Crimes against humanity in Mt Elgon District

In news articles reporting the recent violence in Mt Elgon District of Western Kenya, there is often a disclaimer stating that the violence in the region has nothing to do with the controversial December 2007 election results and post-election violence. I beg to differ. The violence in Mt Elgon may have roots in early Kenyan history, but so does the post-election violence in the rest of the country. To separate the two is to deny the glaring truth: that the colonial British government, and the post-independence Kenyan governments that have followed in its footsteps have not handled the distribution of resources responsibly, and that this form of misgovernance has deepened ethnic divisions in an already polarized state.

I have a specific view on the ongoing violence in Kenya, which I will elaborate in future entries. However, the aim of this blog is not simply to air my views. I am merely one of 30 million plus Kenyans. My larger aim in this blog is to share the opinions and stories of other Kenyans, some of which I may agree with, and others that I may not agree with. My point is that most of these perspectives come from subjective experiences and if we are to work towards peace in Kenya, then we have no choice but to start paying attention to each other’s experiences. I encourage you, the reader, to do independent research on this subject and not to take it for granted that all the opinions presented on this blog are the absolute truth.

The first perspective I will spotlight comes from a young Kenyan who tries to give context to the origins of the violence in Mt Elgon District:

“The government decision to deploy the military in Mt. Elgon is like using “a hammer to kill a fly.” So far the military has adopted “scorched earth” tactics against the civilian, resulting in the death of over 50 people by starvation and beatings to death, and being thrown in the forest, and thousands of women and children internally displaced with no food, shelter, clothing and medicine. This is another Wagalla massacre in the making.

Violence in Mt. Elgon district, which has claimed more than 500 lives, dates back to 1965 when the state decided to settle 370 Ndorobos who were living on land that was not arable. They had been pushed out of Trans-Nzoia District into Chekitale, near the top of Mt. Elgon,  by the colonial government in the 1950s. Others were forced by settlers into Kaptega, Kiptugot, Kimoson and Kiborowa, also in Trans-Nzoia and more pushed afield into Romronwet in Mt.Elgon.

Two years after independence, the government decided to settle families from Chekitale – a moorland of 39,575 acres at  the Chebyuk Settlement Scheme- so that they could do meaningful farming and have access to education. The 370 Ndorobos were to be settled in  Bura in Tana River District and Naitiri in Bungoma, but the elders led by the then MP, Mr. Daniel Moss, rejected the offer, saying that the people were not used to the hot climate of Bura and would not feel at home in Naitiri either. Since they were too few to warrant the excising of the larger Mt. Elgon forest, they invited 300 Soys to make the number. Some 670 Ndorobos and Soys were initially allocated 7220 accres, with each receiving about 20.

A committee chaired by Mr. Francis Laikong’ did the distribution in 1974. After the settlement, the Ndorobos (now Ogieks) started selling their pieces of land to the Soy since most of them (Ndorobos) depended on honey, milk, meat and wild fruits. Since there was great friendship between the two clans, they entered into a mutual understanding in which the Ndorobos would exchange an acre for one head of cattle. This happened although the land had been gazetted as a game reserve. After some time, the Ndorobos started moving back to Chepkitale

In 1987, an aspirant for the area parliamentary  seat, Mr.Simon Psiwa,  led a delegation of Ndorobos to Sacho in Baringo District to see President Moi and report that the then MP, Mr. Wilberforce Kisiero, had brought his supporters to settle on their land. The action led to the nullification of the allocations in 1988 and the sacking of Mr. Kisiero as a livestock assistant minister the following year. In October 1989, Mr. Kisiero was reinstated but redeployed to the Ministry of Water. Western provincial Commissioner Francis Lekolool later ordered everybody out of the land to pave the way for fresh allocations.

On January 15, 1982 a local chief lamented, “Most of the Chepkitale originals sold their farms to other members of the public and claimed later that the land had only been hired, which is not true. Unless farms are registered, there will be no understanding among the Ndorobos and the Soy.”

In a letter to the then Elgon District officer, the chief said the Chebyuk land issue should have been sorted out as early as 1965, arguing that it would get complicated with the invasion of illegal squatters. When Mr. Lekolool sub-divided the land in 1989, the Ndorobo population had grown to 1,170 after they invited fellow clansmen and women from Kaptega, Kiptigot, Kimoson, Kiborowa and Romromwet, forcing the PC to give out five acres each in what was called phase I of the scheme.

At the moment there are no records to show the full list of Soys since they bought most of the land from Ndorobos. Since most of the latter had been bought out, they settled illegally in Emia and Chebyuk locations, which were then part of the forest, Later the government excised 3,845 acres of the forest to settle 769 landless people in phase 11 of the scheme. Invaders at Chepkurur and Korngotuny were evicted and trees planted on more than 947 acres with the help of the Norwegian government. This cost about shs.5.7 million. In 1991, a delegation of Soys comprising 15 men and two women saw President Moi at his Kabarnet home to report that more than 1,000 of their clan-mates were still landless, and asked for more land. Their plea went unheeded, however. The following year, tribal clashes hit the area, and when visited the district later, the President was told that the cause of the fighting was land. The head of state then gave them the go-ahead to live on phase III of the scheme.

In 1993, the team comprising one of the ring leaders of the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) again paid a visit to president Moi to say that another 636 people were still landless. But before surveyors could be sent to the ground, the team is said to have led more of their kin to clear a square kilometer of the forest. Tree seedlings on the farms were also uprooted to pave way for the settlement. In 1993, vetting was done and the Soys at first rejected land allocations, and the Ndorobos said they had negotiated for it, but it was eventually shared out on a 50-50 basis after the local elders intervened. Mt. Elgon district was created in 1993, but no district officer was posted there until 2001 eight years later.”