THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

declared a ban on felling indigenous trees. 388 Whether or not these presidential decrees were
followed by a legal notice is highly debatable. This results from the fact that, on the contrary
Kenya entered a period of great change, losing the opportunity to move towards social and
environmental justice. Many of its vast forests continued to be wrecked by companies owned
by the few businesses that benefited from collusion, corruption and nepotism during the Moi
regime. Local people were oppressed by these companies, often through the authoritarian
apparatus of the police, army and Forest Department. Across Kenya, the situation was so bad
that illegal logging outstripped legal timber production. 389
The above scenario vindicates the role played by neo-patrimonial politics in the destruction of
the national biodiversity resource regime in Kenya. That is if put simply, political cronies in
the former regimes used official institutional power to carry out illegal and unofficial
transactions on behalf of the state. Agents of patrimonial politics are seldom independent of
each other. This makes it hard to apportion individual contributions to the biodiversity crisis
in Kenya at this point in time. However, what we know is that such agents operate at different
times and their roles play a significant role in fostering subsequent mosaic practices. In the
next sub-section we delve into the historical context of neo-patrimonial Politics in Kenya.
Locating neo-patrimonial politics in Kenya: A historical context
In order for us to understand the history of neo-patrimonialism in Kenya, it is imperative to
draw ourselves back to the immediate years of post independent Kenya, specifically looking
at the new government under the leadership of President Jomo Kenyatta and his eventual
successor President Daniel Arap Moi. The new government was sworn into power after the
Mau Mau revolution whose chief slogan was to reclaim back the land that had been grabbed
by the white settlers.
In all, the new government was faced with a task of land redistribution and restoration to the
rightful owners. 390 While this cause was noble, it was heavily abused. This resulted from the
widespread presidential discretion with regard to alienated lands especially the land around
forested areas and highlands. In many instances both Presidents Kenyatta and Moi were
making land grants to individuals without any consideration to the public interests. This was
done for political reasons, and without proper pursuit of legal procedures, whilst there was
also extensive illegal allocation by the presidents of alienated land that is; land which they did
not have legal power to allocate. 391
There were also various commissioners of land who made direct grants of government land
without any authority from the President, but also undertook the system of patrimonial land
and resource allocation. Forged letters and documents were used to allocate land in numerous
instances, with many records at the Ministry of Lands and Settlements having been
388 Wass, P. 1995. Kenya’s Indegenous Forests: Status, Management and Conservation. Naiorbi:IUCN.
389 Daily Nation. Firm Destroying Forests, Says Church leaders. Sepetember 1996.
390 Muchai, J.1985. A History of Mordern Kenya.Nairobi:East African Publishing House.
391 GOK. 2005. The Ndungu Report on land grabing in Kenya. Opcit
79