The beginning of bloody land dispute in Mwea

Squatters who camped at Ciagini vilage, Mwea, after being kicked out of troubled Mwea Trust Land, listen to Kirinyaga Deputy Governor Peter Ndambiri, last week. [Munene Kamau/standard]

For close to a century, battles have been fought, won and lost in what has been one of Kenya’s theatre of conflict.

To the white colonial masters, Mwea was a useless piece of wasteland, riddled with rinderpest that could not be compared with undulating plains and valleys which constituted the white Highlands, where the loyalty displayed their superiority and killed boredom by playing out their debauchery in what would later be called white mischief.