Land-Tenure Shifts in the Maa Landscapes, Kenya, and the Impacts on Social-Cultural Relations, Structural Power and Social Economic Differentiation

3.1. Historical Land-Tenure Shifts in the Maa Landscapes Bordering Chyulu Hills and Tsavo-West National Parks The Maa landscapes bordering the eastern side of Chyulu Hills and Tsavo-west national parks are characterised by a long history of complex land ownership and control shifts. Before the onset of colonialism in Kenya, the Maa pastoralists enjoyed free movement across expansive landscapes ranging from Southwest to Southeast Kenya and northern Tanzania. The contemporary land-tenure shifts started with the hiving off of what was part of the original Maa landscapes by the British colonial authority in 1947–48 to create Tsavo National Reserve, now Tsavo-east and Tsavo-west National Parks [10,11,12]. The British colonial authority forced the Maa to sign treaties restricting their access to over 50% of their original land. Kenya’s post-colonial government did not improve the situation. Instead, it continued to enforce and justify the Maa’s displacement. In 1983, Chyulu Hills was also turned into a national park, imposing even more restrictions on pasture and access to forest resources. The conservation-based displacement, dispossession and land-tenure shifts more generally in the Maa landscapes corroborate with colonial displacement and dispossession of indigenous inhabitants during the establishment of premier national parks in America and elsewhere [7,25,26,27,28]. The new wildlife conservation practices limited the Maa’s access to their traditional grazing lands, changed their social relations and shaped differential abilities to benefit from the landscapes. Further discussion on how the displacement or exclusion of the Maa community, who historically lived in and managed these landscapes, led to changes in land tenure, loss of livelihoods, and cultural and social dislocation, is provided in Sections 3.2 and 3.3 of this article.The second major shift is converting the communal land-tenure system into group ranches. This was initiated in 1952 by the colonial-era East African Royal Commission, also known as the Dow Commission, along with the post-independence Lawrence Commission of 1965. The two commissions formed the policy basis for forming group ranches beginning in 1968 when parliament enacted the Land Adjudication Act Chapter 284 [1]. The new statute provided land registration to groups of people who elected to be recognized as such [29]. The Maa rangelands adjoining Chyulu and Tsavo-west national parks were converted into group ranches such as Kuku, Kimana, Mbirikani and Rombo. The ranches retained collective land ownership but brought into effect grazing management plans aimed at limiting nomadism and reducing the number of animals an individual kept. In return, the ranches would benefit from the development of permanent water sources and the introduction of measures to promote commercial livestock keeping. The ranches would also benefit from the land in more subtle ways, including monetary income from wildlife conservation activities and financial assistance from conservation NGOs [1]. However, the ranches did not make provisions for dry season grazing lands, and those that did failed to provide for movement corridors across group-ranch boundaries. This resulted in disputes between different group-ranch members over access to traditional dry-season pasture and water [14]. Further, Mwangi E [30] observes that some individuals exploited their friendship and kinship ties to committees and ordinary members of neighbouring group ranches to graze their livestock during the wet season but retreated to their ranches during the dry season. Thus, some individuals could effectively use others’ group ranch as a wet-season pasture while reserving their ranch for use during the dry season. Reciprocal use would be exclusively extended to kins and friends in the neighbouring ranches who had extended use of their ranches during the wet season. Members who did not have such friendship and kinship ties were thus socially disadvantaged. The third major shift was spearheaded by Kenya’s second president, Daniel Arap Moi. Moi had repeatedly encouraged the Maa community to subdivide group ranches, stressing that they were not economically viable and that individual land ownership would allow families to develop their piece of land [30]. In 1989, he directed the then Kajiado District to expedite the subdivision of group ranches and allocate and issue individual owners with a title deed of their parcel. Although most widows and elderly males were against the subdivision, the majority of the group ranch members overwhelmingly supported the subdivision. They observed that individualized land ownership would improve one’s status in the community and open up possibilities for alternative livelihood and income-generating opportunities [14]. When doing this research in 2022, most of the group ranches had been subdivided or were in the final stages of dissolution and subdivision. Kimana group ranch, for example, was fully subdivided and Mbirikani and Kuku group ranches were in the final stages of full subdivision. Each member of Kimana group ranch was allocated a 60-acre parcel and two-acre plot with the aim of settling the members on the two-acre land, which they could use for farming while leasing the 60 acres to a conservation NGO. While some members felt that these changes would result in reduced animal pasture, some did not see any problem with it. This generated yet another major shift in the Maa landscapes as most members either sold out their parcels or started converting them into agricultural land. Evidence suggests that most of the two-acre parcels have been subdivided into half-acre and quarter-acre plots. These smaller plots have been sold or converted into commercial and residential areas, contributing to the rapid growth of Kimana town (personal observation). People have become complacent, arguing that before subdivision, the group ranch was benefiting only the ranch representatives at the expense of the community:

‘I don’t mind if people sell the land. If I sell, it’s my land. I would rather sell my land and ‘eat the money’ than have one person benefitting all alone from our communal land. The officials would have sold the land anyway.’—Nkerai, a middle-aged pastoralist and former member of the Kimana group ranch.

3.2. Shifts in Socio-Cultural Relations The shifts in land tenure from communal to group ranch ownership reconfigured the free movement of the Maa people and their livestock and constrained access rights to their indigenous landscapes. This was further complicated by the subdivision of the ranches into individual parcels, a shift that, although overwhelmingly supported by the majority of the ranch members [30], inadvertently undermined the socio-cultural basis of pastoralists’ nomadic livelihoods [1,13,31]. This produced new complexities: while some residents considered individual ownership as an opportunity to exercise autonomy over their land, others felt that it undermined communal connections to land, livestock, and traditional grazing patterns. The social-cultural structures and relations that allowed for traditional responses to ecological changes were disrupted, leading to challenges in long-held land and pasture management strategies [30]. Traditionally, the Maa negotiated pasture resources through social networks such as clans, age-set affiliations and kinship ties [32]. Elders regulated access to communal pastures and water sources. There were grazing areas set aside for use only in exceptionally dry seasons. Some grazing spaces were reserved near homesteads for calves and sick cattle grazing. Breaching the protocols established for regulating the use of pasture or water was met with fines, punishments, or injunctions [13]. Today, such protocols and order have been greatly compromised owing to subdivision and subsequent issuance of title-deeds to individuals, meaning that the land is no longer communal but individually owned. ‘You cannot tell someone not to put up a fence on their land or not to burn or clear the grass... they tell you that this is their land and they can do whatever they want with it’, lamented Naitoi, a senior elder and a former official of the Kimana Group Ranch. Without proper regulation and control, widespread farming has occurred in subdivided ranches owing to increased demand to produce cash crops for urban markets. This farming often occurs in wetlands formerly served as dry-season grazing and watering points. As Naitoi further observed, perennial, spring-fed wetlands traditionally relied upon during drought have been individualized, drained, and converted to farmlands. Even for individuals whose land fell within such dry season reserves and have continued to reserve them, the social networks that afforded clan members, kins, and other relations to access such dry season reserves have largely diminished. Other respondents observed that access to dry-season forage and water was heavily restricted, or payment was required to access them on land that was once communal but is now someone else’s land. Leboo, a middle-aged pastoralist quipped, ‘Even your relative or your close friend now asks for money to allow your animals to drink water or graze on his land’. This article also illuminates a land-tenure shift that deviates from the community’s communal life and property ownership culture with long-term ramifications on people’s social and cultural disposition. Lemaiyan, an elderly male pastoralist and member of the Kuku group ranch observes that the new shifts in Maa landscapes and population have diluted the community’s cultural and social fabric. For example, it was traditionally very easy to identify a Maa person’s lineage by asking their name. This has become difficult due to land subdivision and sales, which have led to the influx of non-Maa communities and changes in the naming system. Further, he observes that it was traditionally highly disparaging for a Maa man not to own any livestock. ‘Nobody would allow you to marry their daughter if you had no cattle’, he quipped. He remarked that when a goat or a cow was slaughtered, somebody who did not have any livestock would be given a small piece of the most delicious part of the meat and asked how it tasted. Upon saying it was nice, he would be asked to go and ‘look for’ (meaning to work towards acquiring) his livestock, leaving the others to enjoy the meat. He could not get any more meat even if he stuck around. Lemaiyan’s accounts demonstrate how the current changes in land tenure and social differentiation might trouble long-held Maa traditions and close entwinement of their lives with livestock. The community continues to experience loss of grazing land and subsequently reduced or no cattle among completely sedentary households [33]. 3.3. Structural Power and Socio-Economic Differentiation The formation of group ranches in the Maa landscapes appears to have entrenched a power structure where each ranch was controlled and governed by an organisation with officials such as a chairman, secretary and treasurer. The subdivision of the group ranches was motivated by a complex suite of factors, including the fear of appropriation of the land by the ranch officials in collusion with politicians and government officials [14,32]. A common sentiment in the majority of the group ranches was that the three primary officials of the ranches (chairman, secretary, treasurer) were often involved in financial mismanagement and were benefitting either individually or with close relatives and friends from new land-use projects. In particular, distrust over the distribution of financial benefits from conservation projects in the group rancheswas frequently stated. Leboo, a middle-aged pastoralist, remarked that, ‘The ranch receives payment from a conservation NGO, but nothing comes to the common pastoralists. It all ends up in the pockets of the officials’. Summing his statement, Leboo remarked that the community members realized that the ranch was in the hands of individuals who might eventually sell it or that someone might grab the land from them, so they decided to subdivide it and have each member exercise ownership over their share. Unks et al. [1] corroborate this, observing that most members held that the officials were not representing them but making decisions that served their interests. Other studies have also reported widespread concerns that representatives of the group ranches were misappropriating or expropriating the land. (See [1,30]). Disquiet about excesses by the ranch officials might have driven the community to embrace subdivision of the ranches. Subsequently, subdividing the land brought forth a market system that saw the officials use their positions to exploit the less powerful in the community. For example, ranch officials are claimed to have skewed the process to register, secure and allot more land for themselves and their relatives, including children: ‘Some underage children were allocated land while mature sons from some families were left out’, claimed Naini, an elderly male Kuku Ranch member. According to Naini, this negated the long-held social principle of Maa elders, which was to exercise both authority and fairness. Other members cited political interferences, claiming that allotment was done based on one’s political alignment. Further, new shifts in land subdivision and allotment processes have risen to disturb the subdivision and allotment of Kuku and Rombo group ranches, which was in progress at the time of conducting this research. Unlike Kimana and Mbirikani, which did not charge any subdivision fee, Kuku and Rombo have introduced a fee, making the system favourable to those who can afford and are quick to raise the required fee as the allotment is on a first-come, first-served basis. The poverty level in the area is high and drought has made it difficult for the members to afford the KES 21,000 (≈$170) needed to facilitate subdivision and allotment. Those who cannot afford it are left out of the prime land regardless of whether they originally occupied it. Naini regretted living on his piece of land for 42 years and even buried his father there. Yet, his land was allocated to somebody else. The shifts have left Naini socially differentiated, as he was asked to leave his inheritance because the land now belongs to someone else. Cases of forceful relocation of ‘politically incorrect’ members and disinheritance of widows, orphans and the poor during land subdivision and allotment were also reported elsewhere (See [32]). So are multiple land allocations to group ranch officials and their close associates: ‘they allocated themselves and their relatives and friends many parcels of land. Later, they subdivided the parcels or sold them to people that were not even members of this ranch’, said Lemaiyan, an elderly male pastoralist and member of Kuku ranch. Although Maa traditions and customs deny women entitlement to property at the household level, and women and youth are generally excluded from formal decision-making processes regarding land and finances [34], subdivision of the ranches has suffered even a bigger blow to women and youth. When the landscapes were communal, women and youth enjoyed free access to resources such as fuel wood, poles for construction, herbal medicine, and honey from nature. The subdivision of the ranches did not take women and youth into account, causing them to lose access to these resources, which are now on private land.These groups thus experience land privatisation differently. Furthermore, men hold title deeds and can sell the land without consulting their families. Unfortunately, because the majority do not know the value of the land, they sell it at a throwaway price and squander the little money, leaving their families destitute. The title deed holders are also using the title documents to secure loans at the expense of the families in the event such loans are not paid up. 3.4. More-Than-Human Dispossession Colonial and post-colonial land grabs in areas shared by humans and wildlife have negatively affected not just people and livestock, but also wildlife. Mwangi [12] has demonstrated the extent to which wildlife, like humans, can be victims of conservation initiatives, a situation he refers to as multispecies alienation. Other studies have also hinted at wildlife’s close ties with humans and how expropriation of nature might trouble such ties [35,36,37,38]. The land-tenure shifts discussed in this article have disturbed human life and livelihoods and human co-existence with wildlife andlivestock. Dividing the Maa landscapes into small land parcels and converting them into farmland or fragmented pastures has made it hard for livestock and wildlife to access grazing areas and water. It also prevents them from moving freely between important dry and wet season pastures [2]. Fencing off of individual parcels of land has also made it difficult for wildlife to move from one conservation area to another, for example, from Amboseli to Chyulu or Tsavo National Parks or vice-versa (Personal conversation with KWS Warden, Chyulu National Park). This illuminates a more-than-human process that includes non-human beings such as livestock and wildlife as victims of human-induced land-tenure changes and should therefore be considered a more-than-human process. Land expropriation for wildlife conservation and subdivision and privatization of the Maa landscapes have further ramifications for the pastoralists. Firstly, the new dispensation demands that no one graze their livestockon other individuals’ land. However, the 60 acres that each household got in Kimana Ranch, for example, was not adequate for the big herds that families had so the majority of the families inadvertently had to reduce their herds. Other herders have often opted to take a risk and enter protected areas such as Chyulu Hills and Tsavo-west National Parks with subsequent conflicts with conservation authorities if the herders and/or their livestock are found inside the park. Moreover, hostility is building among residents who have taken up farming and those who remained pastoralists. This is due to the conversion of pasture into farmlands and the constant straying of cattle and goats into neighbouring farms to forage on crops. Such conflicts were non-existent before the hiving of the original pastoral lands for wildlife conservation and the subsequent subdivision and individualization of the communal land that remained. This process can be thought about as a more-than-human achievement with animals, both wildlife and, to some extent, livestock, necessitating reconfiguration of people’s lives and sense of essence as human beings.