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{
    "id": 1100352,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1100352/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 289,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Eng.) Hargura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 827,
        "legal_name": "Godana Hargura",
        "slug": "godana-hargura"
    },
    "content": "One problem I have seen with us, Kenyans, is that we conveniently want to forget history and start as if things happened yesterday. These are historical issues. In fact, the better part of last evening and this morning, I was in a meeting trying to handle some issue on historical land injustices, which communities are submitting to the National Land Commission (NLC). This is the case that we have been having. It is a historical fact that these were pastoralist areas. When the colonialists came with their mentality that land does not belong to anybody, what they call terra nullius, they came in, took the land, and displaced these pastoralists. The pastoral way of life is something that was despised very much by the colonialists. Madam Deputy Speaker, I can remember the case of Marsabit. When they came to Marsabit mountains, they found the Rendile herders there with their camels. They thought that, that it was a backward way of using the land. They chased them out and brought in farmers from even outside this country and settled them there. Those are the kind of injustices we have now. To this case of Laikipia, the way livestock keepers normally live is you leave the better part of your land for livestock grazing during the dry season, the fall back areas. Laikipia happened to be the fallback are of the Samburu. You do not always occupy your land. The problem with the non-pastoralists is that for you to call land yours, you must be settled there with your hut. It is not that way. You have to divide your land. There are areas where you come to when the drought it biting and fall back there. Laikipia looks like it was a fallback area. Unfortunately, you will find that when the colonialists came, they divided the land. They preferred an agricultural way of life to pastoralism. Madam Deputy Speaker, now, it has even gone further. Wildlife conservation is preferred to livestock keeping. If you fly over that area, large tracts of land are just fenced. The only thing you see there is the fence and nothing else. There is a little wildlife roaming in the area. This time round, if there was proper understanding, there should have been a way of allowing these pastoralists to graze in these conservancies during the dry season. It does not always occur, it is only during the dry season. There should be mechanism that recognizes that these people were here before. Even they grabbed their land, they should assist them during the dry season. They should not fence their land, putting up an electric fence and then keep a few elephants there for tourists to see, while the owners of that land are dying next to it with their animals. That is what is happening now. Madam Deputy Speaker, it has reached a point where it is Kenyans who are being forced against each other. The pastoralists come and the only land they find is the land where other Kenyans are farming. That is where the conflict is coming from. These pastoralists were deflected from their lands through large tracts of land being grabbed by colonialists, having the lease extended, then it is said that that it is private land."
}