somebody is thinking of you and smiling.
-somebody wants to be your shoulder to cry on.
SOMEBODY NEEDS YOU TO SEND THIS TO THEM =====
Never take away anyone's hope. That may be all they have.
Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a
wealthy family.
The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the
mansion's guest room.
Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement.
As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole
in the wall and repaired it.
When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied,
"Things aren't always what they seem."
The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but
very hospitable farmer and his wife.
After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels
sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest.
When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and
his wife in tears.
Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field.
The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel how could
you have let this happen?
The first man had everything, yet you helped him, she accused.
The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and
you let the cow die.
"Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied.
"When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was
gold stored in that hole in the wall.
Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his
good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it."
"Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death
came for his wife. I gave him the cow instead.
Things aren't always what they seem."
Sometimes that is exactly what happens when things don't turn out the
way they should. If you have faith, you just need to trust that every
out come is always to your advantage. You just might not know it until
some time later...
Oooo
Some people ( )
come into our lives ) /
and quickly go.. (_ /
oooO
( ) Some people
\ ( become friends
\_ ) and stay awhile...
leaving beautiful Oooo
footprints on our ( )
hearts... ) /
( _/
oooO
( ) and we are
\ ( never
\_ ) quite the same
because we have
made a good
friend!!
Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That's why it's called the present!
I think this is special...live and savor every
moment... This is not a dress rehearsal!
(\ /)
( \ __ / )
( \()/ )
( / \ ) TAKE THIS LITTLE ANGEL
( / \/ \ ) AND KEEP HER CLOSE TO YOU
/ \ SHE IS YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL
( ) SENT TO WATCH OVER YOU
____
THIS IS A SPECIAL GUARDIAN ANGEL.... YOU MUST
PASS THIS ON TO 5 PEOPLE WITHIN THE HOUR OF
RECEIVING HER..AFTER YOU DO MAKE A WISH....
IF YOU HAVE PASSED HER ON, YOUR WISH WILL
BE GRANTED AND SHE WILL WATCH OVER YOU FOREVER....
IF NOT..HER TEARS WILL FLOW AND NO WISHES
WILL BE GRANTED....
Now don't delete this message, because it comes
from a very special angel.
Right Now -
-somebody is thinking of you.
-somebody is caring about you.
-somebody misses you
-somebody wants to talk to you.
-somebody wants to be with you.
-somebody hopes you aren't in trouble.
-somebody is thankful for the support you have provided.
-somebody wants to hold your hand.
-somebody hopes everything turns out all right.
-somebody wants you to be happy.
-somebody wants you to find him/her.
-somebody is celebrating your successes.
-somebody wants to give you a gift.
-somebody thinks that you ARE a gift.
-somebody loves you.
-somebody admires your strength.
-somebody is thinking of you and smiling.
-somebody wants to be your shoulder to cry on.
SOMEBODY NEEDS YOU TO SEND THIS TO THEM =====
Never take away anyone's hope. That may be all they have.
you star!!!!
Signs of the Zodiac
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb 18) - You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. You make the same mistakes repeatedly because you are stupid. Everyone thinks you are a jerk.
PISCES (Feb 19-Mar 20) - You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by the FBI or CIA. You have a minor influence on your friends and people resent you for flaunting your power. You lack confidence and are a general loser.
ARIES (Mar21-Apr 20) - You are the pioneer type and think most people are quick-tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are a prick.
TAURUS (Apr 21-May 20) - You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bullheaded. You are nothing but a communist.
GEMINI (May 21-Jun 20) - You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. You are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are a cheap bastard. Geminis are notorious for thriving on incest.
CANCER (Jun 21-Jul 22) - You are sympathetic and understanding to other peoples problems, which makes you a sucker. You are always putting things off. That is why you will always be on welfare and won't be worth a penny. Everybody in prison is a Cancer.
LEO (Jul 23-Aug 22) - You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you're an idiot. Most Leos are bullies. You are vain and cannot tolerate honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieving sods and spend most of their lives kissing mirrors.
VIRGO (Aug 23-Sep 22) - You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and often fall asleep while having sex. Virgos make good bus drivers and pimps.
LIBRA (Sep 23-Oct 22) - You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality. If you are male, you are probably queer. Chances for employment and monetary gain are nil. Most Libra women are whores. All Libras die of venereal disease.
SCORPIO (Oct 23-Nov 21) - The worst of the lot. You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You shall achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. You are a perfect S.O.B.. Most Scorpios are murdered.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21) - You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on luck since you have no talent. The majority of Sagittarius' are drunks. You are not worth the time of day.
CAPRICORN (Dec 22-Jan 19) - You are conservative and are afraid of taking risks. You are basically spineless. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance. Become a monk.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb 18) - You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. You make the same mistakes repeatedly because you are stupid. Everyone thinks you are a jerk.
PISCES (Feb 19-Mar 20) - You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by the FBI or CIA. You have a minor influence on your friends and people resent you for flaunting your power. You lack confidence and are a general loser.
ARIES (Mar21-Apr 20) - You are the pioneer type and think most people are quick-tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are a prick.
TAURUS (Apr 21-May 20) - You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bullheaded. You are nothing but a communist.
GEMINI (May 21-Jun 20) - You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. You are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are a cheap bastard. Geminis are notorious for thriving on incest.
CANCER (Jun 21-Jul 22) - You are sympathetic and understanding to other peoples problems, which makes you a sucker. You are always putting things off. That is why you will always be on welfare and won't be worth a penny. Everybody in prison is a Cancer.
LEO (Jul 23-Aug 22) - You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you're an idiot. Most Leos are bullies. You are vain and cannot tolerate honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieving sods and spend most of their lives kissing mirrors.
VIRGO (Aug 23-Sep 22) - You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and often fall asleep while having sex. Virgos make good bus drivers and pimps.
LIBRA (Sep 23-Oct 22) - You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality. If you are male, you are probably queer. Chances for employment and monetary gain are nil. Most Libra women are whores. All Libras die of venereal disease.
SCORPIO (Oct 23-Nov 21) - The worst of the lot. You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You shall achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. You are a perfect S.O.B.. Most Scorpios are murdered.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21) - You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on luck since you have no talent. The majority of Sagittarius' are drunks. You are not worth the time of day.
CAPRICORN (Dec 22-Jan 19) - You are conservative and are afraid of taking risks. You are basically spineless. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance. Become a monk.
who is ugly in Africa
Kenyans were last weekend voted the funniest looking people in Africa. With 48 participating nations in the Annual Most Beautiful People of Africa Awards, held at the Gregor Theater in Bloemfontein SA, Kenya took the last position, dislodging Zambia and reclaiming the title it held in 2000.
It posted 7pts out of a possible 540. The top position was taken by Rwanda, followed by Cameroon and then Ethiopia as second runner up. The last three positions were Kenya at 48, Zambia at 47, then Gabon, at 46. The judges said they gave their points based on presentation, physical appearance, grooming, communication and other areas.
Coincidentally this came just a week after an article on Kenyans appeared in the Pretorian Bird. The article, in the entertainment section, claims Kenya has the funniest looking president on earth, and a VP with a strange looking head. It goes on to say that Kikuyu women and Luo men pose the most weird features.
Read this:
"Women from the Kikuyu community have small legs, totally no figures, and a little exeggerated heads. They lack good behinds and those who have them look like inflated baloons.They are shaped like pyramids turned upside down.A big upper frame and an almost inviscible lower bit.
Luo men on the other side have distorted facial features..say big lips and huge noses or should we call them knobs. Kikuyu men are also unproportional, and most of them are stunted. They walk leaning foward. Plus they have long rusty teeth."
"Those from Kisii Districts are small people, the average Kenyan man will stop growing at 5'2"...5'4" tops. Kisii men have mango shaped heads, and bowed legs, a feature also common in in their Luhya counterparts."
He goes on to describe Kaleos as "Funny little pitch black emaciated fellows, raking in millions from the track. However long they'll remain in Europe, their features never improve". "Nandis will have rounded foreheads, and thin, long arms". While occupants at the coast province are said to have "Wide faces, almost like a widescreen telly, especially taitas,and durumas"
"Kenyans do not know the meaning of good grooming" The writer says. "The women hate their dark skins and opt for mercury bleachs which mess them up. The result: A scary (unpigmented)light face, black legs, and a black back". As much as the Kenyan accent, of standard english is admired, "there's too much mothertounge interference, common in Merus, Kisiis, and Kikuyus".
While Luos were pointed out as to be suffering from chronic 'braggitis'. The research funded by the institute of Primate Research at the University of St. Kenkley, also noted that Kenyan men are very marketable in the Kimberely area of SA and parts of the Guateng region. Reason, they are big, hopeless spenders.
Moral lesson, "Be careful dating a Kenyan online." Accepting the Award Ambassador Kinyesi, complained of biased judging. Also present were dignitaries from all around Africa.
It posted 7pts out of a possible 540. The top position was taken by Rwanda, followed by Cameroon and then Ethiopia as second runner up. The last three positions were Kenya at 48, Zambia at 47, then Gabon, at 46. The judges said they gave their points based on presentation, physical appearance, grooming, communication and other areas.
Coincidentally this came just a week after an article on Kenyans appeared in the Pretorian Bird. The article, in the entertainment section, claims Kenya has the funniest looking president on earth, and a VP with a strange looking head. It goes on to say that Kikuyu women and Luo men pose the most weird features.
Read this:
"Women from the Kikuyu community have small legs, totally no figures, and a little exeggerated heads. They lack good behinds and those who have them look like inflated baloons.They are shaped like pyramids turned upside down.A big upper frame and an almost inviscible lower bit.
Luo men on the other side have distorted facial features..say big lips and huge noses or should we call them knobs. Kikuyu men are also unproportional, and most of them are stunted. They walk leaning foward. Plus they have long rusty teeth."
"Those from Kisii Districts are small people, the average Kenyan man will stop growing at 5'2"...5'4" tops. Kisii men have mango shaped heads, and bowed legs, a feature also common in in their Luhya counterparts."
He goes on to describe Kaleos as "Funny little pitch black emaciated fellows, raking in millions from the track. However long they'll remain in Europe, their features never improve". "Nandis will have rounded foreheads, and thin, long arms". While occupants at the coast province are said to have "Wide faces, almost like a widescreen telly, especially taitas,and durumas"
"Kenyans do not know the meaning of good grooming" The writer says. "The women hate their dark skins and opt for mercury bleachs which mess them up. The result: A scary (unpigmented)light face, black legs, and a black back". As much as the Kenyan accent, of standard english is admired, "there's too much mothertounge interference, common in Merus, Kisiis, and Kikuyus".
While Luos were pointed out as to be suffering from chronic 'braggitis'. The research funded by the institute of Primate Research at the University of St. Kenkley, also noted that Kenyan men are very marketable in the Kimberely area of SA and parts of the Guateng region. Reason, they are big, hopeless spenders.
Moral lesson, "Be careful dating a Kenyan online." Accepting the Award Ambassador Kinyesi, complained of biased judging. Also present were dignitaries from all around Africa.
Friday, May 21, 2010
The Man In The Arena
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of the deed could have done better.
The credit belongs to the Man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly: who errs, who comes short again and again; for there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end of triumph of high achievement and who at worst if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never ranked with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Roosevelt,
Paris
April 23, 1910.
The credit belongs to the Man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly: who errs, who comes short again and again; for there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end of triumph of high achievement and who at worst if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never ranked with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Roosevelt,
Paris
April 23, 1910.
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