“Through the case to regain Mau Narok, it is clear the justice system of this country is on trial … For our part, this case is the beginning of a new dawn for the Maasai people and nothing would stop us from using whatever we have to make sure it is not trivialized or corrupted. It is a matter of life and death for us and we are determined. “
–Meitamei Olol Dapash
Map of the 30,000 acres at Mau Narok in Northen Maasailand
As Kenya struggles to implement its first post-colonial constitution, voted in with overwhelming support last July, the Maasai community is doing its part to bring about a new, democratic Kenya by insisting that its case for the return of ancestral homeland is determined, not through intimidation, violence or the blatant exercise of power by Kenya’s elite, but by the Courts. And the effort is succeeding! In the past year, the government’s attempts to derail the suit filed by 52 people representing the larger Maasai community for the return of this land have so far failed. This is the result of the commitment and unity of the Maasai people and the support of its friends and colleagues outside of Maasailand.
BACKGROUND
In January, 2010, 52 petitioners representing the Maasai community, led by Meitamei Olol Dapash, filed a suit in Kenya Superior Court to recover 30,000 acres of Mau Narok, in northern Maasailand, land that was appropriated under British colonialism and continues to be occupied under independent Kenya. The suit is being argued by two lawyers from Letangule and Associates; the opposition has hired a total of 14 lawyers to represent the interests of those who have occupied and profited from the land since the 1970s or before including the family of Mbiyu Koinange and Simeon Nyachae, both political insiders from the era of the Kenyatta presidency, the Attorney General of Kenya and the Registered Settlement Fund Trustees.
Because Maasai people are pastoral and semi nomadic, for centuries they have set aside the most well watered land for their communal use during periodic droughts. One of those “deep drought reserves” is Mau Narok, and thousands of people and their cattle survived by sharing the grasses and water there. Because the land is lush, it was lost to British settlers back in the early 20th century to grow commodity crops. Having been moved onto dry lands, the health and well-being of the Maasai community has fallen dramatically over the past decades as a result. Research conducted by Prescott College support the claims of Maasai community elders that Mau Narok was promised to them in the 1911 Agreement between Maasai leadership and the British government; the land was gradually taken from the community through the colonial era, under means that were illegal according to British colonial law. At Independence in 1963, the Maasai understood that this and other land would be returned to them, as land was being returned to other Kenyan communities especially communities in central Kenya. Instead, the Maasai and other Indigenous communities were excluded from the land allocation policies developed by the British and KANU political party which brought Jomo Kenyatta to power. Attempts by at least two Europeans to transfer their land at Mau Narok to the Maasai community were thwarted by the Kenyatta government, and land their was handed out, apparently in at least one case without title transfer, to friends and political allies of Kenyatta, who himself took possession of tens of thousands of acres of Maasailand elsewhere. The Maasai people who were removed from the land at Mau Narok continue to live at its borders and families are in fact divided by it. The land has been defended by gates and guards for 40 years, and Maasai people beaten when they try to take their cattle through it to reach the forest on the other side. Beginning in 2000, the Maasai community, under the leadership of Moses Ole Mpoe of Mau Narok, began to openly challenge the occupation of Mau Narok and sought to purchase the land for community ownership but those efforts were thwarted by the Kenyan government. Following research into the history of the land, the court case was filed and Maasai people began to move back onto the land in the late Spring of 201o.
These Maasai people are risking their lives to ensure that the a suit is brought by the community to regain the land is determined in Kenyan court of law and not undermined by attempts by the Kenyan government to sell the land and settle it before the court reaches a verdict. The Maasai community is unified and determined to continue to wage this non-violent campaign through the duration of the trial. The government responded by attempting to move forward with plans to resettle on Mau Narok Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from other parts of Kenya, many of whom were left landless following the 2007 election violence, a tactic which promised to lead to unrest on the ground and further complicate the court case. On November 1, 2010, exactly one week before opening arguments were to be offered in court, the government began forcibly evicting Maasai people from Mau Narok; judges have rejected appointment to hear this case, citing its controversial nature, and many death threats have been received by leaders of what has become a movement for civil rights in Maasailand. The government issued general arrest orders for all Maasai people occupying the land and stationed paramilitary police to move people off of the land. Over a thousand Maasai people traveled to Nairobi for the next court hearing on December 2, 2010, after eight Maasai members of Parliament, from Samburu to Amboseli, held a press conference in support of the case. On December 3, after weeks of threats and intimidate, two Maasai activists were assassinated outside of Nakuru while another was severely harmed. (see below.) Mpoe’s death mobilized the Maasai community. Most recently, on February 19th, 15,000 Maasai people gathered on Mau Narok to show support for the court case, traveling from as far as Samburu to the North and Loitokitok in the East, a broad representation of the entire community. Court resumes on March 25th, 2011.
For more information on the government’s response to the case, seehttp://www.nation.co.ke/News/regional/Wako%20failed%20to%20advise%20State%20over%20IDP%20land%20/-/1070/1063942/-/kwh5gxz/-/index.html. For insights from other Kenyans on the IDP issue, seehttp://jukwaa.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=4705
In its response to the court case and community demands for justice, the Kenyan government has thus far revealed the degree to which it is influenced by a powerful and united front of elite Kenyans who have long enjoyed its support and protection. The stakes are high. If this case is successful, many others will be filed by Maasai and other Indigenous communities in Kenya . This is a critical moment in the history of an extremely marginalized people.
BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS:
1907: Colonial settler Powys Cobb petitions the colonial government to award him 30,000 acres of Maasailand in Mau Narok and he settles the land that year. This land lay within the recognized boundaries of Southern Masai Reserve established by the 1904 British-Maasai Treaty.
1910: Colonial administrators allow settler occupation of the Northern Masai Reserve in exchange for expanded borders of the Southern Reserve. Those borders are negotiated on site with Ole Masikonde and other Maasai elders who give their agreement to the move only if all of Mau Narok continues to be included in the Masai Reserve, as the area’s headwaters provide drought relief and forest necessary to the survival of the entire community. The larger area was referred to as the “Promised land” in colonial documents to designate ‘the land promised to the Maasai people,’ though the designation was, later, co-opted by Powys Cobb who came to refer to Mau Narok as his own personal ‘promised land.’
1911: The second Masai Agreement established the northern border of the Masai Reserve in reference to undefined land ‘set aside for Powys Cobb,’ and official maps did not actually identify a northern border. This delay gave Powys Cobb time, under the protection of the Colonial Government, to construct the northern border of the Masai Reserve by choosing the best land for his individual use and gradually occupying it. The land was not officially surveyed until 1916, and Mau Narok was not officially severed from the Masai Reserve until the publication of Sanford’s Official Administrative History of the Masai Reserve in 1918.
1913: Colonial court rejected the claims of the Maasai community to all land ceded in the 1911 Agreement arguing that “…this court has no jurisdiction over this matter since it is a matter between two sovereign states…” Maasai attempts to go to the Colonial Court of Appeal were thwarted through a combination of strategies that included intimidation, manipulation and non-cooperation.
1911-1923: As Maasai villages were gradually removed one-by-one to accommodate Cobb’s settlement, the Maasai Community filed grievances with colonial administrators and steps were taken by colonial police to contain Maasai resistance. Maasai protests included outright defiance and refusal to move their villages, continued grazing and interference with the settler farming activities on the land. The colonial government countered Maasai resistance with arrests, giving authority to local police shoot Maasai trespassers, and prosecution, fines, jail time, livestock confiscation, and forced relocation of the villages around the farm. In response, Maasai leaders launched and sustained a campaign for the return of Mau Narok arguing that this “Promised land” was guaranteed to the Maasai people in the 1911 Agreement which reaffirmed the northern boundary of the Southern Reserve established in the 1904 Agreement, and which was promised to Maasai leadership at that time.
1926-1960: Maasai-Cobb conflict escalated leading to arrests and jailing of 6 Maasai people for trespass. Later colonial District Commissioner Baden ordered a retrial of the convicts. In the subsequent hearing the Maasai were acquitted on grounds that the land on which they were arrested, land that was well within the current borders of Mau Narok, was disputed and outside of a boundary that had been negotiated by a colonial administrator, Storrs-Fox, in 1923 and that recognized the rights of the Maasai community to use and occupation of Mau Narok.
1962-1963: In the process of drafting Kenya’s constitution, Maasai leadership renewed claims to 12 parcels of land which it continued to claim had been illegally occupied by colonial settlers under the protection of the colonial government. This fight was taken all the way to the Lancaster Conference and sustained through the entire constitutional era. At this time, in-coming President, Kenyatta colluded with a section of other African leaders including Ronald Ngala to deny the Maasai community the opportunity to present its grievances at the Lancaster House Conference.
1963-1967: Settlement Fund Trustees, a government agency, was created to facilitate compensation to colonial settlers for the land they abandoned upon returning to Europe. Britain loaned Ksh 6 Billion to the new Kenyan nation to compensate the departing settlers. Repossessed land was by agreement to be returned to original native owners, though no land was returned to the Maasai community and instead was occupied by other Kenyans through government resettlement.
1967: Mrs Powys Cobb wrote to Bruce McKenzie, Minister for Agriculture, to request the government’s permission to sell her remaining land to the Maasai as the land’s original owners, to establish an agricultural training school which she offered to continue to fund after her departure to Europe. In secret letters obtained from various sources, McKenzie rejected her plan saying the Maasai did not know how to use the land productively.
1968 to Present: The beneficiaries of the Settlement Fund Trustees schemes, and those who inherited Maasailand from the Kenyatta government’s land redistribution policy in Mau Narok, include Simon Nyachae, the family of Mbiyu Koinange, and several other entities closely associated with Kenyan leadership.
2007-2010: Comprehensive research study was launched by faculty and students of Prescott College to look into the Maasai land history and establish past and current ownership of Mau Narok.
2010: A suit is filed in the High Court of Kenya by 52 members of the Maasai community to reclaim Mau Narok under the Kenyan Constitution and United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)
September 2010: the government, without regard for the pending lawsuit, purchased 2,246 acres of the original Powys Cobb’s 30,000 acres land to resettle IDPs. The community returned to Mau Narok to prevent the settlement of IDPs until the conclusion of the court case. Leadership of the movement received death threats, arrests were made, and military police occupied the land in question.
December 3, 2010: Moses Ole Mpoe and the second Maasai activist were killed in very suspicious circumstances. Arrest orders were issued for two members of the Mbiyu Koinange family, and the Maasai community remains unconvinced that the accused persons are the sole architects of this crime.
LAND RIGHTS AND CULTURAL SURVIVAL
The Maasai people have survived many challenges. They were colonized by the British a century ago, forced off of their best land onto land rife with disease and subject to drought. They have been denied schools and clinics made available to more urbanized Kenyans, and because of their land loss, they watch their cattle die in dry seasons and face starvation themselves at those times. Yet, the Maasai are determined to hold onto their culture and right to determine their way of life. Today, the Maasai people have an opportunity to that has never presented itself before: the opportunity to regain a piece of its ancestral land on which to build a future, to move beyond the perpetual struggleto survive.
Maasai child at Erusiai Primary School, Northern Maasailand
HOW YOU CAN HELP
We are urgently looking to raise $20,000 USD to provide additional legal services for the court case currently underway. These funds will be used to pay lawyers fees, transportation to bring witnesses to court, and related expenses.
