Some fellow licensed surveyors have narrated harrowing stories of land grabs targeting their clients. I have had the experience too. Some local newspapers have reported similar accounts.
Africa Uncensored, one of the independent media houses, ran a series of episodes entitled “Title Deals” between September and November last year, highlighting the wretched plight of some victims. Were it not for the familiar localities such as Karen, Westlands, South B and Thome, the serialised incidents would fit into the fictional realm.
The government ought to be rattled, and move to stem the trend, or else, impunity will reign, and private land tenure security in Kenya will be greatly undermined. Sooner or later, government officers themselves may become victims.
The conventional form of land grab in Kenya, and most of Africa, has been standard and predictable. Folks, often with privileged knowledge of land ownership patterns in a jurisdiction will identify available public or community land and then proceed to use Executive, political or even business influence to acquire it.
This would be done regardless of the designated public purpose and in contravention of due procedures. It would happen regardless of protests from the target institutions and communities.
Enough incidents of this nature have been documented in the Ndung’u Report of 2004, among others. Perhaps the establishment and coming into office of the National Land Commission interrupted this gravy train, making scouting for public and community land for private take riskier. This may have motivated the emerging alternative forms of land grabs.
The new method, at its primary level, targets vacant private land. Level two targets developed private land where the proprietor may have died or is away for long periods. Level three targets the old, elderly and defenceless proprietors, or those that are poor and weak, both susceptible to raw intimidation and easy eviction. Ownership documents for the vacant pieces of land are replicated, with or without the connivance of the duly mandated government agencies.
The physical entry then follows, often accompanied by the use of brute force in the event that the legitimate owners resist. Suave grabbers will also quickly subdivide the land, and convey the smaller plots to willing buyers, to optimise gains. At times, this is done with the support of complicit professionals in the private and public sectors.
At other times, innocent professionals in the surveying, legal and valuation disciplines in the private sector have found themselves entangled in such irregularities.
Parallel ownership documents for developed properties where owners may have died, travelled or are aged and weak have been processed then used to put such properties on sale. Victims who attempt to obstruct eviction are bundled out. In all the cases, the grabbers use pliant State officials and our courts to frustrate any efforts to recover the subject land. It is cruel and ruthless; it’s against local and international conventions on land tenure rights. The government ought to stop it.
