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{
"id": 212905,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/212905/?format=api",
"text_counter": 229,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Wekesa",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Science and Technology",
"speaker": {
"id": 137,
"legal_name": "Alfred B. Wekesa Sambu",
"slug": "alfred-sambu"
},
"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to second this Bill. This Bill has come at an opportune time. As you know, it is only the other day that the Minister for Finance set aside Kshs1.3 billion for the purpose of doing exactly what this Bill wants. It is necessary to recognise the efforts of the previous Government in settling Kenyans. It should not be lost to Members of Parliament, and Kenyans at large, that, we, in Kenya, did not approach the issue of settlement in the proper way. If you look right across this nation, you will see that before Independence, we had the so-called \"White Highlands\". In 1963, the Europeans were given the option to either continue farming or leave this country. They were given ample time to either sell their land to the Government through a programme called \"willing-buyer-willing seller\" or continue farming. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this process went on very well. During the Kenyatta regime, many Kenyans were settled in the so-called \"White Highlands\". It was a very well structured process. Even the squatters who took over the Europeans farms were given training in both livestock management and agriculture. They were given loans to enable them farm. So, we had a very civilised way of turning the former mzungu farms to their owners, who were the indigenous Africans. I am saying this because we can see that elsewhere a process has destabilised the economy. I have in mind the situation that has happened in Zimbabwe. I have visited many countries. Zimbabwe was in exactly the same status as Kenya. There, the process of transferring land from the mzungu to the African was not properly structured. You can see that this has affected the economy of a country such as Zimbabwe, which depended mainly on agriculture. I do not want to go out of the subject. All that I am trying to say is that we should be grateful to the process that was put in place after Independence. The Kenyatta regime tried as much as possible to settle people in the so-called \"White Highlands\". While touching on the history, I also want to say that the structures that were put in place to settle people have never been revamped. This Bills is actually going to address that issue. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. Now, we need to zero in on the so-called landless people in our nation. You know that our economy depends on agriculture. So, the way we handle our land issue is still very important to us, as Members of Parliament. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what happened recently and created a large number of displaced people, through tribal clashes, as I saw it happen in my own district, did contribute a lot to people moving from land they had legally acquired, or which land they had been given by the Government. Many people still stay at market centres and towns. They have been rendered landless, not through their own fault but because of what we call \"the tribal clashes of 1991 and 1992\", which continued up to 1994. Also, during the process of land acquisition between 1963 and 1974, the Government of the day forgot the fact that there were many people working on the so- called \"European land\". So, when the land distribution was undertaken, not everybody was given 2674 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 19, 2007 land. It would have been very proper if during the purchase of those huge farms in the Rift Valley everybody, who could prove that he had worked on those farms was given accommodation. However, that did not happen. In particular, the scheme that was referred to as \"willing-buyer- willing-seller\" never took into consideration the people who had previously worked on those farms. The people who went to the Rift Valley region and bought land from the mzungu actually cleared workers from those farms when settling in them and hired their own workers, thereby rendering the former workers landless. Those people are still with us. Many generations now reside in market places. They are completely landless. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also had the so-called land grabbers of the Moi era. This created a lot of landless people. We know of people who grabbed forest land. The grabbers chased away the people who had been living on that land for a long time. People grabbed land in urban areas. In Nairobi, a lot of plots were grabbed by individuals. In my own town of Kitale, and in my own district of Trans Nzoia, there were many instances of individuals grabbing land and chasing away people who had lived on that land. If I heard the Mover of the Bill properly, he has suggested that if anybody can prove that he has lived on a piece of land for more than five years, the Government of the day must consider it its duty to make sure that such a person is settled. So, we have landless people because of our historical background, right from the transition from the Colonial government to our present Government. Also, through land grabbing, many people were made landless. Farms and plots were grabbed and people were chased away from those plots. Those people are very many in this nation, right from Mombasa to Kitale---"
}