Kusadikika wrote:The Land Commission should be formed quickly to address these issues because this "Historical injustices" is a dangerous thing that should be handled delicately. Before the mzungu came to Kenya there were no title deeds. So he surveyed the land and put up boundaries. Of course the people living there were displaced. I am sure there was a certain Maasai who was displaced from what is now the KICC, Parliament buildings, basically the whole of CBD. There was an original owner of the land you claim to be yours in South B, Syokimau or Langata. The reason you do not feel like a land grabber is that the mzungu who first grabbed it was given a title deed that gave him legal right to own the land and you are now the 4th or fifth owner down that legal grabber's line.
The deal at independence was that the new government would recognize all titles issued by the British. The settlers who had title would sell it to the locals on a willing buyer, willing seller basis. Of course the people who were in the first government had two advantages, they had access to information (they knew which farms were up for sale where) and two they also had access to capital. They were more educated and had salaries and access to loans. So it is not any wonder that the Kenyatta's bought land in thousands of acres. Remember that Kenyatta became president at 74 years old and had lived in the Britain for about 15 years from 1931 to 1946.
After independence people and institutions organized themselves to buy land (Of course they were buying from the wazungus who had grabbed it from some Africans). So people from central Kenya organized themselves to buy land in Rift Valley. A group of say a thousand people would form a company and approach a mzungu who had say 10,000 acres. They would form a company with say 9000 shares and each would buy as many shares as they could. So some people had more shares than others. The land would be divided into plots equal to a share and then each would get as many as plots as his number of shares.
Of course the most well known buyers were the Kikuyu in Rift Valley but people forget that that is the same way Luhyas got to own land in Trans Nzoia and other parts of Uasin Ngishu. Of course some of the first owners sold and people from other communities bought.
If Kenyatta's title to his 30,000 acres in Taita is not legal, you put into question the legality of any Kikuyu, Luhya, Kisii to own even a quarter of an acre in Rift Valley and places like Nairobi that were originally not theirs. I am sure there is a Wazuan or two who have bought land in Karen from John Keen or bought a plot in Runda from Mbugua Githere or from someone who originally bought from Githere. You have as much claim to your land as Kenyatta has to his Taita land.
How far back in history do we go to correct historical injustices? Do we stop with the coming of the mzungu or do we even go back further to say the Bantus came from Cameroon Forest and the Nilotes from South Sudan?
You are missing the point. Kenyatta did not buy any of this properties, same route followed by Moi. What he did was to betray the publics trust by transferring to himself land meant for the African communities. Taking advantage of the very people he was meant to protect by denying them their birth right. The British gava gave loans to the kenya gava to buy land from the leaving settlers (i.e compensated the settlers) however Kenyatta and his cronies took advantage of their education to take away from their fellow countrymen.
Please do not equate this robbery to my had earned Ka'plot in the outskirts of Nairobi.
"The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline." James Collins