TJRC: Open up beaches,recover grabbed land

May 22nd 2013, By PATRICK  BEJA   
Nairobi, Kenya: All public beaches as well as access routes to fishing sites and beaches should be re-opened, the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission recommends in its final report released on Wednesday evening.
Its far-reaching recommendations include seizure of illegally acquired land to redress the thorny land problem at the Coast.
In what will come as a relief to the long-suffering aggrieved, the TJRC report calls for urgent measures to revoke all illegally obtained titles. It directs the National Land Commission to fast track the recovery of all irregularly or illegally acquired land at the Coast and other parts of the country.
The report calls on those responsible to encourage individuals and entities to surrender illegally acquired land to help address the extensive squatter problem at the Coast.

It recommends that the Lands ministry begins a process of surveying, demarcating and registering all remaining government lands, including those that were formerly owned or managed by local authorities, all protected wildlife areas and riverbanks, among other public lands.
The NLC is required to work with the ministry of Lands to undertake adjudication and registration exercises at the Coast and all other areas where it has not been conducted.
 “Successive governments have since independence failed to take tangible action to deal with these deep-rooted feelings among the inhabitants of the Coast. One of the critical issues, described by some as ‘a ticking time bomb’, is the seemingly intractable land question,” says the report handed to President Kenyatta on Tuesday.
The report also details resentment in the region over perceived targeting in anti-terrorism crackdowns and poor basic amenities.
“More recently, other factors including the perceived mistreatment of residents at the hands of police in the context of Kenya’s efforts in the American-led ‘war on terror’, poor education levels and lack of infrastructure have all served to fuel feelings that successive governments do not care about the region,” said the report.
The TJRC also revives the memory of the bitter tribal violence that rocked Coast province, especially Likoni and Kwale in 1997 and calls for implementation of judicial reports that recommended investigation or prosecution of key officials from Coast province.
These included a former State corporation chief and powerful politician whom the report recommends should have been investigated over the deadly 1997-1998 violence “with a view of taking appropriate legal action.”
It says that land-related injustices took the form of illegal alienation of public and trust lands and preferential treatment of specific ethnic groups in settlement schemes at the expense of the most deserving landless.
The report has traced the genesis of the squatter problem at the Coast to the colonial era when the indigenous coastals could not be registered as landowners.
The report details how the Sultan of Zanzibar gave preference to his “subjects” who could register land in the 10-mile Coastal Strip and up to 25 percent of the indigenous Mijikenda were turned into squatters, unable to register the land they had lived on for centuries.
  Land rights
“The British recognised claims of the Sultan of Zanzibar on his 16km coastal strip.  Only the Sultan’s “subjects” would register land in this area,” says the report.
The Mijikenda are nine groups comprising Digo, Giriama, Duruma, Chonyi, Rabai, Jibana, Ribe, Kambe and Kauma.
The report says although some of the land was adjudicated under the Land Titles Act and registered as private land, mostly by outsiders and absentee landlords, the prevailing situation is that land occupied by the indigenous Kenyans is still held under communal and customary tenure.
This is because most of the land has not been adjudicated to determine the individual land rights.
“Further, although several settlement schemes have been established over the years by the government, they have not always benefited the locals,” TJRC says.
It said the inability of the locals to use land on which they live for economic purposes has led to extreme levels of poverty.
“While affected communities expected redress through resettlement, restoration of their land from the Kenyatta and subsequent post-independence administrations, the government instead alienated more land from already affected communities for the benefit of politically privileged ethnic communities and the political elite,” says the report.
The report says the illegal acquisition of land has led to deeply held resentment against specific ethnic communities who benefited from resettlements at the expense of those who believe to be the rightful landowners.
TJRC observed that the Akiwumi commission of inquiry established in 1998 to look into the ethnic clashes during the 1997 General Election had demonstrated how the skewed land allocation and ownership had fueled ethnic tensions and violent conflicts particularly in Coast and Rift Valley regions.
The commission noted that land related grievances have led to the emergence of militia groups to reclaim land. “In recent years, many land related problems have degenerated into social unrest and violence,” the report says.
Politicians often exploit the real or perceived land injustices especially around election time for personal gain.
TJRC warned that the dangerous mix of land-related claims with political aspirations of specific groups or individuals remains a powder keg that could ignite at any time.
TJRC established that the willing buyer willing seller land tenure approach was grossly abused and was one of the factors causing disinheritance and landlessness especially in the face of rising human populations.
The report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land revealed that some 200,000 illegal titles were created between 1962 and 2002. Of these, 98 percent were issued between 1986 and 2002.