How Kibaki kept grabbers at bay
What you need to know:
- Mr Kibaki, who was in office from 2003 to 2013 was tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind by his predecessors; Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi, under whose terms the Ministry of Lands became the most corrupt institution in the country.
- President Uhuru Kenyatta, was expected to tame the perennial problem at the Land ministry but the few cases so far indicate grabbers have returned.
- Kibaki’s weaknesses in addressing land problems were that some of his Cabinet members had been mentioned in the Ndung’u report. This made it difficult to implement its recommendations that included prosecuting grabbers and forcing them to return land.
President Mwai Kibaki kept land grabbing on the low when he was in office because he discouraged his backers from using land as a political tool.
It is one of the parallels Mr Kibaki’s confidants say enabled him to stand out from the other three presidents Kenya has had since independence.
Mr Kibaki, who was in office from 2003 to 2013, was tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind by his predecessors, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi, under whose terms the Ministry of Lands became the most corrupt institution in the country.
Although there were cases of illegal allocation of land towards the end of his term, one of his handlers claims such cases were rare compared with the situation in the reign of the first two leaders.
“Kibaki had no history in such things as grabbing land. Then he came into office as a person who had some moral force that could stop people from doing things that could jeopardise virtue and law,” argued a senior officer in the Office of the President during Kibaki’s time.
The officer asked to remain anonymous so he could discuss the sensitive subject freely.
RETURN OF GRABBERS
President Uhuru Kenyatta was expected to tame the perennial problem at the Land ministry but the few cases so far indicate grabbers have returned.
“I know President Kenyatta is (appalled) by the very thought of land grabbing. But his administration (has a structure that) makes it difficult to execute certain policies,” the official added.
“He is in (the) politics of duality where everyone is looking at the other and waiting to see who is doing what. During Kibaki’s time, there was an advantage of having a strong President as opposed to a presidency.
“In addition, matters of land were not just a matter of enterprise of willing seller willing buyer. It was a socio-economic issue with political attachments.
According to the Ndung’u Land Report released in October 2004, the multiparty politics introduced in early 1990s enabled senior politicians close to Moi to grab land and use it to influence votes.
“The scramble for land became one of the main preoccupations of political operatives seeking favours. Some of the officials did not see anything legally or morally wrong with allocating public land to individuals or companies,” observed the report, which also termed the Ministry of Lands as “rotten”.
EXCESSIVE POWERS
Back then, part of the problem was the excessive powers vested in the presidency, where communities, individuals and companies could be given land from forests, schools or State institutions to swing their political support. This changed during Kibaki’s time.
“Kibaki’s government drove interventionist land governance tools. The farming and delivery of each of these tools had very anti-grabbing text and tone, which had the effect of immobilising cartels,” Mr Ibrahim Mwathane, who chairs the Land Development and Governance Institute, told the Nation. They include the Ndung’u Land Report, National Land Policy and the Constitution.
But this is not to say Kibaki’s regime was blameless when it came to land scandals.
“Kibaki rode on the belief that he would make land reforms his agenda. He facilitated in minimising land-grabbing opportunities and endeared himself to the economic forces, including land,” argued Mr Odenda Lumumba, a co-coordinator of the National Land Alliance.
DID NOT ADDRESS PROBLEM
“But you cannot say Kibaki had nothing to do with land problems. He reduced grabbing but did not address the problem fully and that is one of the reasons people fought after 2007 elections was land.”
Kibaki’s weaknesses in addressing land problems were that some of his Cabinet members had been mentioned in the Ndung’u report. This made it difficult to implement its recommendations, which included prosecuting grabbers and forcing them to return grabbed land.
Moreover, both he and the then Prime Minister Raila Odinga had at different times during the Kibaki era been embroiled in court cases involving land grabbing. Mr Kibaki’s family was in 2010 involved in a court case in which a person sold them land by forging a court order from a non-existent judge.
In 2011, the PM appeared in a Kilifi court to testify in a beach plot dispute with Kango Enterprises, a firm court documents showed had bought the same land sold to Mr Odinga.
