THE TIANIA ARE DYING DUE TO LAND CASES

The Tiania community of Meru has earned the dubious distinction as the most litigious among other Meru communities due to endless and unresolved land related cases with some dating as far back as 40 years. Let's now look at a brief genesis of this sordid state of affairs.
The colonial government through the Swynnerton Plan of 1954 introduced land adjudication and registration in the native reserves which hitherto were regulated through  local community agreements whereby land was viewed as the property of the community that occupied, cultivated and grazed livestock on it without much attachment to individual or selfish utilization. Obviously, as Prof. Okoth Ogendo taught me many years ago, there are pros and cons to the Swynnerton Plan, but that is a story for another day. The plan meant that those who cultivated several parcels of land, some in different Eco-zones, had them surveyed, put together and allotted a temporary number pending the issuance of a land title deed once all the parties involved were satisfied that the process had been done fairly. Whereas this exercise went smoothly in the neighboring Imenti community, this was not the case in Tiania where selfish and corrupt members of the local Provincial Administration colluded with the government land officers to punish clans and individuals who were considered anti-government and as perceived enemies. Pieces of land were hived-off from the "bad"clans and passed to the favored clans while individuals in the local Provincial Administration, their families and friends were generously rewarded from chunks of land curved from the unwanted individuals, the poor and the illiterates particularly if they didn't belong to the colonial religion. This is why you find that the former members of the Provincial administration and their confidants have large pieces of land in the middle of poverty and misery in Tiania. These members of the local Provincial Administration planted the first seeds of disaffection in Tiania and the poor and those affected lodged their claims to their stolen land but the new corrupt Independent government wasn't sympathetic to their cases either. Although land committees were supposed to be chosen by the community and thus neutral, the powerful Provincial Administrators  armed with  the repressive Chiefs Authority Act ensured that their relatives, friends and cronies were put in the committees. Therefore, it's easy to guess who got justice and who got the shorter end of the stick at the end of the day. In order to cover their tracks of iniquities, the retired Provincial Administrators and their associates have continued to influence local politics such that politicians get sucked into the imbroglio or at best are made redundant in the equation.
The main beneficiaries of these unresolved cases are the lawyers who have made a fortune out of it and the greedy and rich people who have joined in to take advantage of poverty and illiteracy so as to buy land on the cheap. Therefore, unless we manage to exorcise the ghosts of our forefathers who sowed the seeds of greed and corruption in land cases, the Tiania will remain litigious, poor and hungry leading to many early visits to the grave.The situation is now getting complicated by the day because the first generation of litigants and witnesses are dead, records have been compromised or lost and soon it will be a case of "dead men tell no tales". What a shame! The challenge now is to the local politicians who need to show leadership by leading from the front otherwise they also risk dubbed the "leaders of litigants". The situation is now grave and needs urgent attention from those with some moral fiber and human hearts.