Ogendo was an unrelenting champion of land reform

A few years ago, when University of Nairobi law student Susan Mwangi decided to write a dissertation on constitution-making in Kenya, the natural choice for a supervisor was the late Prof Hastings Okoth-Ogendo. Though a demanding and awe-inspiring academic, he was simply the best.

A former vice-chairman of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, he had a wealth of knowledge and experience in constitutional politics and constitution-making and had published extensively on African constitutional history, constitutional theory and design.

Prof Okoth-Ogendo, who is being buried on Saturday at his home in Gem Rae in Nyakach District, was a scholar of many achievements. His areas of study included international environmental governance, environmental law, human rights law, democracy and the legal process.

HE ALSO SPECIALISED IN DEVELOPMENT policy and law, agrarian law, land use law, natural resources law, the law of property and policy development in Africa, jurisprudence and legal theory. He even took in reproductive rights and choices in Africa, population policy and law, labour law and labour relations.

He was one of the first post-independence African lawyers to specialise and he became very good at what he did. He worked as a consultant on land policy, land reform and land rights, for governments including Uganda, Tanzania, Southern Sudan, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, South Africa and Papua New Guinea.

A professor of public law at the University of Nairobi since 1988, Okoth-Ogendo hovered over the Faculty of Law like an academic Goliath.

But in recent years, it became obvious to any keen observer that he did not enjoy the best of health; he would walk down the staircase at the Parklands administrative and lecture halls in slow, painful, measured steps.

All the same, even the most disinterested student was overawed by his presence.

I was privileged to sit in his Saturday morning class on land use law, next to Susan and only a seat away from his gracious wife Ruth, a banker. But you would never have known the relationship from the goings-on in class. Although Ruth was his wife, Prof Okoth-Ogendo behaved like she was just another student.

It was also refreshing that Prof Okoth-Ogendo would “dress down” on Saturdays and appear in class wearing a chequered or suede flat cap that made him look more like an English taxi cab driver than a staid and revered professor.

Prof Okoth-Ogendo leaves a legacy of scholarship, in particular on land and agrarian law. Ben Sihanya, the dean of Faculty of Law at the University of Nairobi was on the mark when he said, following the news of his death, that Kenya has lost a distinguished scholar.

He said he not only participated in the establishment of Faculty of Law but his expertise in land law was unrivalled in Africa.

“We shall sadly miss him,” said Dr Sihanya, another eminent scholar on intellectual property.

Prof Okoth-Ogendo died on April 24 in Addis Ababa while on a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa mission to put the final touches to an African land policy document.

If adopted by the African Union heads of state and government in their meeting in July, the framework document will become the continent’s blueprint for agrarian reform.

IN KENYA, HE WAS THE LEADING scholar on the issue of land use and agrarian law. In his 1991 book, Tenants of the Crown, he traces the origins of Kenya’s agrarian law and its socio-economic impact from the colonial terms to the present.

One of his theses in his many writings was that the Swynnerton Plan of 1954 rewarded home guards and punished Mau Mau.

The Swynnerton Plan set up the machinery for the adjudication and consolidation of land, conferring legal title on individual holders. It was implemented in Central Province in the 1950s and in other parts of the country throughout the 1960s.

Prof Okoth-Ogendo pointed out the consequences of the plan which, though it had many benefits, wiped out customary land tenure and created a landless and near-landless class.

The don was an articulate and unrelenting critic of the zero-sum game. The socio-economic and political consequences of the Swynnerton Plan are still being felt today in the form of poverty, endless litigation over title and ethnic clashes over land rights.

gigirimwaura@yahoo.com