NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Forest Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial Kenya, 1940-1990s A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of History By Alphonse Omondi Otieno EVANSTON, ILLINOIS December 2008 2 © Copyright by Otieno, Alphonse Omondi 2008 All Rights reserved. 3 ABSTRACT Forest Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial Kenya, 1940-1990s Alphonse Omondi Otieno In the period 1940-1990s, the Kenyan forestry policy evolved from an emphasis on preservation to a combination of programs which embodied both rural Africans’ interests and practices and state interests in environmental issues. Using four cases from the western Kenya region, this dissertation explains how and why this shift took place. It examines the significance of local processes in the form of struggles over preserved rural landscapes in the shift of the policy. The struggles were manifested in contests and negotiations between officials and rural people from the affected areas. Through these contests and negotiations, compromises that led to the preservation of the landscapes materialized. The compromises allowed rural Africans’ interests and uses of the landscapes to insinuate themselves into the preservation policy reshaping it in the process in different contexts. Despite the compromises, contests against the preservation continued due to its restrictive effects on local ways of using the landscapes. Rural Africans made persistent claims for usufruct and ownership rights to the preserved landscapes which compelled government officials in some cases to give back substantial acres of the preserved forests to the claimants and in other cases to allow regulated uses of the forests. These official responses incorporated local ways of using the landscapes into conventional agendas for the forest preservation. To expand forests in rural areas in the face of such incessant claims for land, the government adopted social forestry and agroforestry programs that aimed at integrating forests, crops, livestock, and people. The programs appropriated certain local land-and tree-use practices which transformed the forestry policy into a mixture of local uses of landscapes and 4 conventional discourses on forests. The constitution of the forestry policy was thus more complex than the high modernist model used for environmental policies generally. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT So many people contributed to this dissertation in many valuable ways. I will not be able to mention them all in name here, but I would like to acknowledge the guidance and generous support I received from my advisor, Professor David Schoenbrun. He was always available and ready to help whenever I needed it. His incisive questions pushed me to think critically and clearly about this work. Many a times did I face dead-ends, but the ton of literature he suggested at such moments opened up new questions and perspectives that always propelled me forward beyond what had initially seemed insurmountable. In times of crises, when I thought I would not make it, he was always there to offer encouragement and insights. Without any doubt, his objective was to push me to excellence, to mould me into a good scholar. If I have not reached his expectations, the blame squarely falls on me. He did all he could and he did it best. I am exceedingly grateful. My committee members, Professor Jonathon Glassman, Professor Josef Barton, and Professor Karen Tranberg Hansen were extremely helpful. I thank them for their reading and critical suggestions that provided me with new perspectives. Without them this dissertation would not have been possible. The financial assistance that I received from a number of institutions at Northwestern University enabled me to travel to Kenya for research. The Graduate School offered me the Graduate Research Grant. The Program of African Studies granted me Hans E. Panofsky Pre- Dissertation and Guyer-Virmani Awards. I also received Graduate Student Summer Research Travel Grant from the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies. During my fieldwork, I was able to meet my daily expenses from the teaching assistantship that the History Department offered me. I am extremely grateful. 6 I deeply thank Professor Benjamin Frommer and Professor Edward Muir of the History Department who always intervened when I had nothing to fall back on in terms of finances. Three times they offered me teaching opportunities that provided me with atleast some income to meet my expenses as I labored daily on this dissertation. David Easterbrook, the curator of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, offered me a summer job that kept me going financially as I corrected this dissertation. During my research, the staff at the Kenya National Archives, Nairobi, worked hard daily to ensure that I received the materials I needed. I express my gratitude to them. I also thank the men and women who generously spared their precious time to allow me to interview them. The valuable information they provided contributed immensely to this dissertation. My friends and colleagues, Professor Evan Mwangi, Rita Wilkenfeld, Pamela Khanakwa, Chrysanthus Gwellem, Dr. Patricia Ogendengbe, Eunice Uchechi Ukaegbu, Sam Obiero, Gabriel Odando, and Dr. Joseph Oyugi offered a social space where I could sometimes go to escape the rigors of dissertation writing. The many moments I spent with them left me rejuvenated and motivated to plough back into my work. I cannot imagine how I would have fared without them. My family was always supportive and encouraging. I believe it was their constant prayer that saw me through the hurdles I faced during this project. Last but not least, without the strength that God provided whenever I felt weakened I would not have made it this far. My humble thanks to the Great One, Nyasaye Obong’o Nyakalaga, who moved with me throughout this arduous process. 7 DEDICATION To my family. In loving memory of my sister, Justin Akinyi who departed so early. 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………3 Acknowledgment……………………………………………………………………………….5 Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………7 List of maps and pictures……………………………………………………………………….9 Chapter One: Introduction: Contested and negotiated forestry………………………………………………………………10 Chapter Two: A place to live: African perceptions and uses of landscapes in the western Kenya Region before forest preservation …………………………………………………………………………………….50 Chapter Three: Alienating landscapes: Forestry policy in Western Kenya 1940-1963……………………………………………….....95 Chapter Four: Continuity and change: The forestry policy at the local and national levels, 1963-1980……………………………….157 Chapter Five: Taking forestry back to the People: Agroforestry and Social forestry policies, 1980-1990s………………………………………...190 Chapter Six: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..222 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………233 9 LIST OF MAPS AND PICTURES Maps Map 1: The western Kenya Region 27 Map 2: European settlements around Chepalungu forest area 64 Map 3: Western Kenya forest reserves 100 Map 4 Chepalungu, Sotik and Trans-Mara 102 Pictures Picture 1 : Chepalungu Forest Reserve and spaces cleared for settlement, 2005 71 Picture 2: Honey hunting, an old practice that is still common in Chepalungu, 2005 72 Picture 3: Part of Maragoli hill, 2005 81 Picture 4: Kakamega forest, 2005 92 10 Chapter One Introduction: Contested and negotiated forestry In the late 1980s the Kenyan government, working with non-governmental agencies, adopted social forestry programs in the country that aimed at taking forestry back to the people. Forestry before then was influenced primarily by commercial, as well as ecological interests, later articulated in a conservationist tone, which in essence emphasized macroeconomic significance of forests. The shift to social forestry emerged as part of a long history of struggles over rural landscapes between their residents, government officials, and later, agents of non-governmental organizations in different parts of the country, beginning in the colonial period. The struggles began when colonial officials embarked on the policy for forest preservation, turning portions of rural landscapes into forest reserves, areas which local people had owned and used since pre- colonial times. They had cultivated crops and grazed stock within cleared spaces, hunted wild animals within scattered bush, collected wood fuel, herbal medicine, as well as building materials from forests. They also had utilized specific trees and spaces within the landscapes for religious purposes. These landscapes, thus, were of both material and symbolic significance to their African users. Their alienation through the forestry policy that restricted local uses generated intense struggles between rural residents and colonial officials, which persisted into the period after independence. The changes that occurred as the result of the policy have been inexpressibly daunting to most present elderly people who remember old uses of the landscapes with nostalgia and great sense of loss. During interviews, they expressed extreme concern about social and ecological changes that have occurred since the beginning of the policy process. For example, Magana, an elderly man from Maragoli hill, in the western Kenya region, lamented loss of important 11 indigenous trees from the hill, some of which were considered sacred and of wild animals and birds which he and his peers used to hunt, grasses