Court ends 20-year land dispute

• The land has been the cause of recurrent clashes in Maiella over the years.

• Appeal Court rules Maasai pastoralists are the rightful owners of some 4,200 acres of land.

The Appeal Court has ended a 20-year-old land dispute pitting two communities in Naivasha district.

In a judgment, the highest court in the land ruled that a group of Maasai pastoralists were the rightful owners of some 4,200 acres in Maiella, through adverse possession.

The protracted legal battle pitted some 17 elders from Maasai community on behalf of 3,000 others and members of Ng’ati Farmers Cooperative Society, a group of farmers from the Kikuyu community, which bought the land in 1964 from a White settler.

The land has been the cause of recurrent clashes in Maiella over the years. Residents resort to fights with triggers being as little as bar brawls or herding animals on farms, which in turn destroy crops.

In the case, evidence was that after buying the land from a White settler, Ng’ati farmers were issued with a title deed in 1974.

According to their chairman Mr Patrick Karanja, the society was registered in 1964 with the sole purpose of buying and subdividing land to its members.

Subdivide

Mr Karanja told the court that in 1995, the society got consent to subdivide the land and allocate it to its members.

According to him, the society had also developed part of the land and built five primary schools and a secondary school.

But later, some people (the Maasai) who had been given annual grazing rights at a fee of Sh3,700 in 1979, objected to the plan.

The witness produced an agreement dated December 17, 1979 showing a licence to graze, but which was rejected by High Court Judge David Rimita in 2000.

In the agreement, the Maasai were asked to avoid starting fires, constructing of Manyattas, cutting trees, burning of charcoal or inviting other Maasais onto the land.

Mr Karanja added that later, a group of people who had been thrown out of a government forest started settling on the land, and some were sued for trespass.

In 1970, he said, the Maasai breached the agreement and were asked to leave the land. Instead, the Maasai, in 1996, hired surveyors to subdivide the land forcing them to move to court.

In a counter-claim, the Maasai led by Mr John Ledidi asked the court to declare them the rightful owners through adverse possession.

They also wanted the court to, among other issues, transfer and register the land at the centre of the dispute in their names.

Members also wanted a permanent injunction against the society, barring it from subdividing, carrying out agricultural activity, or interfering with their occupation of the land. 

Mr Ledidi told the court that he was born at Ngambani in 1966 and found his ancestors occupying the land uninterrupted until members of the society moved to survey and subdivide the land in 1996.