“This law will put an end to the conflicting judgments that we have seen in our courts because the courts will not have too much discretion,” Tororei said. “They will have clear guidelines what to do about different complaints.”
Analysts who recall the history of land issues in Kenya over the past 50 years warn against believing that either the NLC or new legislation can by themselves bring about swift change.
Despite having a clear mandate from the Constitution, the NLC has been bogged down by delays in approving staff and putting the required level of funding in place.
Odenda Lumumba, director of the Kenya Land Alliance, which advocates on land issues, says designing and approving new laws is only part of the tasks that lie ahead. Once legislation is in place, it will have to be followed to the letter if future crises are to be resolved.
“We need good laws to engender good governance but those will only materialise if we do it with good practices and approaches,” he said. “There is too much promise and rhetoric about what is being addressed when the reality-check is simply that the intervention by the government is flawed, is slow and at best retrogressive.”
Recent violence highlights land sensitivities
Fears about the government’s ability to address land issues have not been assuaged by its response to the recent trouble in the coastal region of Lamu.
In June and July, a succession of brutal attacks in the area killed more than 100 people.
The Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attacks, but President Uhuru Kenyatta blamed “local political networks” for violence that he said targeted an unspecified “Kenyan community”. The victims of an attack on the town of Mpeketoni were largely members of Kenyatta’s ethnic group, the Kikuyu, and one theory is that they were targeted by locals who resent their presence.
At the end of July, President Kenyatta announced that he would revoke land titles in up to 70 per cent of Lamu County, after accusing people of acquiring public land illegally with a view to selling it back to the government at a hefty profit. The allegations relate to land that is earmarked for oil and transportation infrastructure at a planned port in Lamu.
President Kenyatta subsequently used the issue to berate opposition leader Raila Odinga, who hit back by accusing the president himself of acquiring land illegally.
Land Minister Charity Ngilu has described the alleged misappropriation of land in Lamu, said to have taken place in 2011-12 as the port project took shape, as “great danger to the socioeconomic and political stability and growth of the area”.
A criminal investigation was launched after Kenyatta said that a review of landholdings in Lamu County revealed that 22 individuals had illegally acquired a total of 2,000 square kilometres.
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