The time is now to resolve the Land Question

The land law of Kenya is as clear as mud, and only the foolhardy enter into a transaction over land without a battery of white-shoe lawyers attending to the nitty-gritty. The residents of various parts of Mavoko Municipality and Nairobi have had the sad experience of watching millions of shillings in investment leveled to the ground by bulldozers of the government with armed policemen standing by to ensure that the operations are not hindered or stopped. The Minister for Lands and his Permanent Secretary have declared that their intention is to repossess land that lawfully belongs to the national government and that the occupiers of thee properties are, essentially, trespassers.

Tears of grief by the hapless victims of the demolitions have not softened the heart of the Government of Kenya; nor have the crocodile tears of politicians hoping to cash in on their plight in time for the 2012 general elections. Pundits have gone on air and online to decry what they see as the heavy handed response of a government that is to blame for the situation and the extent of the corruption that has led to this sad state of affairs. None, however, has sought to examine whether this could have been avoided, or whether the victims had any role to play in the disaster that has now befallen them.

When President Kibaki was sworn in in 2003 among his first acts was to appoint a Commission of Inquiry on illegal land allocations in Kenya, the result of which was the Ndung'u Report which catalogued all the land that belonged to the government that had been irregularly or unlawfully allocated and to whom. President Kibaki's government, perhaps afraid of antagonising the men and women who run the private sector, has sat on this report for the past 8 years failing or refusing to implement its recommendations. The Minister of Lands has had to resort to, quite frankly, unlawful acts to repossess some of the parcels of land that were so irregularly or illegally allocated. The recent exercise to demolish houses in Syokimau and the Mitumba Slum near Wilson Airport seems to be part of that programme; the Minister states that the land belongs to the Kenya Airports Authority and that the occupiers do not have valid titles to these parcels. The victims have not helped their case; they have nothing to show for these parcels save for share certificates in land buying companies that were behind the demarcation and allocation of these parcels of lands. Indeed, the government also managed to publish a National Land Policy, much of which was incorporated in the new Constitution, but it is yet to be implemented.

The pain and suffering experienced by many Kenyans and the continued failure by the government to come to terms with the shambles that is land administration in Kenya hide the fact that unless and until the land question is resolved, there will be no meaningful development or that attaining the goals of Vision 2030 will remain a pipe dream. The political environment will continue to be poisonous so long as politicians can use the land question in their political campaigns to paint one community as benefitting at the expense of another. Many young families are now alive to the fact that even when they have followed due process in purchasing land and setting up their homes, they ay not be safe from the rampaging bulldozers of their government. The effect of the these demolitions on the family and family life are yet to be examined, but they cannot be positive or life affirming. It is time, as a nation, that we expedited the process of reforming land administration in Kenya and putting to bed one of the most pernicious aspects o colonial administration adopted by Independent Kenya.