Owner of disputed Likoni farm tells politicians to keep off his property

Evanson Kamau Waitiki is a worried man. His pain is that leaders are planning to dispossess him of his 930-acre farm in Likoni, if their pronouncements at the weekend are anything to go by.

An emotional Likoni MP Masoud Mwahima on Sunday said he was ready to put his life on the line protecting his people against an eviction order during an ODM rally at Tononoka in Mombasa.

The rally was attended by Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

“Bwana (Mr) Prime Minister, about 75,000 of my people are being threatened with eviction and would like you to intervene,” he said, warning that if bulldozers are sent to demolish squatters’ houses, he would resist.

Mr Odinga pledged to find a lasting solution to the tussle, adding that eviction was not the answer.

Lands Minister James Orengo noted that the Constitution does not allow people to be evicted without being given an alternative place to go, and pledged that the government would ensure the rights of the owner and the squatters are not violated.

These are the sentiments that are giving Mr Waitiki sleepless nights and yesterday he raised the red flag over the use of his legally acquired land as a political tool for the 2013 polls.

Met with resistance

“Is it a crime to own property in the country?” he said in a phone interview with the Nation.

Since Mr Waitiki got a High Court order in July to evict the squatters from his farm, tension has been running high in the densely populated Majengo Mapya Village, where an estimated 75,000 people live.

His efforts to reclaim the parcel have been met with resistance by the hostile squatters, and police believe pushing them out now will spark violence.

But Mr Waitiki, 67, is adamant and wants police to provide security and facilitate the eviction.

To enforce this, he has sought court intervention to commit Police Commissioner Matthew Iteere to a six-month civil jail for disobeying the court ruling.

Through Kamau Kuria and Kiraitu Advocates, Mr Waitiki has been pursuing the matter on grounds that the officers have declined to comply with a court order issued on November 8, 2001 to provide security during the eviction of the landless families.

He said his ordeal started in 1999, two years after the infamous Kaya Bombo clashes, when a gang of youths blocked him from accessing his two-storey house on the disputed farm.

“Sensing danger for my life, I fled and sort refuge elsewhere as I looked for ways and means of getting back my farm. But things went from bad to worse forcing me to shift to Nairobi from where I tried to get back my land, in vain,” he says.

For the last 10 years, the landowner has been pushing police to enforce the order. Coast provincial police chief Aggrey Adoli fears there will be violence if the eviction order is effected. He says police are not disrespecting the court order, but the timing is not right.

But Mr Waitiki has refused to buy the explanation and reads politics in the saga. He says politicians have reduced him to a pauper after blocking him from reaping the fruits of his farm, which used to earn him over Sh1 million per month.

“Before 1999, I used to supply milk to South Coast hotels and produce 100,000 chicks per month that I sold locally or exported to Tanzania and Uganda,” he said.

At the age of 30, Mr Waitiki says he bought the farm from an Asian named Haribhai Sherriff, who was running the Gulb Dairy and Poultry Farm in 1975 and wanted to migrate to Canada.

Through the East African Estate, he acquired the vast farm comprising four parcels namely LR Mombasa/Mainland South/Block I/363, LR Mombasa/Mainland South/Block I/1031, LR Mombasa/Mainland South/Block V/109 and LR Mombasa/Mainland South/Block V/110.

The geo-chemist working with the United Nations at the time was forced to sell two of his houses at Karen and Lavington and topped up the amount with a Sh960,000 loan from Agricultural Corporation Finance.

Circulating rumours

“I am giving you (media) this information to dispel circulating rumours that this farm was not given to me as a token by Kenya’s first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, whom I don’t know and don’t have any relationship (with),” he said.

After settling in Mombasa and operating the farm for some time, he was approached by the Catholic Consolata fathers from Italy to whom he sold three acres from his LR Mombasa/Mainland South/Block I/1031 in 1978/79.

“This parcel of land has leasehold of 99 years while the remaining three have 999 years leasehold under the colonial system,” he said, adding that only the Likoni Catholic Consolata Church is a genuine occupant of his farm.

However, through Timbwani Landlord and Housing Association chairman Omari Mwamkongo, the residents claim the court order negates the principle of social justice and is meant to inflame violence.

“This is the wrong time to give such an order when peace and stability is slowly returning to Likoni,” he says in a memorandum to Likoni DC Lawrence Kinyua.

The disputed farm has drawn mixed reactions from Coastal leaders, with former Tourism Minister and Mvita MP Najib Balala calling on the government to buy the land and allocate it to the occupants.

“I don’t want to question the legality of the property, but the interests of those living there should not be ignored either,” he says.

In a statement to newsrooms, Mombasa gubernatorial aspirant Suleiman Shahbal asked the government to use the Settlement Trust Fund that is allocated an average of Sh1 billion to resolve the squatter problem.