Grounds for Appeal: Maasai Customary Claims and Conflicts

Abstract

Abstract: In a 1994 episode, Maasai herders from Ewuaso were prevented from watering livestock at wells along border between two ranches, but, before strife escalated, police established control. After such events, talk puts a construction on event, framing, highlighting, justifying and reinterpreting it to certain aims and purposes. This article discusses backdrop to conflict in Ewuaso: subdivision and privatization of lands, competition for land by political factions and age-sets, claims by locally powerful and high Kenyan politics of grabbing land and forging electoral alliances, as global forces appear as local faces.Word blew like dust through market of small rift-valley town of Ewuaso oon Kedong', the river-of-beehives. Ewuaso herders had been accosted by a of armed men -- young men, or, rather, older boys, from an age-grade of later teenagers often glossed, not inappropriately, as warriors. These Il-murran from Mosiro, ranch immediately to south of Ewuaso ranch, sought to prevent herders from watering livestock at wells along border between two localities. In market town, a comparable set of young men from Ewuaso quickly gathered, readying themselves for a counterattack to defend what they saw as their group's rights. But before they could move to site, news came that police had established control, so, with a mixture of relief and regret, would-be champions of locality drifted home. A wind rises, becomes a swirling sand devil, then subsides. The state prevails.Local Maasai politics always seem to involve a ready mix of talk and violence, often talk, then violence, but just as often violence, then talk. After deed, talk puts a sort of construction on event, flaming, highlighting, justifying and reinterpreting it to certain aims and purposes. Never simply acts of force, violent deeds are practices which have force not despite but because they signify. For young men -- older boys -- from Mosiro, their attack on a herd that belonged to Senior Government Chief of Keekonyokie location -- of which both Ewuaso and Mosiro form a part -- was defensive, for ingress of his herd into Mosiro locality in early June 1994, was a concrete sign of his claim to land in area. To have allowed his herd access to wells, given ongoing conflicts, would have been to concede his right not only to water but to land.Named after its terrain (osero, a place of dry bushes, a sort of wilderness), Mosiro benefits from flow of Ewuaso Ng'iro down from slopes of rocky Osoit le Mosiro, but its lowland plains have served as wet-season pasture for several Maasai groups.(f.1) Throughout colonial period, and into decade of Kenya's Independence, Maasai districts represented crown land, held in trust for entire community. Governance occurred through a hierarchy of administrative levels; answerable to district commissioners and their subordinate district officers, government chiefs and subchiefs were responsible for locations and sublocations, generally demarcated in terms of Maasai customary territorial sections (Il-oshon) and subsections (In-kutot). Beginning in late 1960s, two Maasai districts of Kajiado and Narok were gradually transformed from trust to freehold. In areas of varying sizes, representing divisions of traditional sections, ranches were formed, titles of which were held by formally constituted group representatives, composed of adult males with recognized claims to local residence who were registered as members (Galaty, 1980a; Lawrence, 1966).Group ranches represented a social compromise between common and private property, or, to be more exact, between legally undifferentiated (nonetheless administratively and politically differentiated) crown land, in which communities held rights of residence and use, and legally differentiated and enclosed land, in which only individuals held private titl (Galaty, 1980a). …