this is about one of the worst human encroachment in Africa's largest water tower based in kenya. the country is already facing severe water shortage, drought and unpreidictable weather.I would like to get more comments in areas of improvment in this area though am a journalist and a media and communication lecturer

1. DUNCAN ISAIAH ODUOR ONYANGO ABWAO
BOC 45841,00100
NAIROBI
PHONE; +254702235859
Email; gombas2002@gmail.com
BRIEF INFORMATION ON WHERE I GOT THIS IDEA
I came a cross this information nearly two years a go while browsing the internet.
It was then that I found out about the ST.SNDREWS UNIVERSITY ESSAY
COMPETITION.I immediately got my self registered since writing is also part of my
career. Being a writer, I would always love to be associated with such competitions
particularly when people from all walks of life are also involved. It might not be all about
winning as such but being given an opportunity to express oneself is something which
should be appreciated by all.
ASTATEMENT THAT THE WORK IS MINE AND IT IS
ORIGINAL
This is the work of my hand and never got any assistance
from any quarter say apart from the ideas provided by the local
community about the disappearing of Kenya’s largest water tower.
With my own ideas I penned it down because writing remains my
passion. I put a cross what I saw happening before my eyes in
Kenya, a country where I was born and raised. Of course it is my
motherland and that is why I chose the MAU forest as my area of
presentation and case study.

2. POLITICS OF LAND DISTRIBUTION IN AFRICA.
A CASE STUDY OF THE MAU FOREST IN KENYA AND
ETHNIC POWER STRUGGLE BEHIND LAND
OWNERSHIP
BY
DUNCAN ISAIAH ODUOR O.ABWAO
AJUNCT LECTURER, ST.PAUL’S UNIVERSITY NAIROBI
KENYA
M.SC MEDIA MANAGEMENT GRADUATE
AWRITER, A CORPORATE TRAINER AND AN ASPIRING
JOURNALIST.
SYNOPSIS ON THE MAU FOREST IN KENYA
Most developing countries having attained independence
from their colonial masters expected to usher into a new era of
prosperity and peace. Some countries are now four decades old, yet
little has been achieved in terms of economic growth and
distribution of resources back to the common man.Infact their
democracies are so fragile and any mistake in the election can
always spark a deadly conflict among the powers that be. There is
nothing positive for the citizens to cheer about as millions people
still go hungry due to rampant poverty and a rotten corrupt
political system.
One area that has turned out to be a hot potato is the issue of
land distribution in the developing countries. The worst affected
economies are the African countries where politics and land goes
hand in hand. Land issue is so explosive in Africa to such an
extend that even a small unproductive piece of land can easily
make thousands loose their lives. The competition is between the
rich and the poor. Nearly everybody wants to grab acres of land
right from politicians to the ordinary citizens. It is absurd that an
African president can have land equivalent almost the size of

3. Belgium, yet the citizens are living in crowded slum in a country
they so thought would guarantee them economic prosperity and
empowerment.
The Zimbabwean Government under President Robert
Mugabe made the issue of land loud and clear when he introduced
the infamous land acquisition policy. It meant that all the white
settlers in that country had to surrender huge acres of land they
once grabbed or purchased. The move never helped the country in
anyway after the annexation of land from the white settlers.
Leaders across Africa seemed to be quite sensitive to land,
more so after mixing it with politics. It is a war of survival for the
fittest as the masses and the elected leaders compete to grab the
few remaining fertile agricultural lands. The fact food is also
becoming scarce across certain parts of the developing nations is
an indication on how poorly land is being managed.
Environmentalists and Government officials have often had
bitters wars in Africa whenever the issue of land is addressed. A
Kenyan born former Nobel Peace Prize winner, WANGARI
MATHAI, had in the past clashed with the past government
officials on how to go about land conservation in the country. That
was when she protested about illegal encroachment in the
KARURA forest by the political establishment under the then
former president DANIEL ARAP MOI.The KARURA FOREST is
considered to be the lifeline of Kenya’s capital NAIROBI, yet it
has been always been under threat from illegal encroachers.
It is the issue of land distribution that is likely to engulf the
East African nation into flames. Recent and past violence in the
once prosperous Kenya, all evolves around acquisition of the
remaining fertile lands that support millions of peasant farmers
across the country. The latest wars of words between
environmentalist and politicians have again emerged in Kenya.
This time around it is about the MAU Forest, a green aria that is
said to be the largest water catchments in Africa. It is believed that
without MAU forest, Kenya might be no more and it could be
another Sahara desert in the offing. Powerful Politicians once
grabbed a huge portion of it and distributed to their friends and
relatives

4. THE BODY
THE MAU FOREST IN KENYA
Kenya has witnessed a bloody past since it’s independence
from Britain, though our leaders have always presented to the
outside world a different picture of what goes on in the country. To
the outside world, the picture is that of a lovely peaceful nation, a
country united to challenge all adversities. It is argued that lands in
Kenya have always been up for grabs right by the top political
brass, down to the ordinary Kenyans up to the white colonial
settlers who still own huge chunks of acres a cross the country.
From street battles to parliament, the war has now shifted to
Mau forest, believed to be one of the remaining water catchments
area in Africa or the perhaps the world. Due to illegal human
settlement and rampant land grabbing, the Mau forest future is
bleak. With its destruction, millions of lives remain under threat
because of the dying rivers. Kenya has many rivers and most of
them either pump water into Lake Victoria or Indian Ocean. Of the
Kenya’s clean rivers, thirty three of them have their origin traced
to the MAU forest,. All the rivers that support life in the entire
western and Nyanza plus the Great Rift Valley, originate from the
Mau forest.
The forest is now under threat and the politicians who started
the mess are not ready town up to their responsibilities. It is
turning into a nasty war between the Environmentalists and the top
powerful leaders of the country who either own thousand of acres
or distributed the catchments areas to their friends. The
encroachments into the forest begun some decades back when
Kenya was under perhaps a dictatorial regime. That was during the
regime of former president Daniel Arap Moi who was at logger
heads with heads with leading archeologist Dr. Richard Leakey
and the former Nobel peace Prize winner and environmentalist
Laurent Wangari Mathai.

5. It was during his regime that the MAU
FOREST was grabbed and dished out to friends within the ruling party KANU.The
former president in the picture even built a tea factory within the water tower complex
claiming that it to be economically productive for the local population.
The fact that the water level of most rivers emanate from the Mau
forest is shrinking. This is a threat to both human and the wild
animals which roam freely within the Masai Mara National park.
One such river which flows just adjacent to the Masai Mara
national park is the River Mara. The thousands of hippos cannot
find enough water to sink in or swim due to the massive
destruction of the forest.

6. The picture show how the Hippos of the
MARA River are under threat due to man made disaster. Should this problem goes on
unchecked, even the future of Kenya’s tourism could be jeopardized.
The hippos of the River Mara are under severe stress due to
the shrinking water level. All is due to the fact that someone is
destroying the once peaceful ecosystem which sustains the forest.
The river is also famous for its wildebeest extravaganza where a
million of the animals yearly cross over to the Tanzanian side of
the border. Under threat from the shrinking river which originates
from the Mau forest are also thousands of wild animals from the
Masai Mara National park which often take a dip or a sip on the
river.
What saddens most environmentalists from Kenya and even
abroad is that certain powerful political leaders cannot see the
dangers a head. They have brushed a side any fact which shows
that the The Mau forest is under threat from land grabbers and
illegal human settlement expansion. Kenya wars have now shifted
from the streets of its cities to the thick Mau forest. As a result two
groups of powerful politicians have emerged in Kenya –one
supporting human settlements in the forest and another group fully
against it.

7. The above picture shows the wildebeest migration season as a million of these animals
migrate to Tanzania. It is a big show and often frequented by the local population as well
the foreign tourists. The show might never happen as long as the Mau forest is grabbed
for farm use and human settlements because the river Mara which sustains life in the
region originates from the Mau.
It isn’t clear as how long this war will not continue nor which
camp will emerge the winner. The settlers in the forest have also
refused to go claiming that they genuinely bought some parts of
the rich fertile catchments land within the water tower. For them it
is a war for survival as they claimed that they have no alternative
place to go to. A section of Kenyan leaders and a group of
environmentalists have refused to buy their theory. They (settlers)
are instead accused of settling on a government property illegally.
Though forceful eviction was carried out where poor peasant
farmers were evicted from the forest, the destruction of the water
tower might take years to be restored. It was the forceful eviction
of the settlers which nearly made the coalition Government to
collapse as leader from, the Vast Rift valley united against the
move. They brought in ethnic politics on the Mau forest though the
Government remained firm.
Instead of leaving the matter to the land policy makers and
environmentalists, politicians have now jumped in. There are now
accusations and counter accusations on both sides. What is making

8. the Mau issue more complex is that the issue of ethnicity has now
cropped up from nowhere. The majority of settlers’ are said to be
members of the Kalenjin ethnic group. The parliamentarians from
the region have ganged up together with the former Kenya’s
president Daniel Arap Moi to ensure that their people are not
evicted from the forest. So complex is the issue that Kenyan
members of parliament are currently divided over an
environmental issue due to its sensitivity.
One side claims that their people are being targeted while
the other camp accused them of making an environmental problem
go ethnic. As the debate rages on, one community that has been
caught in the middle is Kenya’s small indigenous ethnic group
known as the OGIEK.It is the only ethnic group which has all a
long claim ownership of the Mau forest. Their claim is that the
forest is their property or ancestral land given to them by God.
The OGIEK community has been dwelling in the forest and
it is now their home. The OGIEK community has no permanent
shelter as they are hunters and bee keepers. To keep themselves
safe from wild animals and heavy rains during the night, the
community climbs on tall trees where they have erected temporary
shelters with tree branches and banana leaves. By morning, they
would come down and start roaming throughout the forest as they
hunt for antelopes and other wild animals. Attempts by the Kenyan
Government to resettle them haven’t bore any much fruit due to
their attachment to the forest.
. This is the Ogiek community, the group
claiming to be the owners of the MAU Forest. However leading environmentalists and
certain politicians tend to differ with them. The Indigenous Ogiek community has instead
been accused of causing harm to Kenya’s water tower
The Mau forest is a tricky issue in Kenya, so much that
politicians have always referred to it as “a hot potato.” It has made

9. Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga quite unpopular with leaders
hailing from the region (Rift Valley); accusing him of throwing
their people out of the land they were born. It was the Prime
Minister’s office which responsible for the steps to restore the
country’s water tower somehow with the Government’s blessing.
Ethnicity soon cam on the way and that turned Mau forest into a
political hate campaign. The war now is not about the future of
Kenya but the fate of a particular ethnic group who has encroached
into the Mau forest where almost a million acres of the forest has
been eaten up by land grabbers.
The Kenyan public on the other hand looks at the Mau Land
issue differently. Their stand is that invading farmers and the
recipients of land in the past regimes should be thrown out. A
section of the population even wants such people behind bars for
destroying a land which is the lifeline of the country. The effect of
the Mau forest destruction meanwhile has been felt far and wide.
Some years a go tea and coffee farmers started complaining of
some parts of the farms getting dry. So far certain leaders in Kenya
are so blind that they haven’t’ noticed even any poor quality of tea,
pyrethrum and coffee in the region.
It isn’t clear who authorized the unlicensed timber felling and
massive charcoal production in the Mau forest. Nearly a dozen
rivers that originate from the Mau forest are drying up and five
Lakes are already feeling the heat, including Lake Victoria. When
deforestation is taking place with a quarter of a million acres of
land destroyed, then Kenya is in for more disasters. Anybody
destroying the MAU forest is likely to cripple the main three
sectors that hold the country’s economy together: tourism,
hydropower and agriculture. With tea drying up in some parts of
the Rift Valley even as far the Kisii highlands, then Kenya’s
exports earning is likely to go down drastically.

10. The above picture is one of the Kericho tea estates in Kenya. Tea is Kenya’s main
export and there is fear that its production is going down due to lack of rainfall. All
is being attributed to the destruction of the vast Mau Forest which has been
sustaining the region’s greenery.
The poor peasant farmers who live in the MAU Forest
engage mostly in maize farming and charcoal production. It is the
only way or means of meeting both ends meet and they struggle to
large hfamilies.As aresult, decades old trees have disappeared as
they are converted into charcoal and hardwood timbers.
Kenya now has been torn apart by land issues leave a lone
the shaky democracy that continued to thrive in the East African
Nation since its independence from Britain. Thanks to the new
constitution which has been implemented this year which most
citizens believed would put the nation back into wheel of
Economic acceleration. Shortly after independence, Kenya’s first
elected President Jommo Kenyattadifeered with his colleagues
who even struggled with him against the British rule. The issue
which emerged immediately after independence was how to
distribute Kenya’s meager resources and land. Any leader who
mentioned the issue of land in the then Kenyatta Government, was
either dismissed from the main political stream,deteianed or put
under house arrest over some outrageous charges.

11. It was during the dawn of independence that people grabbed huge
chunks of land throughout the country. Most of them were well
connected individuals and the president’s relatives or close
associates. The few agricultural and fertile farm lands nearly
became the property of particular individuals in the country. Now
the land issue has come out in the open and Kenyans are angry
with each other. The war right now is between whose who
benefited in the past corrupt regime and those who have been
marginalized economically. Even the second generation Britons
who decided to settle in Kenya after independence did not spare
the fertile lands around them. That brings us to the land owned by
the Lord Delamere family who controlled nearly half of lands near
Naivasha in the Rift valley. It also a war between a few powerful
land owners and the landless or squatters who could not make a
living in less than an acre of land
Th
is is the sprawling estate farmlands owned by the Lord Delamere family in Naivasha
just along Nakuru high way in the Rift valley. It should be noted that the region was
the centre of bloody conflict during the 2007 disputed presidential election where
thousands were killed and many were left homeless. The locals accused them
(settlers) of acquiring their lands illegally during the Kenyatta regime. The grand
son of the Delamere who is in charge of the Estate also had to face murder charge
when he shot a peasant farmer whom he claimed had encroached into his land.

12. That could be the reason why thousands of peasant farmers decided to
invade the Mau forest because land grabbers in Kenya are not ready to part
even with an inch they own. In an impoverished Nation like Kenya, the
landless are likely to hit back in such circumstances should they reach a
point of no return. That might be the journey which forced many to go deep
into the Mau forest desperately in search of search for bread and butter.
Other areas that were once invaded are the Abadares Range, the Great
Mount Kenya and even the Elgon region just close to the Ugandan border.
Most of the Illegal forest occupants engage in large scale charcoal
business, maize and at times opium production. It is an indiscriminate sort of
business where no trees can be spared even the old historical indigenous
ones. A ten $ sack of charcoal would be enough to feed their children and
many other wives. They might not be aware of the effect of deforestation
because their aim is to feed themselves since three meals a day is still a far
away dream. For the rest who might have acquired land with the help of
powerful lobbies or through corrupt politicians, it is business as usual.
Surrendering their lands given due to political support means inviting blood
shed, and they are ready always ready for bloody confrontations. That’s why
land skirmishes is perhaps is more prevalent in Kenya compared to some
other African countries.
The former president Daniel Arap Moi has been trying to defend
himself against accusations that under his regime, he distributed many acres
of land to powerful individuals in his then Government. He seems not even
aware of the old famous slogan which was quite common during his rule,
“the land for votes scheme.”The Mau saga has exposed our past corrupt
leaders who still present are part of the land grabbing chain. These clearly
demonstrate how ethnic politics can contribute to a massive environmental
degradation in the long run.
Even the former president Mwai Kibaki now in office under a new
coalition Government has been put in a fix spot over the Mau forest issue.
Since 1966 that the then president has been in the corridor of power when he
was once elected as a member of parliament in his constituency, it would be
wrong for him to feign ignorance on how land started to be grabbed in the
Mau forest. Perhaps he had to avoid tackling the issue, leave a lone
mentioning powerful force who owned parts of the water tower, lest he
angered people like former president Moi whom he even served as his vice.
By the end of it all, it is the small scale farmers who had to face the
consequences as the country and the Government move to reclaim the Mau
forest before further damage is done. Some who invaded the forest have
formally between evicted and they will have no option but to wait for a new
government settlement scheme or find their own means of survival. Some
squatters or invaders have even been told to go back to their original
ancestral lands which others now claim they don’t have.

13. Our political class is cunning and smart on issues pertaining to land,
are likely to wash off their hands from the Mau occupants. Already some
leaders are in denial that they never allotted any pieced of land to friends or
relatives in the Mau Forest. The former president Daniel Arap Moi vies or
recent outburst over the Mau issue is that of s typical ignorant politician. He
seemed to be a ware of what has been going on the forest over the past
decade. He is also not able to tell the world or the International community
how a million acres of the Mau Forest, got decimated over a period of time
most of it under his regime. He instead lashed out at the forest guards or
rangers whom he claimed resorted to illegal timber business and charcoal.
What is now emerging from the forest complex is how to handle the
Ogiek community who consider Mau as their God given property. Their
claim now is that relocating them forcefully from the Mau forest, would be
like removing fish out of water. In their opinion, such attempts are other
aspects of pushing them further into poverty and extinction. The Kenyan
Government and some environmentalists tend to disagree with the
community over the issue and instead accuse them of being part of the land
destruction gang that has been thriving in the forest over the years.
Kenya cannot afford to witness further destruction of the water tower
or even another forest and acting timely on the Mau would definitely
accelerate a positive climate change in the country or East Africa. The
proposal by the current Kenya’s Prime Minister that all major forests in the
country or water catchments areas should be monitored by a special military
task force. The current forest rangers have failed to as some of them might
be involved in the illegal timber trade. A new set up task force in the country
could salvage the situation now that Kenya is under a new law.
It is not only the Mau which is under threat but also the thick jungles of
Mount Kenya which lies within the central part of the country. There are
cases where a large opium production has been unearthed deep inside Mount
Kenya in the past. Perhaps with a new forest military task force such
incidents would be a thing of the past.
The Kenya military has also been tackling a well trained militia who were
quite active in Mount Elgon region in the western part of the country. They
too claim ownership of the vast mountain areas that stretches up to the
Kenyan-Ugandan border. Unless prompt action is taken by those who love
Kenya, then another bloody war might one day erupt again simply over land
no be it productive or not.