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| Ogiek, Kenya
© Survival |
'We refuse to give up hoping. This is still our home' Ogiek man, 2000
The Nairobi High Court was packed to the roof. Behind the row of advocates in
their wigs and gowns sat the representatives of the Ogiek community of
forest-dwellers and honey-gatherers, also formally dressed in fur cloaks and
head-dresses decorated with cowrie shells. Around them were people from other
Ogiek communities, there out of solidarity, and dressed in what is nowadays
their everyday wear: the Euro-American hand-me-downs of the African poor. The
crowd of other people present – the journalists, human rights observers, and
members of the Kenyan public – showed how much interest this case had aroused.
Together we waited for the final judgement on a lawsuit that has been going
on since May 1999: was the Kenyan Government within its rights in evicting 5,000
Ogiek tribespeople from Tinet Forest? Tinet, about 250 kilometres west of
Nairobi, is part of the much larger Mau Forest, ancestral home of the Ogiek
people.
The advocates for the Ogiek had argued that Tinet was the ancestral land of
the community; that nine years ago the government had agreed that they should
remain there and granted them each a five-acre plot; and that depriving them of
access to the forest and its products infringed their right to life and
livelihood. Survival supporters and others had written from all over the world
on their behalf.
But – when they finally appeared – judges Samuel Oguk and Richard Kuloba
dismissed the Ogiek's case and found that they had no right whatever to continue
living in Tinet. The tone of the judgment was harsh and contemptuous, as though
the judges were determined not only to deny the title of the Tinet Ogiek, but to
frighten off any other group of people who might try to make a similar claim.
The judges both dismissed the claim of the Ogiek to be indigenous to Tinet,
and denied the fact that tracts of land have already been given to powerful
non-Ogiek individuals. The authorities, they said, had belatedly recognised that
Tinet is a water catchment area as well as a gazetted forest and conservation
area, and so had lawfully revoked their earlier plan to let the Ogiek remain.
The judgement climaxed in an outburst of environmental rhetoric clearly aimed
at enlisting the support of the green lobby. 'The eviction is for the
purpose of saving the whole of Kenya from a possible environmental
disaster.' The Ogiek, the judges alleged, had engaged in 'massive
developments' which disqualify them from living in the forest. One would think
that they had constructed vast shopping malls rather than scattered wooden
schoolhouses and little one-room stores, and that these were the principal
threat to Kenya's environment.
Nothing was said about the real threats – the huge logging operations which
are still destroying other parts of the Mau forest in defiance of the logging
ban recently imposed by the government, the tea plantations owned by a company
belonging to President Moi, or the intensive cultivation of flowers for export.
There was no mention of the handsome house and large estate owned by Zakayo
Cheruiyot, Permanent Secretary for Provincial Administration and Internal
Security in the Office of the President. Nobody has proposed to evict him.
Observers have little doubt that interests like these are the real forces behind
the judgment.
The Ogiek have had a severe blow. Some women were in tears. But the community
remain defiant. They are appealing against the judgment. One man said,
'We refuse to give up hoping – Tinet is still our home.'
