Probably by now, you have seen that the much-hyped Mau evictions had little to do with the environment.
It was just a convenient excuse that covered an intensely simmering situation steeped with geo-ethnic considerations and emergent political realities, which are working to complicate matters. The problems continue.
It is my sincere hope that all those involved will come to the conclusion that the solutions for the Mau issue will not be simple, or painless and that the problems would have to be solved at a much higher level of thinking than that which caused them. Just this week ethnic clashes erupted in the northern part of the Mau pitting the Maasai and the Kipsigis. This is coming hardly a week after another harrowing battle between the Ogiek and the Kipsigis. The Kipsigis and the Ogiek are practically co-ethnics, with only very slight variations in their speech and culture. To get them to fight, it must have taken the inciter a good amount of work. The situation is complicated. We must begin to unpack the issues bedeviling the region.
When the Mau evictions began last month, there was markedly little or no sympathy for the migrant Kipsigis who were seen as being behind the destruction of the forest. Everyone supported their eviction and when Environment CS Tobiko Keriako declared there would be no compensation, their fortunes were decidedly grim. I made a most grueling tour of the region, from Nkoben, Sierra Leone and the upper parts of Ol Mekenyu, where security forces evicted thousands of Kipsigis settlers on the Maasai Mau.
Many of them had lived there all their lives, including one old man, who paid for his land in cattle, having arrived in 1971. You can still see at Ol Mekenyu the signage for the road commissioned by Uhuru Kenyatta when he campaigned in the area in July last year, only weeks to his battle with Raila who had the upper hand in Narok. Uhuru promised goodies, including the construction of the road and numerous schools (for which hundreds of millions were released) only to order the eviction of the Kipsigis soon as he had secured his second term. I counted 26 schools that were closed by the operation. These schools were also polling centres and so you can tell what that means in the politics of 2022.
ROLE OF OLE KINA
Narok senator Ledama ole Kina has become the voice of the anti-Kipsigis sentiments in Narok. He is probably the only leader who has had the courage to take up the cudgels and confront the situation. Standing there with baton at hand, ole Kina is the quintessential Maasai man-of-war, the armageddonist, spewing everything from expletives to threats, and literally getting away with it. But he is coming in at a time when the problems of Narok were coming home to roost, some of which were sown long before he was born. But why does he hate the Kipsigis so much? One plausible reason can be seen in his own controversial election. He won only because the Kipsigis fielded a strong candidate, Albert Kiming’in, through the NVP and which served to split the Jubilee vote. This saw the fall of Nkoida ole Lankas, who was a strong Jubilee candidate. Ole Kina is, therefore, not sitting pretty and must consolidate his political position among the Maasai. He knows that a change in the strategy by Jubilee could send him packing in 2022.
But are his anti-Kipsigis sentiments emblematic of the problems that we face as a nation?
When we adopted devolution, we created geo-ethnic microcosms and failed to emphasise on nationhood and cohesion. Narok, the heartland of the Maa nation, is feeling the pinch of migration. Ole Kina and Donald Trump, therefore, have one thing in common — the Kipsigis being the new Mexicans.
He betrayed his intentions with the Mau after he called for the Kipsigis to return to whence they came from — not to other parts of Narok. When the first Kipsigis moved to Narok in the 1920s, they came in small numbers, in indeterminable trickles. But then their birth rate was higher than that of the Maasai and their numbers began to rise. The Maasai felt the pinch of their migration when in 1992, the Kilgoris seat nearly fell to a Kipsigis, Richard Bwogo Birir. Some say he won only for the results to be doctored. Again in 2007, when Johana Ngeno won it. It took the intervention of the Maasai (the tallying station was destroyed) necessitating a by-election. This time, the Maasai were wiser and fielded only one candidate and won the seat.
THE KIPSIGIS QUESTION
But it would not be easy to keep the Kipsigis out of political power. In the next election, there were now six constituencies in Narok — Narok North, Narok West, Narok South, Narok East, Emurua Dikirr and Kilgoris. This spread the Maa vote thin. Emurua Dikirr fell to a Kipsigis, while Narok West and Narok South constituencies had Kipsigis contestants, all of whom registered considerable support.
The Kipsigis, who were decidedly pro-Jubilee, opened up the race, delivering the leverage Governor Samuel Tunai needed to retain his seat on a Jubilee ticket.
The Maasai, on the other hand, were mostly sympathetic to ODM, having licked the sweet lollipop of resource nationalism fed to them by Raila Odinga. Raila seemed to offer the only plausible route to regaining their lost lands.
When Senator Stephen Ntutu opted to quit politics and allow his brother, Patrick, to run for governor, he essentially opened the race to a bruising battle splitting his populous Purko clan and paving way for a Maasai of a lesser clan (current Governor Tunai) to win.
But it was the Kipsigis who were on his side that made the day for Tunai. It got worse for the Purko, who are yet to feel the benefit of their numbers, when the number of their MCAs lost seats to the Kipsigis. In fact, the loss of Melelo ward and even Lolunga ward to Kipsigis signaled the advent of troubling times for the Maasai. Both wards are at the heart of Maasai history and culture and coming under the Kipsigis is evidence of their seemingly tenacious eastward expansion. There are now about a dozen Kipsigis elected MCAs, which is a significant increase from 2013. The Kipsigis have a nostalgic, even sentimental, attachment to many parts of Narok, one of which is Angata Barikoi in Kilgoris and another is Kutto in Ilmotiok ward, both of which are steeped in legend and have even been set to music numerous times. So they won’t leave. They reportedly told Senator Kina that they would only leave Narok for heaven. Kina is still insisting they must leave and could barely hide his disdain for the Kipsigis using unacceptably disdainful language to describe them.
TUNAI SUCCESSION
As Tunai’s succession gains currency, the Kipsigis question must be resolved. Statistically, it is feared that they could someday (in the near future) command all the key positions in the county. So, the evictions were about the fight by the Maasai for their beloved homeland of Narok. However, it was the late senior chief Lerionka ole Ntutu, who had been tolerant to the Kipsigis migration and reportedly told his sons that there was no way the situation could be reversed.
The Purko, the largest clan among the Maasai, feel it is their turn to take over the leadership of Narok. The Ntutu Family had positioned themselves to take over the governorship last year, even making great sacrifices for it. The sum total of their calculation left them out of power. Patrick Ntutu has lately taken a more conciliatory attitude with the Kipsigis, knowing they could hold the key to his future political ambitions. Senator Kina, on the other hand, has endeared himself to the ordinary Maasai, but is extremely unpopular with the Kipsigis, who see him as the face of their problems. They believe that he has completely manipulated county commissioner George Natembeya and Tobiko.
In fact, during the recent sweeping operations carried out by the security forces to remove the Kipsigis from the Mau, hired goons were in tow burning down huts, food stores, farm crops and making off with whatever they could. For this, the Maasai were actually employing an age-old strategy.
Back in March 1905, the Kipsigis raided the Maasai and made off with hundreds of cows. The Maasai did not bother to go after the cattle, they had gained a new and powerful ally – the British. And so they turned to them for help. Eager to please the Maasai over the recently signed Anglo-Maasai Treaty, the British demanded that the Kipsigis return the cattle at once. Not accustomed to such orders, they simply ignored a move that invited disaster. Led by Major Richard Pope-Hennessy, the British forces carried out an expedition against the Kipsigis and the Maasai were in tow to recover their cattle. In the process, the British massacred an estimated 1,900 Kipsigis and the Maasai took more than thrice the animals they had lost. It turned out to be a very profitable venture, although they would soon bitterly discover that the British were not at all as honourable as they seemed. So bad were the Kipsigis deaths that the place of the battle was named Chemagel, which, in their language, means the place where the teeth were laid out to dry (meaning the unburied skulls of the dead).
COOPERATION NOT CONFRONTATION
The Kipsigis and the Maasai have inter-married with the very latest being that of the Emurua Dikirr MP Johana Ngeno, who has married into the Ntutu family. Another is Narok South MP Korei ole Lemein, who is married to a Kipsigis. The wise ones are seeing that it is more profitable that the two communities work together. Going forward however, the Kipsigis must also admit that it is not in their best interest to take part in confrontational political maneuvers in Narok until such a time that the county is more cosmopolitan. As economic migrants, they are playing into the psyche that feeds such antagonistic rhetoric that comes from the Ole Kinas of this world. But as their influence grows, so will their counter grow leading to an endless circle of violence. Kina on the other hand must also realise that his brand of antagonism only breeds the resolve of the Kipsigis to stay. Perhaps he should visit Uasin Gishu and learn that when the Nandi realised they were unable to remove the Kikuyu through violence, they opted to work with them. It has proved a rather profitable venture.