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"content": "come to trade in Kenya so that they could have the island exchanged with part of land in Kenya; Witu and Heligoland. It so happened. The same British and Germans are responsible for demarcating Africa into various countries irrespective of communities which lived and even today live across the boundaries particularly the Maasais, the Kuria, the Suba and quite a number of tribes. It is the same British and Germans who saw it fit to transfer our Mt. Kilimanjaro, which that time was in Kenya, to the Germans in 1891 just because there was a queen who wanted it in Germany. The British wanted to have a principal outlet from Mombasa. To have the railway line constructed in 1894, they had, therefore, to agree to have Kenya and Uganda become protectorates. They had to protect those ones against the Germans. That is how bad history can be and how injustice came to Kenya. Through the same process, the railway was started in 1894 and it reached Port Florence in 1901. At that time, Kisumu was called Port Florence. Since the British had already decided that even Uganda was to be protected because of the source of River Nile which took water to Egypt that relied on River Nile, in 1895, therefore, demarcation was done and Kisumu which was in Uganda at that time, had to be transferred to Kenya so that they could be in one country called the Kenya colony. So, by 1920, the Kenya colony was created. When it was created, the boundaries included and excluded some communities. Some found themselves in Uganda while others found themselves in Tanzania, Somali, Ethiopia, and Sudan. That is how Kenya was created. In 1963, when we became independent, we had more than 40 tribes living in Kenya which occupied parcels of land, what we call community land. With the community land ownership, there were creations within the colony of provinces and districts which, today we call counties. Initially, we had eight to ten provinces. I remember that central Kenya did not include Kiambu. Southern province included only Machakos. When there was some shake-up in 1963, they created the eight provinces. Out of that creation, many other people came into play. We had some very powerful politicians. Some powerful communities came up. To our surprise, you find that a place like Kirinyaga, at that time called Embu up to 1963, had to have its land hived out of the Kirinyaga proper because there was somebody who was more powerful that time at the Government and created southern Kirinyaga to be part of a province in eastern province which was hived off from central. This has happened and we have so many of those injustices which have happened. So, as we contribute to this Motion, it is important to consider some of these problems and errors which were created by none other than the colonialists and our people. There is nobody else who is concerned apart from what we are doing now. We are looking into a commission which will look into all those problems; for instance, Mwea which should have been in Kirinyaga and not Mbeere, Makueni which borders Kajiado, there is a boundary problem there and so many other boundaries which came up as a result of migration of tribes which were existing until the time they found it necessary to be called sedentary communities. These are the people who settled to farming and so on. In 1904 and 1911, the Maasai Agreement was signed by the colonialist because they wanted the Maasai reserve to be on the south and the north to be left so that the “whites” could occupy the land. When the colonialists came, they occupied the best land. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}