History offers a number of reasons why different Kenyan communities settle in forests and eventually suffer after forcible evictions by the government.
Some were settled by the government soon after Independence through the forestry department to conserve forests under the shamba system. Other communities, such as the Ogiek of Mau forest and Sengwer of Embobut forest, are traditionally hunter-gatherer communities, whose forests have been their only home from time immemorial.
Other people move into forests as they view them as free lands to be cleared to create space for farming, and also cut down trees for commercial purposes, like timber and charcoal burning. Others are settled in forests by politicians. Politicians, too, allocate themselves forestland in the process.
Some communities settle and invest their future in forests, completely ignorant, or oblivious of, the consequences that come with eviction if executed. Laikipia evictees are a classic example of such investment. Group chairman Charlse Gachema says the forest department paid meagre salaries to people contracted to conserve forests in Laikipia soon after Independence. Oral history, he says, has it that the first group was paid Sh28 a month.
The majority could not buy themselves land, though they lived with the hope that one day they would raise enough funds for the purpose. But in most cases, buying land was overtaken by the demands of educating their children.
Gachema says forest communities were cooperative Kenyan citizens who faithfully carried out national obligations. They participated in paying taxes, acquiring IDs, and voting in general elections.
They heeded the clarion call of ‘harambee’ and pooled resources together to build school, cattle dips, and some also grew enough maize, which they donated to the government to distribute to communities affected by drought. They also enabled the government to make profit in that through the forest department, they sold mature trees to sawmills. Gachema says they deserved appreciation, not eviction. What makes them bitter, however, is that the forests they spent decades conserving were soon cleared after evictions by other people who were allocated the land.
OTHER EVICTIONS
Inconsiderate evictions are, however, not isolated to Laikipia West. A National Assembly Hansard report of May 10, 1994, for example, captured a heated debate concerning some 500 people who were made destitute after the government evicted them from Chehe and Hombe forests in Nyeri.They were said to be descendants of people employed by the forest department to plant trees in the 1920s, but the government of the day regarded them as illegal settlers.
Some media reports have it that over 10,000 people were evicted from forests in Mt Kenya and Aberdare slopes in 1989, and forced to live in shacks outside Zaina, Hombe, Ragati and Chehe forests in Nyeri, in abject hopelessness.
In 2009, through the intervention of the then first lady, Lucy Kibaki, 25,000 acres of land were hived from Solio Ranch for settlement of Mt Kenya forest evictees. But not all benefited, as in July last year, over 2,000 evictees of Kahurura and Gathiru forests on the slopes of Mt Kenya appealed to President Uhuru Kenyatta for resettlement.
On February 21, 2014, the Land and Human Rights Advocacy Organisation did an open letter to the Government of Kenya and other state actors on land, environment and natural resources, opposing eviction of the Sengwer community from Embobut forest, to conserve the forest biodiversity.
The letter, titled ‘The Truth About Embobut Forest Evictions and A Way Forward’, was addressed to President Uhuru Kenyatta, the then Enviroment CS Judi Wakhungu, Attorney General Githu Muigai, Environment Committee chairperson Amina Abdalla, and Lands Committee Department chairperson Alex Mwiru.
The groups said the eviction was a gross violation of human rights, given that the Sengwer people are a marginalised ethnic group of hunter- gatherers, who have for centuries regarded the forest as their ancestral and communal land.
MAU FOREST EVICTIONS
Many a Kenyan has also found themselves in pain and misery following forcible evictions from the Mau forest complex, the largest indigenous montane forest in East Africa, with an area of 273,300ha. The forest was originally occupied by the Ogiek community, whose hunter-gatherer life style sustained the forest.
But in the 1980s and 90s, during the Kanu era, many people, including famed politicians like Franklin Bett and Zakayo Cheriot, were allocated the forestland. Kiptagich Tea Factory, owned by the family of former President Daniel Moi, had its land hived off from Mau forest. The resulting human activities, especially logging, led to wanton destruction of this water tower.
The 2004 Ndung’u Report termed these allocations illegal and recommended revocation. The evictions, without a resettlement plan, began in 2004 through to 2006.
Leaders like NASA principal Raila Odinga paid a heavy political price, after he, on July 15, 2008, then as a Prime Minister, issued an order that proper evictions be carried out by October 2008.