14 octobre 2006
Rising tensions over land
In the dock again. Thomas Cholmondeley, heir to one of Kenya's most famous white settler dynasties, is facing his second murder charge. The first time he killed a black man on his family estate, last year, the case was dropped, to the outrage of many.
Now, he is on trial over the separate killing of a man he caught poaching on his land in May. Like everywhere in Kenya, unemployment and poverty run high in the Rift Valley. This means the temptation to search for food or fuel on private land is often too great to resist.
Sarah Njoya, victim’s widow
“My husband had gone to Cholmondeley’s ranch to hunt for meat and feed our family.”
But trespassing and poaching are just the tip of the iceberg. Over the past couple of years, the Rift Valley area has seen an explosion of violence, with several white residents killed in armed robberies and carjackings.
Tony Church manages a large ranch with 750 heads of cattle.
Tony Church, Kedong ranch manager
“Of course we are concerned about security. We are a long way off the beaten track so to speak, we are 8 kilometers from any kind of main road and it's quite a trek for anyone to get in here. And we have our own security, we've got watchmen and I'm always armed of course.”
For Tony Church, it's not the trespassers themselves that are the most to blame, but the police and government who have been slow in tackling the land issue in the country.
Tony Church, Kedong ranch manager
“They kinda shy away from it and hope that by burying their head in the sand that things will sort of blow away but they don't, they won't.”
And it’s not just colonial throwbacks like Cholmondley who are seen to have more than their fare share of land. Many blame years of corrupt political patronage since independence for the fact that a tiny minority has so much, while so many Kenyans have none at all.
