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{
    "id": 266334,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/266334/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 269,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Mungatana",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 185,
        "legal_name": "Danson Buya Mungatana",
        "slug": "danson-mungatana"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the only thing that I wanted to add in terms of my own thinking is that let us ask the philosophical question that has been asked here many times. Who has brought the problem as far as land registration is concerned? That question has not been answered in this beautiful draft. My simple answer is people have come, for example to the Coast where I come from, who have the knowledge about how to acquire land, who know the process and then used, or abused their knowledge, to acquire land on which people exist; then they come to Nairobi and said: “There are no people here, this land is empty and so give me its registration.” This is the problem. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, if you look at this Bill--- I will demonstrate it to you. First we have the preliminaries which tell us about the definitions and all these things that would never make sense to the man in the shamba in Garsen, or the man in the Clapham Omnibus in London. There are these beautiful definitions and all that. The next thing is registration units in Clause 6. After that is Land Registry and Community Land Registry. Now, for purposes of clarity, I am a simple villager in a village called Ngao in Garsen, Tana River District; my biggest worry and fear as a coastal is that somebody is going to come here and tell me that the land where I have buried my great grandfather and great grandmother is not mine because he has a title deed. We all know the Government can issue title deeds. I have no information whatsoever and somebody comes with a surprise. Another hon. Member said that people get to know when it is time for eviction that their land has gone. We have omitted the most significant thing that worries most Kenyans – the duty to give clear information before even the process of registration at units. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want the Minister to think with me how we can make giving of information compulsory before any registration takes place. We must not assume; you watched the Syokimau demolitions that were going on; those were not people who were villagers. Some of them are educated people, and who had invested a lot of money in putting up some of the structures on the land around the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA); those are not simple people. But all the land laws, some of which are going to be eradicated by this law--- We have inherited the same colonial attitude and we shall pass the law to provide for registration, how we will transfer this land to so-and-so, but information will not be given to the general public and the person who lives there. I would have preferred that we have a whole section imposing a lot of responsibility on the part of the Government, on any person who wants to get a grant and on any person who wants to purchase land. We need a whole section that says that the Chief Land Registrar must be satisfied that there was a physical visit, and that there were no people, if it was a Government grant, and that there was advertisement so that people know that tenure is changing. There should be papers spread around that area. There should be radio announcements. These are not very expensive. It should not just be on television or in the Kenya Gazette. How many people in Garsen read the Kenya Gazette ? How many people even read those small things people put titled: Change of User . Worse still, people are living in an area they know to be home and then one day somebody comes with a title deed. There has been no process of informing them. We need to create a whole section that talks about the processes that must be undertaken to inform everybody who is physically on the ground. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I know when they are doing the adjudication, they do some advertisement and everything, but I want people to know that majority of Kenyans who live in the rural areas do not have education. We must go beyond the call of duty. Let us think together; what is it that we can put here that will protect every coastal person and other Kenyans from future expropriation? We must think of how we will make it difficult for someone to effect a change of user. If a place has been agricultural or pastoral, somebody should not just come and change user and then people are left hanging in the air. So, I am going to propose that the officials in the Land Registry--- Before we come for the Third Reading, we will have to be creative and impose responsibilities on people who are going to receive grants from the Government, certificate of leases and all the legal titles; such people must make sure that the people who are occupying the land have information. I am not even saying that we should refuse to give land, but people must know about land transactions. If they used to own some land and it is being sold--- Neighbours must know that so-and-so is selling his land. People must know what is happening; then if somebody new comes in, there is no problem. If that land is being given and the process is transparent, there is no problem. However, this shock treatment is what has created the hatred that has been between the land owners in this country and those who have been dispossessed. The colonial mentality of protecting those who have is what has been imported into the legal regime and the thinking has not changed. There is a lot that I think we could do here in order to create sections that will make it very difficult for land to go to anyone without a transparent process. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, while still on this, there is the question of community land, which is another thing. I am so uncomfortable with the issue of members of a certain group coming together. We will have county governments. Why can people not hold land in trust, because this community is bound to change anyway? They are continually giving birth. I know we have community land, but why create a situation where certain people can actually abuse this process to get access to land? I am not speaking from theory. Somewhere in Kilifi County - I will not be too specific – in a whole location, and the Minister knows about this case, people were registered as a ranch. Then they did all the procedures, the land was given to them and then they charged it to a bank and then they disappeared with all the money and people in a whole location were left high and dry. In the case of that community, you cannot expect the Government to go back again and use other powers to settle those people because you cannot create many squatters at ago. What if the process was very transparent? What if the process was very clear and everyone was being told that our land has not been registered but it is being registered now or our land is being sold? We should even have provisions in this law that say that people who want to purchase or allocate that land should visit community elders. In our place or in our language we say lalava . There is a crier who goes out if there is information in the village that is critical and everyone is told. There is a bell that is rung in a certain way and people are able to know that the information is critical. However, the way this has been done, it does not provide for that. The Bible tells us that where there is light, darkness cannot be there. So, if you put a lot of light in the processing itself, alienation of land to thugs will never happen again in this country. However, we have gone straight to registration units and the land registry. I think we have not addressed the problem of land. If the Maasai - at that time when the colonial masters were in - had gone through a process like that, their land would not have gone the way it has gone. If it would have gone, it would have gone on a consensus basis. If the coastal people had gone through a process like that, the land would not have gone and if it had gone, it would have been on a willing buyer, willing seller. I feel very strongly, that a whole section of information has been removed. Otherwise, I think this is a good law. In particular, I like the idea of the cadastral maps. I propose that whether progressively or immediately, we should create an electronic register in every county, and all these things be reflected at ago so that even when we are saying that in Tana River County we have land that we can invite investors, the investor can, at a touch of a button after paying the requisite fees, get proper information on which land is available and which is not. I think we should introduce a clause here. We will think how he will put it. We will probably discuss this with the Minister. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, with regard to the marginalized areas like where we come from and the areas that hon. Ethuro had talked about in northern Kenya, there has not been registration of land. This is because of historical reasons. We were not in the centre of Government and, therefore, allocation of money was always to the people who had the muscle in politics. So, our areas were always a second thought. In this Land Registration Bill, we ought to create a clause that will say that for a number of years there ought to be affirmative action in terms of allocation of resources so that certain areas which had been left out can be given more funding to enable registration to take place in those areas. If the entire northern Kenya or most of it is unregistered and the Minister for Lands or the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Lands starts preparing his budget, he will be guided by this section. He will be told that whichever way he prepares his budget, he must do some affirmative action so that registration can take place in these areas. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, one of the things we have found very difficult to deal with is how unfair, from our own perspective, Kenya is. You are told that there is no money to finish adjudication process in your area. You are also told that the funding has been taken to purchase land for so-and-so. You are told that this process is about to be completed in this area and if we put the money there, we will complete it. Obviously, they will never complete. You are made to wait and wait. I really urge that this time round we introduce a clause that will compel the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Lands to carry out affirmative action for a number of years so that the budgetary allocations can help those of us who come from the counties which have not been given titles so that some tittles can be done. This should be, at least, for a period of years so that we can have a fresh beginning in the area of land management in this country. Otherwise, I just want to support this Bill."
}