Let’s not joke with the emotive land question.

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray’. We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land,’’ said Desmond Tutu. As in most African states, the link between land, politics, community interests and national development is strong in Kenya.

On 6 April 1994, President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane exploded in the skies above Kigali. Violence engrossed the country. It shook Rwanda. It shook the world. Two months ago I visited a memorial site for the Rwandan genocide in the outskirts of Kigali; the experiences of the 1994 Rwandan genocide are gloomy. Summarizing the Rwandan genocide as “a failure of humanity” and a case of ethno-tribal conflict of the African jungles’ is not enough. Coupled with other factors, land contributed to this conflict through the unfair and inequitable land distribution and population pressure tightening cut-throat contests for scarce land, ultimately shaping the communal distrust.

Kenya is currently in a land reform process, recently the Cabinet approved three bills; the National Land Commission (NLC), the land bill and the land registration bill now set for debate in parliament. The 2012 national land commission bill seeks to form the NLC and the County Land Management Boards, whilst the 2012 Land bill aims to nationalize and consolidate land laws around land related resources. The Land registration bill seeks to guide land registration in the new counties.

Chapter five on land and environment of Kenya’s constitution is ambitious and therefore there is a need to be cautious in its implementation knowing that contexts differ; therefore the National Land commissioners must not be textbook oriented experts and elites clogged with thoughts of tribal analysis packaged as nationalist; instead they should view things with open minds.

It is important that due attention and care be accorded to historical injustices committed to the voiceless communities of Kenya; this would take us away from the Rwanda route of “years of complaints” by the communities.
Throughout this process, the key issues around past historical injustices and gender perspectives must be at the center of the land question for it to make a mark of meaning in Kenya’s national development discourse. Due attention must focus on rights of users, land access, tenure, ownership, use and control from both current and historical perspectives; due attention must also be given to the rot and putrefactions in the international trade rules and subsidies rigged to favor the global giants.

Key issues putting pressure on land use include population pressure, climate change, declining soil fertility, demand for global food and fuel security, desertification, exclusion of locals in governance and management, and inter-ethnic resource conflicts especially in areas originally expropriated for resettlement and inadequate capacities in the land sector. Secured access to land is a prerequisite for sustainable agriculture, national development and prosperity for all.

Land is a key factor in any meaningful production process. According to Euripides, "what greater grief than the loss of one's native land." This validates African people’s struggle to retain their ancestral homelands and to gain independence from the colonial slavery and external occupation.
Land remains the definitive form of social, political, communal, national, and cultural, economic security, expression and identity. People’s right to land is central in the struggle against poverty, since landlessness is a principal ground of poverty. National and county policy makers and implementers should enshrine justice and equality, hostile view of community voices, gender spectacles for all, rights of Pastoralists, indigenous peoples, regulating market forces, well behaved foreign investor, and accessible legitimate policy engagement talks-UNCLEAR WHAT WRITER IS TRYING TO SAY HERE. Land is here to stay with us and its importance is best captured by the Hebrew proverb, “He is not a full man who does not own a piece of land. "

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Cheruiyot Collins is a Pan-Africanist working in Nairobi.
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