How 110 years of colonial mischief left behind a troubled land in Laikipia
Of late, Laikipia has been in the news in what, on the face of it, looks like a feud between pastoralists and sedentary farmers. But 110 years after the Maasai were forced to abandon their grazing lands, and a colonial judge justified the Maasai agreement as a “treaty” between two nations, Laikipia has become a battle-field, especially, during the dry season.
Today, the county has been left to deal with the consequences of Laikipia land alienation for white settlements – an anthropological experiment that was the dream of British administrator Sir Charles Eliot. I pity the modern-day administrators who, perhaps with no regard to history, think they can resolve the Laikipia question with police. Let me help them rethink their strategy, for free.
It all started with a man known as Sir Charles Eliot, a racist who given a chance, would have exterminated many indigenous communities.
To accommodate the white settlers, the colonial government, or rather Sir Eliot, hatched a plot to remove the Maasai in one of the biggest single transfers of a community. Actually, if he had his way, Sir Eliot would have done much worse.
He wrote in the Natal Witness of October 24, 1903: “There can be no doubt that the Maasai and many other tribes must go under. It is a prospect which I view with equanimity… I have no desire to protect Maasaidom… the sooner it disappears and it is unknown, except in books of anthropology, the better.”
Sir Eliot believed in the foundation of a white colony similar to what was happening in South Africa, and held that “the interior of the Protectorate is a white man’s country.”
He said: “…it is mere hypocrisy not to admit that white interest must be paramount, and that the main object of our policy and legislation should be to found a white colony.”
Laikipia happens to be the last frontier of colonial Kenya. The best grazing lands, rivers and streams are now within private properties. As the pressure on grazing lands grows and climate change continues to challenge the pastoralists’ way of life, the private land holdings will continue to be easy targets.
Will that be resolved easily? No.
Il Ngwesi Community Conservancy staff Fred Karmushu checks the terrain at the facility located in Laikipia North.
Sir Eliot was warned of the dangers of dispossessing the Maasai, and the Kikuyu in Kiambu, of their land, but he continued to grant more concessions until a scandal emerged over a mining company that had acquired huge tracts of land. He was forced to resign – but the damage had been done. More so, he had laid the ground for the first Maasai treaty in 1904, which created Laikipia as a Maasai reserve in addition to the Southern Reserve.
It was Sir Eliot’s successor, Sir Donald Stewart, who signed this first Maasai agreement in 1904 after he got instructions from London to “sequestrate” the Maasai land.
Initially, it had been agreed that the Maasai would be allotted two reserves on both sides of the Uganda Railway, and that ownership of the land “shall be enduring so long as the Maasai as a race shall exist…(and) that Europeans or other settlers shall not be allowed to take up land in the settlement”. This, as they found later, was a lie. There was hope that the Maasai in the Southern Reserve would settle down and could even become farmers near Kilimanjaro.
While there is (and there was) evidence that Laibon Lenana and his advisers had been induced to agree to vacate the land and settle in the land that had been identified by Sir Eliot in 1904, the claim that his dying wish was that the Maasai should be reunited in one reserve has been called into doubt.
Actually, the British government had pledged, after 1904, not to move the Maasai again, but when another “agreement” was “signed” in 1911, the community decided to file the now famous Ol Le Njogo civil case No 91 of 1912, which was to challenge the legality of the agreement since the Crown had backtracked on the assurance that nobody would touch Laikipia.
It happens that after the 1911 treaty, the Maasai were in April 1912 removed from Laikipia and taken to the Southern Reserve or what is today Narok and Kajiado counties (and parts of Naivasha), which they considered to be inferior.
Historically, Laikipia grasslands were the frontier that offered the pastoralists the last chance for their animals and that is why the Maasai decided to sue after the 1911 agreement.
Economic and physical suffering
In the court papers, Maasai community lawyers A. Morrison and A.D. Home, sued three colonial officials including then Attorney-General R.M. Combe and 20 Maasai signatories whom they accused of conspiring to cause economic and physical suffering to the community.
The Maasai community lawyers argued that the 1904 agreement was a civil contract that was still subsisting, and thus the 1911 agreement was null and void. They also argued that the new agreement had been made by individuals who had no authority to bind the entire tribe.
By then, Lenana had died and the agreement was apparently signed by, among others, Lenana’s son Segi and a person identified as Saburi, “Prime Minister of the Late Lenana and Principal Elder of Maasai Southern Reserve.”
Finally, they wanted an injunction restraining the government from preventing the return of the Maasai and their stock to Laikipia
But Justice R.W. Hamilton, sitting at the Mombasa Municipal Court, dismissed the case on May 26, 1913 arguing that the matter was outside the court’s jurisdiction since this was a pact between two nations.
He defined the Maasai as a nation distinguished by a similar language and government. He also argued that the colonial government could not be faulted since the “treaty” – as he called it – amounted “to an act of state entered into between parties possessing sovereign rights, which can only be enforced by diplomatic representations or in the last resort by war.”
“Even if a wrong has been done,” he argued, “it is a wrong for which no municipal court of justice can afford a remedy.”
The thinking about Laikipia was that the Maasai had ceded part of their land in a “treaty” with the Crown and that when they did that they were not subjects of the Crown but “protected foreigners, who, in return for that protection, owed obedience” to the King in England. By then Kenya was known as East African Protectorate and only became a colony in 1920.
Fire rages on Lolldaiga Hills in Laikipia County on March 26, 2021.
This position was upheld by Justices Morris Carter, Bonham Carter and King Farlow of the Court of Appeal for East Africa, and that is how the Maasai lost the argument about Laikipia in the courts. The decision of the courts was a victory to the settlers and the thinking of Sir Eliot who believed that Africans should be forced out of the fertile lands, forced to pay tax and only have satellite villages from where they would work as labourers.
Certainly, Sir Eliot had foreseen a time when Laikipia would also be taken. This is actually contained in his book The East African Protectorate. He said: “Should Laikipia not be required for the Maasai it will probably afford superb land for European graziers.”
That means that there was nothing like a “Lenana dying wish” to have the Maasai move but a desire within the establishment to have the Laikipia land taken by white settlers. That tone would be picked by future administrators.
It only dawned on the Maasai that they had been duped when they reached the Southern Reserve in what newspapers described as the “biggest exodus of men, animals, and beasts.”
Besides deaths of men, women and children, the Maasai also lost lots of livestock. This information is contained in some of the notes left by Naivasha Provincial Commissioner John Ainsworth.
“I noticed a considerable mortality among the sheep… there appeared to be a fair amount of sickness among the natives… fever and chest pneumonia were the chief complaints.”
Some of the Maasai did not reach the Southern Reserve and returned to the boundaries of Laikipia. It is this group that has grown over the years and pose the greatest dilemma.
So, how should the historical question on Laikipia be resolved after 110 years?
Certainly, one thing is clear; some colonial mischief continues to be the nightmare within Laikipia plains. And from my naïve position, it won’t be resolved with guns. BY DAILY NATION
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