Dybe uretfærdigheder i fordelingen af land tog afsæt i britiske farmeres overtagelse af det frugtbare højland og den senere afrikanske elites tilraning af jord som fast værdi; dertil kommer fordrivelser og tvangsflytninger på grund af ulmende mistro mellem landets folkegrupper.
NAKURU, 5 March 2013 (IRIN): Land-related grievances (stridigheder) were among the underlying causes of the violence that followed Kenya’s disputed presidential election results in 2007.
Some communities, such as those in the worst-affected Rift Valley Province, invaded land that did not legally belong to them but which they perceived to be their birthright.
More recently, conflict in regions in the north and near the coast have been driven in part by land-related interests.
In the northern Rift Valley area of Baringo, for example, officials are blaming a two-month-long conflict that has displaced an estimated 1.000 families on an attempt by one community to extend its administrative boundaries.
“The issue of land in Kenya is the hot political potato,” veteran anti-corruption activist and chief executive officer of the NGO Inuka Trust Kenya, John Githongo, said in an IRIN film.
The film is part of a web-documentary entitled No Ordinary Elections.
In this briefing, IRIN examines the land question and its role in recurrent ethno-political conflicts.
Historical Injustices
Land-related disputes date back to colonial times, when British colonists displaced (fjernede) people from Kenya’s fertile highlands and either resettled them elsewhere or left them landless, effectively turning them into squatters (jordløse /jordbesættere) .
For example, some people in Central Province, which was predominantly home to the Kikuyu ethnic group, were relocated to Rift Valley Province, home to the Kalenjin.
“People in Rift Valley were evicted from ‘their’ land to create room for those relocated from Central,” said Oliver Waindi, deputy national coordinator of the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA).
KLA is a non-partisan group of civil society organizations working on land reform.
Some of those displaced in Rift Valley Province ended up not being resettled, leading to generations of resentment (bitterhed).
“At independence, we did not actually address these issues. We did not redistribute the land in the way which… was fair”, said Atsango Chesoni, the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, adding:
“Instead we had a situation where the incoming elite then perpetuated (forlængede /fordybede) some of those injustices and did not even want to address the historical injustices pertaining [to] the land,” said Atsango Chesoni, the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
“So you have a legacy of multiple displacements: initially part of the colonial experience, and then subsequently, part of the various regimes that came in,” she said.
Exploited by politicians
Since 1992, with the introduction of multi-party politics, land-related tensions, especially in the Rift Valley and later in Coast Province, have been exploited by politicians, often during campaigning, sometimes resulting in pre-election violence.
“You would have people removed from an area because they were treated with suspicion because people thought that they would not vote in certain ways. So you have those kinds of tensions – and also what was essentially an economic issue – which became politicized, and so it would take on ethno-political undertones,” said Chesoni.
At the Indian Ocean coast, land ownership has been one of the factors fuelling separatists sentiments.
“The coastal area, also, because of beaches and because we have a tourist economy, [is] another part of the country where you have a history of displacement and alienation (fremmedgørelse). And you have entire communities living as squatters in what was supposed, historically, to be their ancestral (forfædres) land,” Chesoni said.
Around 80 percent of the coastal population lacks land titles (skøder på deres jord).
Large chunks of land there were appropriated by the government after the country’s 1963 independence, and much of it was distributed to outsiders in a system of political patronage.
But why land?
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http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97599/Briefing-Land-reform-key-to-Kenya-s-future
