Senator Ledama Ole Kina: Defender of Maasai rights or just a rabble-rouser

Narok Senator Ledama ole Kina

Narok Senator Ledama ole Kina is a man who never shies away from controversy.

He picks fights one after another before sorting out earlier ones, something that has made him attract both friends and foes in equal measure.

A few who understand him have stayed close while those against his recent crusades avoid him like plague.

“Kina is somebody who pushes what he believes in and never steps back whatever the consequences,” says a senior politician from Narok County who did not want to be named for fear he might be seen as supporting the senator’s recent utterance against a community.

Kina, a first time senator, has spent most of his adult life in the United States studying and working. He used his connections to try and promote Maasai education, especially for the girl child.

He was the brain behind Maasai Education Discovery, an initiative in which he partnered with his US friends to promote education in Narok.

But recently, Kina is making headlines following his stand on the eviction of settlers from the Mau Forest complex and via a viral video and its impact on the inter-ethnic relations in Narok County.

The senator began his campaign a few weeks ago on KTN where he vowed to ensure the forest is preserved.

Initially, Kina who hails from the minority Ildamat clan of Narok, had not shown any political interest until June last year when he decided to go for the Senate seat.

His elder brother Billy Kina, who is in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) Secretariat, had all along shown political interest in the family of eight.

“I decided to go for it after I saw the need for representing my people at another level,” Kina once said.

Some say his kind of politics can only be compared to that of the late William ole Ntimama, a long time Narok North MP and Cabinet minister. Others say he is yet to master the art of politics.

“Like Ntimama, he is abrasive and not a fence sitter when it comes to issues affecting the community,” says Jackson Saika, the national chairman of Maasai Professionals Association.

Saika says the senator is still learning the ropes, adding that in 10 years, he will be like Ntimama or even much better.

Kina has come out strongly to castigate those opposing the Mau evictions and mentioned the names of influential people who he claims own land in the vast water tower.

But his recent remarks about women from a certain community has landed him in trouble with authorities.

Last Friday, he was required to appear before the Narok County Security and Intelligence Committee for interrogation over the ongoing Mau Forest clashes.

Those who support his stand on the eviction of illegal settlers from Mau see him as a Ntimama reincarnate.

In his time, Ntimama took on the high and mighty without a flinch and with a missionary zeal. His blunt, bold speak on powder keg issues was hailed as evidence of unparalleled courage.

But Kina’s utterances have not gone down well with some leaders from the South Rift region who feel the senator is inciting ethnic animosity between communities living in the region and must be stopped.

Former Cabinet minister Franklin Bett says the path taken by the young senator is worrying.

“What the senator is doing is wrong and he needs to be stopped in his tracks before he ignites more ethnic violence between the two communities.

Kina recently used two helicopters to fly over areas of the forest that were cleared of settlers, purporting to pour seedlings of indigenous trees he had acquired from abroad.