Maasai land loss raises tensions in Kenya ahead of elections
NAIROBI: Kenya’s opposition leader has raised tensions weeks ahead of elections by criticizing the Maasai community’s sale of ancestral land to other ethnic groups in an area hit by political violence in the 1990s, land rights experts said.
Many cash-strapped Maasai have become landless after subdividing and selling swathes of land to the south of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where they used to roam with their cattle.
“Years of neglect and abuse is forcing them to trade in their birthright for survival,” opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga told a news conference on Monday.
“Jubilee has refused to enact proper laws to protect these community lands,” he said, referring to the ruling party of President Uhuru Kenyatta who hopes to retain power in elections on Aug. 8.
Last week, he called on nonMaasai communities to “remain” on their own land rather than buying up Maasai ancestral land around Kajiado, 80 km south of the capital, Nairobi.
Land has been one of the main drivers of conflict in Kenya since independence in 1963, with politicians whipping up historic grievances over land loss to incite their supporters to move away voters opposed to them, experts say.
Dozens have been killed and injured in Kenya’s Laikipia region over the last year as armed herders searching for pasture have driven tens of thousands of cattle onto private farms and ranches from overgrazed communal land.
“We urge the politicians to stop making disturbing comments on land,” Stephen Ambani, chairman of the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya, told a news conference on Tuesday.