Time ripe to diffuse the keg of inequitable land tion in Taita-Taveta County

The skewed distribution of land in Taita-Taveta County has seen thousands of people living as squatters on their ancestral land while a handful of landlords, private sisal farms,ranches and conservancies occupy millions of acres of land.

The Tsavo national park on the other hand occupies 62 per cent ( approximately 10,600 square kilometres) of the total land area of 17,000 square kilometres.

According to Wundanyi/Mbale ward MCA Jimmy Mwamidi, Tsavo which is divided into East and West should be cut so that Tsavo West is converted to a game reserve so that the county government can earn revenue from wildlife.

“Taita-Taveta residents have suffered for many years due to persistent human- wildlife conflicts and the only way our county can be compensated adequately is by hiving off Tsavo West as Taita-Taveta game reserve to boost county revenue through tourism” said Mwamidi.

Of the three sisal plantations, Taveta, Voi and Teita, the latter in Mwatate sub-county owned by the Kyriazy brothers Philip and Costa, is one of the largest sisal estates in the world and the most expansive in East Africa.It occupies more than 32,000 acres.

Apart from sisal farming, the vast farm has also diversified into dairy and horticulture.

For many years now, the sisal farm has been embroiled in a tussle with residents of Singila and Majengo villages who claim the sisal farm management encroached on their ancestral land.

“The sisal farm extended its boundaries and annexed huge chunks of land belonging to the locals, planting sisal right at their doorsteps and turning them into squatters”says Mnjala Mwaluma the secretary of Mwasima Mbuwa Welfare Association,a land lobby group which has been fighting for the liberation of the land grabbed by the sisal farm.

“Recently, angry people invaded land belonging to the Kenyatta family in Kiambu county and it’s just a matter of when, not if ,the same happens in Taita-Taveta County. Locals are tired of living in poverty because of lack of land for development” says Mnjala.

He accused the county government of turning a blind eye to the suffering of the squatters at Majengo and Singila where most are being regularly harassed and arrested on accusations of trespassing on the vast farm.

Ranches and conservancies collectively occupy close to 1.1 million acres of land, even though most of them are dormant and their management are merely holding onto the huge tracts of land for speculative purposes.

In 2019 Taita-Taveta ranches launched an ambitious five year strategic plan under the Taita-Taveta Wildlife Conservancies Association (TTWCA) which recognized the over 900,000 acres of rangeland within Tsavo ecosystem as home to thousands of wildlife.

The TTWCA brought together 28 ranches and seven existing conservancies.

While the formation of TTWCA strategic plan was viewed as a game changer in the management of the vast rangelands, the benefits do not seem to trickle down to the local communities, five years later.

According to Mohamed Kamanya who has worked in Taita-Taveta conservancies for more than twenty years, the conservancies have a total turnover of close to Sh3 billion annually.

One billion comes from carbon trade while Sh1.5 billion and Sh 500m come from artisanal mining and livestock respectively.

However, Kamanya intimates that most of the conservancies are led by members of close families who ensure that the leadership and management does not slip out of their hands for their selfish interests.

“These conservancies are run by cartels who create a thriving ground for criminal enterprises to thrive, while denying the Taita-Taveta residents their rightful share of these resources.

He says its time the county government shined a spotlight on the management of these conservancies to ensure that there is accountable leadership and also for these conservancies to pay the requisite taxes.

“Majority of conservancies do not pay land rates and other concomitant taxes such as VAT, capital gain, excise and income. In fact they have deliberately registered community trusts as a way of circumventing taxation regimes” he says.

On the other hand, the dormant ranches have over the years being embroiled in land tussles with squatters and investors who claim to have bought sections of the land. Currently about 3,500 squatters occupying land said to belong to Ndara A group ranch near Voi town are facing eviction after a company called Sparkle went to court claiming to have bought the land at Sh12m from Bata shoe company.

According to records, Bata acquired the land on a 99 year lease in 1979 from the ministry of lands to put up a shoe factory, which would have created employment opportunities for locals.

However ,the factory came a cropper as Bata relocated the same to Limuru.

Since then the land has been dogged by controversy, with hundreds settling there and putting up permanent and semi-permanent structures.

One of the squatters Alfred Mnjama said the disputed land was their ancestral right.

“Our grandparents leased the land to Bata company to put up a shoe factory which they never did and it was wrong for the company to sell the land to another company without our consent” said Mnjama.

An ambitious multibillion Diaspora university project which was to be put up at Ndara B group ranch has so far failed to kick off due to a standoff between the ranch management, section of leaders and the Diaspora university committee. investors

The university had earmarked 6,000 acres of the land to put up a university at a tune of Sh100 billion.

In 2018,the then governor Granton Samboja vowed to stop the construction of the university, questioning the procedures used by the investors to secure the land. However, Ndara B ranch chairman Benjamin Mwandaa said members of Rong’e and Sagalla had agreed to cede part of the land for the project.

“The views of the public were sought and residents agreed to support the project” Mwandaa said, adding that the land in question was registered and had a title deed.

“The people claiming that they will be displaced by the project are not rightful landowners but squatters” he said. A former MP who did not want to be quoted said for the county to develop, locals should be allowed to purchase parts of the idle land in ranches and sisal farms at an affordable price.

“Land is a key factor of production and one way out of poverty is to empower locals to own land and get title deeds which they can use as collateral to access loans from banks and other lending institutions” he said.

The former legislator said the county government should also acquire part of the land and use it for development projects that would generate revenue for the county.

The Voi and Taveta sisal estates have undergone numerous management changes over the years, with parts being hived off for development.

President Ruto is among those who acquired part of the vast Taveta sisal estate that had been up for sale after controversial former area MP Basil Criticos failed to pay a loan he owed the National Bank.

In February this year, Criticos was awarded more than Sh2.5 billion by the High Court after he won a 15 year court battle with National Bank in a case where the former legislator had sued the lender for compensation for auctioning his farm while undervaluing most of the developments therein.