Land has been used by the government to buy political support in East African coastal region.
The earliest available documents indicate that the East African coastal region was inhabited by Africans.
The Periplus of the Erythrean (Eritrean) Sea, believed to have been written around 100 A.D. by an anonymous Greek author, mentions the inhabitants of the region as men who were black and of great stature, ruled by chiefs.
They used wicker baskets to fish and traded with merchants from the Mediterranean, Persia, Oman, India and China. These are the people we know today as the Swahili and there is no doubt that they controlled the coastal area before the Arabs gradually settled there.
Traditional exports from the East African region comprised mostly spices, ivory and slaves. The Arab traders formed the majority of trade partners, but they were not interested in conquering the hostile territory inland.
When the Portuguese conquered the coastal region, they established a ruthless administration which proved unpopular with the local people forcing them into marriages of convenience with the Omani Arabs for protection.
In 1660, the Swahili people sent a delegation to Muscat, the seat of Omani leadership, seeking military assistance to rout the Christian presence at the coast, but the Sultan declined. A second delegation dispatched in 1729 managed to convince the Sultan to offer military assistance.
After a series of battles the Portuguese were finally defeated in 1798. In 1856, Sultan Said Seyyid transferred his headquarters from Muscat to Zanzibar, assuming full political control over the East African coast.
While defining their spheres of influence in East Africa in the Anglo-German Treaty of 1886, the European powers noted the key position of the Sultan of Zanzibar and allocated him the now famous 10-mile coastal strip stretching from Kipini in the north to Ruvuma River in the south.
The Germans paid £200,000 to the Sultan for the control of the coastline adjacent to their German East Africa. On their part, Britain opted to pay an annual rent of £17,000 to the Sultan for the part adjacent to the East African Protectorate.
This arrangement seemed to work well for the next two decades, but it created an uneasy coexistence between Africans and Arabs living at the coast.
It was not clear on what basis the British and Germans thought that the Sultan’s territory extended for only 10 miles from the coastline. They also assumed that any person residing within the 10-mile zone was a subject of the Sultan while those living inland beyond the zone were British or German subjects.
The Sultan’s nominal possession of the coastal strip later proved to be a major obstacle in the development of the East African Protectorate.
When European settlers and the Colonial Office wished to finance major developments within the protectorate they were told they could not access cheap loans available under the Colonial Stock Act of 1900 because it was neither a colony nor a British dominion.
The Crown Agents advised the Colonial Office to look for ways to change the status from protectorate to colony. Unfortunately, the Sultan of Zanzibar had signed other international treaties with the United States in1833, France in 1862, and Germany in 1886 recognising his sovereignty.
Notably, the Anglo-German Treaty of 1886 did not abrogate the former treaties and in fact recognised the coastal strip as part of the Sultan’s dominion.
The process of changing the status of the protectorate was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. On 11 June 1920 an Order in Council was passed in London declaring the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya; the protectorate comprising the 10-mile coastal strip. Governor, Sir Edward Northey observed:
“We shall now be able to float a loan for development of the country. I anticipate that roughly we shall require £2,000,000 for Plateau railway, £500,000 for Thika extension and £1,000,000 for Kilindini harbour.”
When discussions started on the future independence of Kenya in 1960, Arabs within the 10-mile strip waged a protracted struggle to secede and join the Sultanate of Zanzibar or form a self-governing Mwambao territory.
In the end, on 5th October 1963, the Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta on behalf of the government of Kenya gave undertakings for freedom of worship and entrenched the position of Kadhis within Kenya’s judicial system.
A second agreement dated 8th October 1963 signed by Jomo Kenyatta, Mohamed Shamte, Prime Minister of Zanzibar and the Sultan of Zanzibar effectively declared the 10-mile strip as part of Kenya and ceasing to be part of the Sultan’s territory.
The first agreement recognised all freehold titles issued for land at the coast while land without title was declared trust land effectively sealing the fate of many Africans who had been living on such land as squatters. Traditional African land tenure which had been ignored by successive Arab regimes was once again passed over.
Whereas the slave trade had been abolished along the coastline, the ivory trade continued to flourish, and, in the meantime, a new and lucrative industry had been established at the coast namely, tourism.
The new industry had pushed the price of land, particularly near the beautiful beaches, way beyond the reach of local people. The government of the day took advantage of these circumstances to reward political and ethnic cronies by allocating them trust land.
Although the ancestors of the Swahili people can be said to be the original owners of land along the coastal strip, their integration with the Omani Arabs and the more recent entry of speculators and investors after independence has complicated the matter.
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