Mau residents urge Attorney General to lift caveat on disputed land

Lawyer Kipkoech Ng’etich (left) representing Eastern Mau residents with other lawyers during the hearing of the Eastern Mau case at Environment and Lands Court on October 9,2023. [Kipsang Joseph,Standard]

Residents of Eastern Mau have asked the government to lift the caveat imposed on their land.

Through their lawyer Kipkoech Ng’etich, the residents, in a letter addressed to the Attorney General, said the imposition of the caveat on the land was not justified.

The locals, while referring to a 2020 case by Nessuit MCA Samuel Tonui on their behalf against the government, said they occupied the land following the excision of 35,301 hectares by Katana Ngala, then Minister for Environment, on October 8, 2001, through legal Notice Number 142.

The case, they noted, came for highlighting submissions on October 9, 2023, when the court reserved its judgment.

“Our clients are concerned that the Government of Kenya has continued to restrict their parcels in Molo, Njoro, Kuresoi South and North constituencies through a caveat devoid of any legitimate reasons,” read the letter.

They noted that the caveat followed an interim decision of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights Application no. 006/2012 vide an interim ruling of 15/3/2013 adding that the commission in its final decision of June 23, 2022, did not retain the caveat and the locals and interested parties are “befuddled by continued egregious and discriminatory actions by the State” against them for more than a decade now.

“We thus write to you to demand that the caveat placed across our clients’ parcels be removed forthwith for want of legal justification. Its continued existence is oppressive and discriminatory against the petitioners and interested parties however baseless it is. Your good office should not countenance any violation of the right to property and human dignity,” continued the letter.

In this case, residents want to stop the government from evicting them. They also want the government to revisit the intended degazettement of January 30, 2001, Legal Notice No 889 published on February 16, 2001, by the then Minister for Environment Francis Nyenze.

Kipkoech, on behalf of the locals, said the court should revisit Legal Notice No. 142 of 2001 by Katana Ngala, issued in August 2001.

But the State, through Counsel Fronicah Shirika, submitted that the occupants were not the original inhabitants of the Mau and had parcels of land elsewhere. She noted that they are not the Ogiek covered by the decisions of the African Court on Human and People’s Rights.

Shirika called on the court to intervene and save the environment, adding that the residents had not established the roots of their title deeds.

Lake Victoria, largely shared by Eastern African countries, she said, is fed by rivers originating from the Mau Forest Complex.

The case, Shirika said, was a dispute between the environment and humans.

She argued that titles issued in 1997, 1999 and 2013 were not a justification for the occupants. The right to own property, she said, is not absolute.

The counsel said that even if the said parcel had been degazetted, it would remain government land until when procedures have been followed and conditions have been met.

Justice John Mutungi of the Environment and Lands Court at Kerugoya said he will deliver judgment on the case on September 30, 2024.