Sultan heirs, tenants battle over land

FROM LEFT: Tenants Salim Binsheman, Bilai Farah, Rajab Sumba and Suleiman Mahfudh after meeting land owners’ representatives in Mombasa last week. The land owners want them out of the houses. [Omondi Onyango, Standard]

The long-standing land dispute between tenants-at-will and descendants of pre-independence Coast rulers (Liwali) who represented the Sultan of Zanzibar is far from over after the first meeting failed to resolve the matter.

And the more than 20,0000 tenants from Mombasa who have built houses on the plots owned by the Liwali heirs have threatened to demonstrate to pressure the government to intervene citing frustrations from the landlords who live abroad, especially in Oman.