FULL TEXT: CORD’s Statement on Langata Land Grabbing

CORD’S STATEMENT ON ‘RE-EMERGENCE OF LAND GRABBING IN KENYA’
Monday, January 19th, 2015, marked a glorious day in the history of Kenya. For the first time since we won our independence, we witnessed our children express dissatisfaction and impatience with the continued looting of public resources and take it upon themselves to confront a person who has become a notorious land grabber in Kenya.
As we congratulate the pupils of Lang’ata Road Primary School for their patriotism, it is regrettable that the government had to wait until the children acted before taking action despite the government’s full knowledge of this criminal enterprise.
The people have a constitutional right to information and it is a betrayal of the people for the government to refuse to release information on criminal activities against the people and to stand with the persons who are grabbing public property.
The menace of land grabbing is back in Kenya, and as before, it has full government sanction. We have had land issues in Lamu, Eldoret, Karen, Ngurman in Narok, Taita Taveta to mention just a few. All these remain unresolved and the Government has done nothing to conclusively deal with the many land irregularities all over the Republic despite the continued promise from the Jubilee regime that it has the answer.
Of note is Jubilee’s inability to offer strategies and interventions towards resolving the political, legal and moral questions around land grabbing in Kenya. Land grabbing has been officialised and there exists structural failures by the National Lands Commission (NLC) to deal with the land question including historical injustices on our land tenure system.
Of particular concern is the extension of lease to the Kenyatta family to the 30,000hectares of farmland in Taita Taveta which has been a historical focus of dispossession and disenfranchisement of the local community. This extension by the NLC in total disregard of the Constitutional order is immoral, unacceptable.
Further, the Jubilee regime has admitted that the land in question belongs to Lang’ata Road Primary School and that it was being grabbed. Jubilee must resolve the land grabbing question in the Wilson Airport Area which neighbors the primary school.
We particularly wish to remind the Government of the continued complaints that have been made over the years regarding the grabbing of the land on which Weston Hotel stands.
The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy remains committed to justice and accountability in the land sector. We put all land grabbers on notice, we shall continue to resist all attempts to defraud Kenyans of their just inheritance. We therefore call upon the Jubilee regime to implement the Ndungu report and the TJRC report without any further delay.
We therefore demand that the Government takes action to revoke the title to Weston Hotel, to bring down all developments on the said land and to re-convey the property to the people of Kenya.
We equally demand the extension of lease to the Kenyatta family be nullified and a proper constitutional process be initiated for the proper disposition of the said land.
God bless Kenya!
Signed and dated,
Hon Kalonzo Musyoka, EGH.
Sen Moses Wetangula, EGH.
January 21st, 2015.