Morans share spoils of Nguruman as investor seeks Sh800 million

Maasai morans patrol the expansive Nguruman Ranch earlier this month. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • A two-hour drive through endless jungle later, we arrived at the main gate of Nguruman Ranch, and our guides stepped out to talk to the Maasai guards.
  • A few tense moments later, we were ushered in through a small opening carved on the side of the main gate, which has since been barricaded with tree branches.
  • Immediately inside, the destruction jumped at us like a panther in the wild; burnt houses, littered compounds, bonfires on the airstrip, and empty drums standing erect on the runway, probably to deter any kamikaze pilot on a suicide mission from landing there.

When, on the morning of Saturday, November 1, Patrick Sironka received a call from home that his father’s cows were on the verge of starvation because of lack of water and pasture, he knew he had to leave college immediately and travel home to attend to the matter.

He had to be in solidarity with his clan and community because there was an “enemy” in the community who would not allow his father’s herd to access the only water point in his Nguruman village of Narok County.

The village had become a battle zone days earlier after morans invaded a piece of land belonging to a White rancher, accusing him of being impolite and stingy with pasture yet their cattle were starving.

The morans, having exhausted the pasture outside the ranch, had decided that their cows might as well graze in the private property, to which the owner had said no.

BOILING WITH MILITANCY

That had angered them and raised their ethnic passions, and the rancher had, in the space of a few days, ceased being a neighbour to become an “outsider” who was squatting on “community land”. Boiling with militancy, the morans had torn through the fence and invaded the ranch.

Sironka, a second-year student at the Kenya Medical Training Institute in Nairobi, wanted join the hundreds who had made victory whoops and salutes after tearing down the fence, and when we met him inside the ranch a few days ago, he told us he had no plans of going back to the city until the small matter of whether he and his people have the right to graze their cows in Nguruman is settled.

His resolve is the resolve of many others here, most of whom have camped inside the 300,000-acre piece of land, nestled strategically on the greener stretch of undulating plains near the northern tip of the Kenyan border with Tanzania.

Here, Hermanus Philipus Steyn, a South African investor, had found a life, but the tiff with his neighbours forced him to flee his multi-million shilling investment.

After acquiring the land, Steyn had spent years transforming it into a tourist haven, complete with nature trails, swimming pools, exquisite cottages, modern bars in the jungle stocked with the choicest of imported drinks, and the like.

He had also built a small, private airstrip for his plane, and perhaps to cater to the privacy and convenience needs of his high-end clientele.
Camped inside property

All that is now no more. In their rage, the morans burnt down the cottages and looted the establishment before setting their own version of a military base in the ranch. When we visited Nguruman two weeks ago, we found about 200 morans camped inside the property, all ready for battle with poisoned arrows, bows and spears.

Every day since they moved here, the young morans slaughter a few goats from their herds and light fires on the airstrip to roast them before sharing the meal with the rest. A few make the short trek to their manyattas and wives in the evening, but the majority have basically deserted their families to fight for what they believe is their communal right.

In the neighbouring village of Shompole, signs of the spoils are littered all over; one moran has allocated himself Steyn’s open-roof jeep, another one the investor’s rugged 4X4, another has gone for the expensive liquor, while yet another one is enjoying the spoils of the rancher’s expansive pawpaw and banana farm.

On our way to the ranch from Magadi town, through a stretch of slightly motorable road and 70 kilometres of jungle, we came across a group of morans hovering around a cream Toyota Land Cruiser.

We asked them what was wrong and they informed us they had developed a mechanical problem. After letting us through, they changed their minds and started chasing us, their arms flailing in the air as they chanted an ominous war song.

Our driver, sensing we could be cornered in the lawless jungle should we attempt to speed off, brought the car to a halt. And then our guides, two Maasai we had picked up on our way here, asked us to remain calm.

About 10 morans surrounded the car, but the guides told them something in Maa and they cooled down, almost instantly adopting a friendly mien.

“Our car has a problem,” one of them explained, trying to see whether we could help. “The engine keeps shutting down. I think it has a fuel intake problem. As you can see, this is a jungle tour jeep, but we do not intend to keep it for long. Maybe just drive around for a few days, then sell it off. We are thinking of driving it to Burundi and disposing of it before it breaks down completely.”

The car belongs to the rancher, and, probably in their quest to enjoy the windfall that has come with their acquisition of his property, all they do is drive around all day, sort of like local tourists on a sightseeing safari.

“Your car seems to be having an electrical problem,” our driver told them after helping jump-start the off-roader. “You may need to have that checked.”

Having bought their trust with our motoring advice, they said they would allow us into the ranch for photos. No one else, they said, had been allowed inside since they took over the property.

A two-hour drive through endless jungle later, we arrived at the main gate of Nguruman Ranch, and our guides stepped out to talk to the Maasai guards.

A few tense moments later, we were ushered in through a small opening carved on the side of the main gate, which has since been barricaded with tree branches.

Immediately inside, the destruction jumped at us like a panther in the wild; burnt houses, littered compounds, bonfires on the airstrip, and empty drums standing erect on the runway, probably to deter any kamikaze pilot on a suicide mission from landing there.

We were about to walk the small distance to the main property when someone shouted at us to stop. We looked back and saw another group of menacing morans, their weapons at the ready, and we sensed something was not right. They had changed their minds; we would not, after all, have an unguided tour of the property.

They shouted and waved at us to go back. Our guides tried to plead with them to allow us more time inside, but they were shouted down as well.

MORAN MILITANCY

As we made the about-turn and drove off, a sense of defeat engulfed us. We had come this far, but not far enough.

We had almost managed to document the destruction of Nguruman, the militancy of the morans, the effects of conflict, and the losses of a private investor who had become persona non grata here, but we had been turned away at the last minute.

Fortunately, about 20 kilometres on our way back, we were allowed into the smaller Nguruman ranch, where we surveyed, yet again, the destruction, including burnt houses, a deserted swimming pool, vandalised construction materials such as iron sheets — some of which had been carted away — and the usual empty wine and whiskey bottles, glistening in the sun, but poignantly out of place in the Maasai grassland.

“I plan to keep goats here since there is enough grass and water,” said a man we found inside the ranch, armed with poisoned arrows, and who only introduced himself as Turuka.

The Maasai who live here say they usually drive their cattle towards higher-altitude, greener, water catchment areas during periods of extreme drought as the lower lands dry up under intense heat, but this year they were shocked when the owner of the ranch refused them and their starving cattle entry on claims that the pasture they were eyeing grew on private land and they could not trespass.

But the invaders told DN2 that the land, even though fenced off by the investor, still belonged to the community. The owner does not understand the logic, and has sued the invaders.

In Nguruman, however, the law is a foreign concept, as is business. The men we talked to said all the land belongs to the community, whether held by a local or sold off to an investor. They suspect foul play over the manner in which the land was acquired from them.

Controversies relating to land ownership here started in the 1960s after a section of the land was adjudicated. However, only seven group ranches out of nine located here were adjudicated, leaving out two — the Pakaase and Entasopia irrigation schemes.

In 1972, the government set aside a section of the unadjudicated land for tourism activities, and, according to Joseph Masiaya, director of Shompole Group Ranch that neighbours Nguruman, and who claims Nguruman grabbed their land, an adjudication committee of 16 people who were all civil servants was formed to spearhead the plan.

However, instead of registering the land for tourism, the officials registered it in their own names in 1975. Later, in 1982, they reported to the Land Registrar in Nairobi that the title in question had been lost, and the Registrar issued a gazette notice that gave a 60-day notice for him to issue another title for the same land.

But, when the title was eventually issued, the acreage had changed from 6,970 to 26,993 hectares as other neighbouring ranches had been amalgamated into the scheme.

The individual names were, however, replaced with the name Nguruman Kamorora Group Ranch, says Masiaya of Shompole Group Ranch.

His chairman, Isaac Kiresian, alleges that two of the 16 civil servants declined to be part of the Nguruman Kamorora Group Ranch, and the title was thus owned by 14 people who then entered into a lease agreement with the foreign investor for a 20-year period, with effect from 1986.

Within the lease period, the Nguruman Kamorora Group Ranch was dissolved, prompting a further adjustment where the title was registered as Nguruman Ltd, which is the name it bears to this day, says Kiresian, further alleging that Steyn later acquired majority shares from the 14 members of the Nguruman Kamorora Group Ranch in unknown circumstances.

Joseph Munge, the secretary of the Shompole Group Ranch, alleges that local residents continued to live in the land unaware of the changes in ownership, but some local people who had supposedly been living on the land were accused of trespass since the size of the land in question had increased from 6,970 hectares to 26,993 hectares.

The matter relating to trespass was challenged and, in a judgment dated December 2, 2009, the High Court ordered the eviction of those said to have trespassed. An attempt to evict the trespassers was abandoned after the security team supposedly decided it was not practical to implement the order due to the large number of people occupying the land.

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Nguruman Limited is seeking to recover the award by the court, and in an advertisement placed in the local dailies last month, an auction firm stated that there was an intention to sell the Shompole and Kiramatian ranches.

The Shompole Group Ranch members have already filed their complaint with the National Land Commission on behalf of the local people, seeking revocation of the title owned by Nguruman Ltd.

However, in the suit papers, Nguruman Ltd says Shompole Group Ranch members have forcefully occupied the land in the mistaken belief that the said area forms part of their property.

But the morans told us the plains had belonged to them for ages, and that they were not about to budge. For 40 years they had lived with Hermanus Steyn as good neighbours, but something had snapped in them, and they did not think it could be repaired.

And so, as Steyn waits for the slow wheels of justice to turn, his neighbours are already enjoying the spoils of their own version of justice.

Apart from seeking the eviction of the Maasai from the land, Steyn is also demanding more than Sh800 million in compensation for trespass.

Additional reporting by George Sayagie and Abiud Ochieng