The success or failure of the nation’s land reform process will hinge on the outcome of the current drive to evict people who have settled in the Mau, according to a new report.
It further says failure to carry through with the Mau evictions will put the entire national reconciliation process in danger of failure because of the centrality of land as one of the perceived causes of the post-election violence.
New report
The report commissioned by the African Centre for Open Governance (Africog) says implementation of the evictions in the Mau, which was one of the proposals made by the Commission of Inquiry into Illegal Allocation of Public Land (popularly known as the Ndung’u Commission), will prove whether there is political will to carry through with the reform agenda.
The Mau Forest controversy has dominated headlines in the past week with Cabinet ministers divided on how to carry out evictions from one of the region’s most important water catchment areas.
But the new report, Mission impossible?: Implementing the Ndung’u Report, warns that politicising the process will endanger the implementation of the far-reaching changes proposed by the Ndung’u Commission.
The commission’s findings, published in 2004, inform a large part of the draft national land policy recently approved by the Cabinet and also tally with the findings of the Mau Forest task force appointed by Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Land and discontent over its distribution and ownership was a driving factor of the post-2007 election violence, the Africog report reads in part.
Not implementing the Ndung’u recommendations means that misuse of public land and the resultant damage – economic, environmental and socio-political – continues unchecked. This could fuel greater violence in 2012.
Among the sections of the Ndung’u Report civil society organisations want implemented fast are those dealing with allocation of forestlands, game reserves, wetlands and other protected areas.
Wide abuse
The Ndung’u Commission found that there had been wide abuse of presidential discretion in apportioning land particularly in protected areas. It called for the immediate cancellation of all these allocations.
However, it also recommended that some form of compensation be given to third parties who bought land from people who had abused their positions in government to gain titles to protected areas, a proposal also backed by the PM’s task force on land.
Speaking at the launch of the Africog report, former chairman of the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya Ibrahim Mwathane said full implementation of the national land policy was essential to safeguarding Kenya’s future.
