The Nation carried a good news story on restoration of the Mau Forest Complex last week. The report appeared on Monday, September 24 headlined, “Politicians, lands officials and group ranch leaders to answer to Mau’s tragedy of commons” (p4).
“The government has lined up for prosecution tens of individuals it believes bear the greatest responsibility for the dishing out of huge swathes of the 46,000-hectare Maasai Mau forest,” the Nation reported.
“Rift Valley Regional Commissioner George Natembeya says the government has collected all it needs – green cards, topographical maps and gazette notices – and that it was all systems go for their arraignment to face charges for the destruction of one of the largest closed canopy forests in Africa.”
The Nation said among those targeted are top politicians and former Lands ministry officials stationed in Nairobi and Narok at the time.
This is certainly good news. Restoration of Kenya’s largest water tower, which has been extensively destroyed, has received wide media coverage for nearly a decade. It is long overdue.
For this, Kenyan journalists deserve commendation for bringing this man-made disaster to public attention and for piling pressure on the government to save the country’s critical biodiversity and livelihoods.
A 2018 report by the Kenya Water Towers Agency says by 2009 over 40 water sources in the complex had dried up. A task force formed by then Prime Minister Raila Odinga in 2008 reported that a quarter of the Mau was grabbed in just 15 years.
More than 60,000 people are being moved out of the Mau Forest Complex in the second round of evictions. But they are mostly innocent buyers of forest land who were conned by fraudsters with high-level connections.
Restoration of the Mau has been slow because of the politics involved. The issue has even taken a toll on the careers of certain politicians. Some Rift Valley bigwigs demand compensation and resettlement. But how do you claim rights over property acquired illegally?
Kenya has 18 gazetted and 23 non-gazetted water towers, Mau being the largest. A water tower is a forested area that acts as a receptacle for rainwater, stores the water in aquifers underneath and gradually releases the water to rivers and springs emanating from it.
The Mau is made up of 22 forest blocks in the five counties of Narok, Bomet, Kericho, Nakuru and Uasin Gishu. It is the source of major rivers in the Rift Valley, Western Kenya and parts of Tanzania.
Will the Mau ever be restored? The government seems determined to do so. But the truth might lie not in the assurances of Regional Commissioner George Natembeya but in a cartoon by Nation caricaturist Victor Ndula.
The cartoon names the man bearing the greatest responsibility for destruction of the Mau. Ndula depicts him seated in stately comfort, aging gracefully right in the heart of the Mau. He is preaching to anyone who cares to hear: “Cut down one tree and plant two in its place”.
But there is no Mau, only the grand old man surrounded by tree stumps. Not a single tree in sight. The monster has cut down everything. All that remains besides the stumps is one of the (in)famous wooden symbols of his power. Greed and hypocrisy are the man’s true legacy, Ndula seems to suggest.
Does the government have the guts to uproot this monster and his associates from the Mau, or is the state content to chase out only unfortunate small peasants?
That is the question posed by People Daily editorial cartoonist Stano. His September 24 piece features a humongous government broom sweeping the Mau. But it is the dirt-poor people who are targeted to pave way for rich thieves.
In time, Kenyans will decide for themselves whom between the cartoonists and the government is telling the truth about Mau restoration. But for now the prophets have spoken.
