Sheet n°292 - March 2008
Land tenure conflict in Kenya turning
into strong inter-ethnic territorial claims
© IRD / Médard Claire
N
orth-West Kenya’s
Mount Elgon district has since the 1970s
been the arena of a lurking land access conflict
which boiled up at the
very heart of the Sabaot
community, the majority
ethnic group in that part
of the country. This dispute has attracted much
less media coverage
than the riots following
on from the presidential
elections in December
2007. The source of the
trouble lies in the development of agriculture subsequent to the clearance
of primary forest which
used to cover the slopes
of this dormant volcano.
The past two years or so
have seen the conflict
take on an extra dimension. An IRD researcher,
working jointly with the
Kenyatta University of
Nairobi reviews its origins and the reasons
for its recent intensification. Repeated episodes
of land allocations and
then evictions, dictated
by political favouritism,
generated frustrations
within the community
which are now finding
expression in fierce
territorial claims by different ethnic groups.
Farmers from the Chebyuk district fleeing from the clashes over access to agricultural land.
Kenya’s recent history has been dotted with several intense episodes of
land-ownership conflict, starting in the
early 1950s with the bloody repression
of the Mau Mau movement by the British colonial power. This conflict caused
11 000 deaths among the rebels and
also prompted the first regrouping of
agricultural lands in Kenya. Access to
land in this former European colony is
still to this day a particularly hotly disputed issue. The colonial heritage also
found expression in an administrative
tradition where territorial control was
paramount of all priorities. Stemming
from this, interior boundaries defined
exclusive territories, both in the form of
nature reserves (forest, national parks)
and “ethnic reserves”, which often took
on the aspect of administrative bodies.
The result was a sectorization which
certain repercussions on the distribution of the different communities which
populate the country. This situation has
become a source of inter-ethnic tension. And it is particularly portentous in
the Chebyuk area of the Mount Elgon
district where an IRD researcher has
been conducting a long-term study on
the origins of the conflict over access to
arable land which opposes the Kalenjin
language communities (Sabaots, Ndorobos and Soy), and whose emergence
is closely linked to identity affirmation.
The fertile, well watered Chebyuk region
on the southern slopes of Mount Elgon,
about 2000 m high, was until 2006 home
of a population of 35 000 over a 10 km2
surface area. Following primary forest
clearance which had begun in the 1970s,
crops of maize, cabbage, onion and potatoes, for export to Kenya’s large towns
and cities, developed steadily. Since that
time, the geographic area has represented an agricultural front for families
coming mainly from the Sabaot community, settled on either side of the frontier
between Kenya and Uganda. To meet
people’s demand for farming plots, in the
1970s a committee of elders, co-opted
by government authorities, organized a
first land distribution operation. However, from the mid 1980s, rivalries rose up
over ownership of this expanse of land.
Pressure from the Sabaot community
led to the settlement and clearance of a
more extensive zone than the legally delimited area. In 1989, complaints about
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CONTACT :
CLAIRE MÉDARD
Unité de recherche
Constructions identitaires
et mondialisation
Address : IRD
32 avenue Henri Varagnat
93143 Bondy cedex
FRANCE
Tél : 01 48 02 59 92
claire.medard@ird.fr
REFERENCES :
ANSEEUW WARD AND ALDEN
CHRIS, The Changing
Politics of Land :
Domestic Policies,
Crisis Management
and Regional Norms
Editions Human Science
Research Council Press
Pretoria, South Africa,
sous presse, 288 pages,
2008
MÉDARD CLAIRE, Ethnic
politics, land and
administration in
Chebyuk (1971-2008).
Mount Elgon, Kenya.
Journal of Eastern African
Studies, sous presse,
Volume 3 Issue 1, 2008.
the misappropriation of these land allocations prompted a government decision
to reorganize the attribution of the farming plots. It was a time when tensions
came to a head and houses were burned
down. Tensions broke out with rival land
claims which were arbitrated by a politico-administrative class which persisted
in maintaining a a system of partiality.
The 1989 land reform therefore provided for the redistribution of all land in the
localities of Emia and Chebyuk. It was
organized in three phases, each corresponding to a particular area of Chebyuk :
the lists of beneficiaries of phases 1 and
2 were finalized in 2004; the one for phase 3 was made official in 2006, marking
the end of what was a 30-year-long land
redistribution programme (see Map).
It was subsequent to this final reorganization that the conflict rose to the surface, ending in a form of spatial segregation that rent asunder the apparent unity
of the Sabaot community. Towards the
end of 2006, clashes between the Sabaot and Ndorobos, a new ethnic identity
that had gradually emerged from among
those of the Sabaot group who had
been cast aside, resulted in the displacement of 60 000 people and the death
of 200 others. The region’s inhabitants
assimilated with the Ndorobos then took
refuge on the high moorland expanses
of Chepkitale and in the forest reserve
area at the boundary of the Trans Nzoia
district. Others, assimilated with the Soy,
went over to the plains not far from the
Ugandan border (Cheptais), the main
town of the district (Kapsokwony) or the
neighbouring district of Trans Nzoia.
More recently, the violent stresses associated with the December 2007 elections, expressed locally by rival factions’
taking up of arms, played a role in the
magnifying the conflict. Those long battles for land nevertheless find their origin
more in the history of State schemes for
regulating access to land ownership,
rooted in practices of political favouritism and authoritarian methods employed to implement land redistribution
operations. Land appropriation battles
in the Mount Elgon region stem in the
end from repeated episodes of land
allocations and evictions which gave
rise to frustrations that are now boiling up into ethnic territorial claims.
Grégory Fléchet - DIC
Translation – Nicholas Flay
MASSIF OF THE ELGON MOUNT, KENYA Y UGANDA
KEY WORDS :
Kenya, land ownership,
ethnic conflict
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© IRD / Médard Claire
Sheet n°292 - March 2008
For further information
National park
Forest
Wildlife sanctuary on
community earth
Agrarian housing estate
(stages 1, 2, 3)
City
International border
Tarmacked road
Border of province
Lane
Region
Grégory Fléchet, coordinator
Délégation à l’information et à la communication
Tél. : +33(0)1 48 03 76 07 - fax : +33(0)1 40 36 24 55 - fichesactu@ird.fr
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