Rich ‘pauper’ who can’t reap from his land

By Willis Oketch

He remembers that day when he decided to buy the farm in Likoni, Mombasa, vividly. It was 37 years ago when Evanson Kamau Waitiki, then aged 30, bought the Waitiki Farm.

“I had just come for my holiday from Japan where I was working with an international geothermal energy company when I saw an advertisement for the farm in the then East African Standard.I instantly liked it,” recalls Waitiki.

He travelled to Mombasa to look for the owner as there was no agent in Nairobi.

Sell off quickly
Determined to get the 940-acre farm, waitiki went to mombasa where an agent introduced him to the owner.

“The owner took me to the farm. He was in a hurry to leave the country for Canada and wanted to sell off quickly. I instantly liked the farm and told him I was going to buy it,“ Waitiki told The Standard.

After several correspondences with the owner, Waitiki struck a deal and went ahead to buy the farm.

“I bought the farm from Gulb Wood Company, which was owned by a renowned farmer in East Africa.”

When he bought the land, the farm had 900 heads of cattle, 300,000 chickens, and seven vehicles.

Got a loan

To buy the land, he says, he got a loan of Sh1.2 million from the Agricultural Corporation Finance.

He topped up this amount by selling his other pieces of land in Karen and Lavington – to buy the land and all that was therein, including the cattle, chicken, farmhouses and vehicles.

“I went to Mombasa Land Control Board which approved my application to buy the land. After completing the process, I paid the owner,” explains Waitiki.

At the time, no one objected to his acquistion of the land and everything was done above board.

Then the population of Likoni was not as huge as it is today and the farm was appropriate for farming.

Once the transaction was done, Waitiki resigned from his job and went into full-scale farming.

The farming was rewarding. He made more than Sh1 million every month and comfortably repaid his AFC loan.

The produce from the farm included fresh milk, beef, chicken and fruits.

Waitiki says the farm’s products were popular in South Africa, Europe and even Saudi Arabia where he exported live animals.

Unexpected happened

Then the unexpected happened. In 1999, the infamous Likoni clashes broke out and he was forcefully evicted from his farm as the raiders slaughtered more than 1,000 heads of cattle and 800,000 chickens in the farm. All his sweat evaporated in minutes.

After the clashes subsided and peace was restored, Waitiki was unable to reclaim his land for it had been taken over by squatters.

Since then, he has been on an agonising journey to reclaim the land. In 2001, he got eviction orders after a protracted legal battle between him and the state.

But the police did not honour the order.

On this journey, he has been accused of grabbing the land and using his relationship with President Jomo Kenyatta to acquire the land.

But he says this is a story the people who have taken over his land ‘cooked’ to justify their illegal occupation as he is not related to the Kenyattas and acquired land through his own effort.

After years of unsuccessfully trying to repossess his land, Waitiki got new orders last week when the court ordered police to evict the squatters from the land.

He still has big plans for his farm. He says once he gets back the land, he will do large scale poultry farming, which is well paying.

“Yes, I am ready to sub-divide the land and sell it to willing buyers but this does not mean I should be forced to sell it,” says Waitiki.

He insists that the people who are occupying his land illegally must be removed before he decides to sell it. Besides the more than 120,000 residents at the farm, there are permanent places of worship and schools.

Waitiki, who says he is happy to have purchased the land when he did, says it is the turn of all the people in his farm to feel the pain he felt when he too was evicted.

“No one can claim the farm belongs to them because they do not have documents. I have all the papers of ownership.”

To ensure this time round the orders are followed, Waitiki has moved to the High Court to have the Commissioner of Police Mr Mathew Iteere committed to civil jail for failing to evict the squatters on his land despite the order having been given since 2001.

He has also sued Kenya Power Company for trespassing his land and supplying more than 3,000 connections to people on his land.

The case, which is before Justice Francis Tuiyot, will be mentioned on December 6 to decide when the court will visit the land to assess how the eviction will be done.