1.0 INTRODUCTION
It is important to emphasise the fact that water is a critical resource to all aspects of human development. It is as old as human life itself. Not only is it the basis of human survival, but water has also been a catalyst to major civilisations and to mod-ern industrial development. In Africa, as is the case in other parts of the developing world, water plays an important role in the social and economic activities of the continent. It is used in all facets of society: in domestic sector, agriculture, energy, industry, mining, fisheries, recreation and tourism1.
Water was also important during the heyday of European explorations of Africa. From the late fifteenth century onwards, explorations into the interior of Africa used water transport extensively. Most explorers followed river courses and that required a fair amount of knowledge about navigation and the nature of water resources. Moreover, in some cases, water bodies formed, in some cases, boundaries of the newly carved out colonial territories in Africa. Rivers and lakes were not only important features for demarcating boundaries; but also used as an important means of transportation in the twentieth century2.
Historically, access to natural resources in African societies was secured through complex institutional arrangements based on geographical territories, a social-political age grade system and kinship3. Although the first written water legislation in East Africa Protectorate (Kenya)was put in place in the 1920s it is clear that indigenous
1 Tempelhoff J.W.N (2005). African Water Histories, Vaal Triangle Faculty North-West University Vanderbijlpark, 2005.
2 Tempelhoff J.W.N. (2005). African Water Histories, Vaal Triangle Faculty North-West University Vanderbijlpark, 2005.
3 Jacobs A. H (1963). The Pastoral Maasai of Kenya: A Report of Anthropological Field Research.
Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Illinois.
cultures erected institutions to control and manage water long before that. It is sufficient to point to the fact that fairly advanced irrigation systems were in use in the Rift Valley at Engaruka in Tanzania, around 1400-1700 AD4. The construction and management of these systems could not have been achieved without social organisation and an institutional framework.
Studying the history of traditional water institutions in Kenya is not straight-forward as these institutions have generally not been codified and written down.
Instead, they are embedded in traditional culture, where they could be said to form a traditional water regime.
Meinzen-Dick and Nkonya identified a number of general features in much of African customary water law. First, water was a resource commonly held by the community and no person could be denied water for ‘primary uses’ such as domestic water supply. Despite this universal right for domestic water, certain water rights were allocated to groups or individuals for specific uses through a social negotiation process5. These features were also central for most customary water institutions in East Africa. Water was treated as a common good, but certain water rights could be acquired. Although water was a common good, this should not be confused with an open-access system6. Institutions were put in place to exert control over the resource. The control and rights to water exercised by an individual or a group increase with the group’s input of labour or capital into the development of the resource7. Often these water rights were not fixed, but negotiable, in order to adapt to changing circumstances. In times of water scarcity, tougher restrictions could be imposed on water uses and earlier rights hence revoked. Such renegotiation of claims and rights under external pressure has been recorded in traditional communities in both Kenya and Tanzania8.What sometimes could be perceived as an insecurity of
4 Sutton J. E. G (2004). ‘Engaruka. The success and abandonment of an integrated irrigation system in an arid part of the Rift Valley c. fifteenth to seventeenth centuries’, in M Widgren and J E G Sut-ton (eds) Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa, past & present, James Currey Ltd, Oxford 5 Meinzen-Dick R and L Nkonya (2005). ‘Understanding legal pluralism in water rights: lessons
from Africa and Asia’, paper presented at International workshop on ‘African Water Laws: Plural Legislative Frameworks for Rural Water Management in Africa’, 26-28 January 2005, Johannes-burg, South Africa. Internet source checked 2006-11-01 http://www.nri.org/waterlaw/AWLworK-ESop/MEINZEN-DICK-R.pd.
6 Carlson E (2003). To have and to hold: continuity and change in property rights institutions gov-erning water resources among the Meru of Tanzania and the BaKgatla in Botswana, 1925-2000, Almqvist & Wiksell International, Lund, Sweden.
7 Huggins C (2000). Rural Water Tenure in East Africa. A comparative Study of Legal Regimes and Community Responses to Changing Tenure Patterns in Tanzania and Kenya. Final Draft. BASIS CRSP, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Internet source checked 2006-11-01, http://www.ies.
wisc.edu/ltc/live/bashorn0005a.pdf
8 Orindi V and Huggins C (2005). ‘The dynamic relationship between property rights, water re-source management and poverty in the Lake Victoria Basin’, paper presented at International Work-sop on ‘African Water Laws: Plural Legislative Frameworks for Rural Water Management in Africa’, 26-28 January 2005, Johannesburg, South Africa. Internet source checked 2006-11-01 http://www.
acts.or.ke/prog/energy/reports/ORINDI-V.pdf
tenure in customary water law could instead be seen as a rational response to manage uncertainty in the physical environment9
Much of the customary water institutions in East Africa have been disman-tled through the superimposition of statutory law and through major changes in governance system and social structure. Despite this, customary water institutions have partly persisted, and have been important in some rural communities. This has created a situation where several water regimes co-exist and overlap. In addition, water tenure in East Africa is intertwined with land tenure, where also several legal regimes including customary and statutory co-exist10. In Uganda for instance, the issue of land tenure has proven particularly complex11.
During the early colonial period there were doubts whether the present East African protectorate offered the commercial opportunities that Britain had found in other parts of its empire and so as far as colonial office was concerned, the mainte-nance of law and order was far more important than economic development or social engineering. The colonial office (CO) was the most important department of state as far as the framing and implementation of policy for Britain’s African colonies such as the East African Protectorate was concerned. In theory, the other most important groups external to the CO were parliament and the cabinet. The secretary of state was responsible for the actions of the CO as regards any colonial dependency, in fact, neither parliament nor the cabinet exerted continuous or direct influence on policy for Kenya12. At the turn of the century, the commercial potential of Kenya’s highland became more apparent to British government officials.
The existence of man has been over millions of years dictated by among other factors the availability, quality, distribution and amount of water. As the world grapples with the shortage of water, the Kenyan situation has been over the years getting worse as water sources continue to diminish. This has motivated politicians as well as policymakers to focus keenly on water development strategies.
The book of history of water supply and governance in Kenya captures concerns about scarcity of water resources, its potential impact on the society, and search for an appropriate way to respond to the looming disaster. Water history is situated
9 Ostrom (1990) have stated that sustainable institutions for common pool resources need to be flexible. North (2005) maintains that institutions in essence are created in order to deal with the uncertainties that societies are exposed to.
10 Meinzen-Dick R and Nkonya L (2005). ‘Understanding Legal Pluralism in Water Rights: Lessons from Africa and Asia’, Paper Presented at International Worksop on ‘African Water Laws: Plural Legislative Frameworks for Rural Water Management in Africa’, 26-28 January 2005, Johannes-burg, South Africa. Internet, http://www.nri.org/waterlaw/AWLworKESop/MEINZEN-DICK-R.
pdf. 2006-11-01
11 Nawangwe B. and Nuwagaba A. (2002). Land Tenure and Administrative Issues in Kampala City and their Effects on Urban Development. Research Report, Makerere University, Kampala.
12 Brett E. A (1973). Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa (London: Heinemann, 1973).
58-59.
within the political, ideological, aesthetic and economic fields of social history and eco-history as well as history of science. It delves into how water has been managed on community level, as well as national, international and global scales. Within this book is the recognition of the existing water management policies, practices and outlooks emanating from deep seated ideas, beliefs and values as well as political inequalities, and technological disparities.
This book elucidates the various innovations and how they were accepted within a community and eventually by the society. In this respect, the role of prominent and ordinary individuals in initiating and propagating ideas and practices through human encounters and communication devices is acknowledged. In this historical quest, how ideas and practices emerging in everyday circumstances are transformed into modalities and eventually norms, sacred believes, cognitive structures schema-ta and paradigms are recognized as imporschema-tant tools in bringing man closer to his history. The author intends to create a close relationship between an ordinary man deeds and the eventual greatest innovation.
1.1 Physical Conditions
Kenya is located on the East Coast of Africa, with the equator running almost straight through the middle of the country. Kenya borders with Somalia, Ethiopia, and South Sudan in the north, Uganda in the west, Tanzania in the south and the Indian Ocean in the east. Territorial area is 582,646 km2 and it is divided into water area of 11,230 km2 and land area of 571,416 km2. The major part of the inland water surface area is covered by a portion of Lake Victoria and Lake Turkana. Of the land area, approximately 490,000km2 (close to 86 percent of the land area) is classified as arid and semi-arid land (ASAL). The remaining area of about 81,000 km2 is classified as non-arid and profitably usable lands, sustaining a substantial portion of Kenyan economy and human population.
Kenya is characterised by a tremendous topographical diversity, ranging from glaciated mountains to a true desert landscape. The elevation varies greatly from sea level at the Indian Ocean to 5199m at the Batian Peak of Mount Kenya.
The climate in Kenya is primarily influenced by the movement of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and by topographic relief, especially elevation.
The rainfall in Kenya is affected by large water bodies like Lake Victoria, complex topography with the Great Rift Valley and high mountains like Mt. Kenya and Mt.
Elgon. A relatively wet and narrow tropical belt lies along the Indian Ocean coast.
Behind the coastline there is a stretch of large areas of semi-arid and arid lands.
Kenya generally experiences two seasonal rainfall peaks (long rain and short rain) in most places. Mean annual rainfall over the country is 680 mm. It varies from about 200mm in the ASAL zone to about 1,800mm in the humid zone. Figure 1.1 illustrates the average annual rainfall in various climatic regions in Kenya13.
Figure 1.1: The average annual rainfall
The history of Kenya can be distinctively separated into three periods, pre-colonial period (before 1920), colonial period (1920-1963) and post-colonial period (from 1963 to date). Kenya was established as a British protectorate (1895) and a crown colony (1920). The Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s was directed against European
13 Ministry of Environment and Central Bureau of Statistics, Kenya (2008). Nature’s best in Kenya:
An Atlas of Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing-Chapter 3 Water. World Resource Institute
colonialism. In 1963 the country became fully independent, and a year later a re-publican government was elected.
Cushitic-speaking people from northern Africa moved into the area that is now Kenya beginning around 2000 BC. Arab traders began frequenting the Kenya coast around the first century AD. Kenya’s proximity to the Arabian Peninsula invited colonisation, and Arab and Persian settlements sprouted along the coast by the eighth century. During the first millennium AD, Nilotic and Bantu peoples moved into the region, and the latter now comprises three-quarters of Kenya’s population.
The colonial history of Kenya dates back from the establishment of Imperial Germany’s protectorate over the Sultan of Zanzibar’s coastal possessions in1885.
This was followed by the arrival of Sir William Mackinnon’s British East Africa Company (BEAC) in 1888, after the company had received a royal charter and concessionary rights to the Kenya coast from the Sultan of Zanzibar for a 50-year period. Germany handed its coastal properties to the British Empire in 1890, in exchange for German control over the coast of Tanganyika.
As recent as 1885, the entity Kenya did not exist. The area which the nation Kenya occupies was a conglomeration of various communities without political boundaries or administration. For centuries the land had been occupied by a myriad of different people. The inhabitants settled near water sources and forests from where farming, hunting and gathering were the main source of sustenance. The colonial history of Kenya dates from the Berlin Conference of 1885, when the European powers first partitioned East Africa into spheres of influence. In 1895, the U.K.
Government established the East African Protectorate.
After the Berlin treaty in 1885, the British East Africa Association was founded by William Mackinnon with encouragement from the British government. This led to the creation of the Imperial British East Africa Company, chartered in 1888, and given the original grant to administer the dependency. At the same time, the European missionaries and settlers gradually penetrated the interior. The administration was transferred to the Foreign Office in 1895, and to the Colonial Office in 1905. Nairobi was the administrative headquarters.
The Uganda Railways
However, it was the construction of the railway line from Mombasa to Kisumu, and then to Uganda that not only opened but created a country. Construction of the line started at the port city of Mombasa in 1896 and reached Kisumu, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, in 1901 (figure 1.2). Although almost all of the rail line was actually in the colony that would come to be known as Kenya, the original
purpose of the project was to provide a modern transportation link to carry raw materials out of the Uganda colony and to carry manufactured British goods back in.
The construction of the Kenya Uganda Railway was a turning point in creation of the nation Kenya and development of townships. In fact, all major towns in Kenya have origin from rail stations. Mombasa was the capital city of Kenya until 1906 when the status was transferred to a more central Nairobi.
Figure 1.2: Uganda rail way near Momba-sa, about 1899AD14
The year 1908 and a few years after saw, probably, the peak of the settlement wave.
In one week in July a shipload of 280 Dutchmen arrived from South Africa (from the Ermelo and Carolina districts of the Transvaal) with complete houses and wag-ons and ploughs. They trekked up to the Usain Gishu plateau with the intention of growing large acreages of wheat. Here they founded, with Boers who had preceded them, a “Dutch pocket in that part of the highlands most resembling the South African high veld”15. They started their own little township and called it Eldoret.
The governor during this period was Sir Percy Girouard who was French Canadian, born in Montreal. He had succeeded Sir Hayes Sadler. Prior to Sir Percy appoint-ment to East Africa he was the Governor of Nigeria after Fredrick Lugard. Once in East Africa he improved the relationship between governor and the governed and this saw another influx of settlers. He is the one who put up the railway line to Thika passing through coffee and sisal areas. During Sir Percy Girouard regime the protectorate made the biggest economic advance it had yet achieved. Revenue was made to meet expenditure, and the grant-in-aid was abandoned16.
14 Kenyanchui S. S. S (1992). European settler agriculture, an economic history of Kenya, edited by Ochieng W. R and Maxon R. M East African Educational Publishers Ltd, Nairobi, Kenya.
15 Kenyanchui S. S. S (1992) European settler agriculture, an economic history of Kenya, edited by W. R Ochieng and R M Maxon East African Educational Publishers Ltd, Nairobi, Kenya.
16 Kenyanchui S. S. S (1992) European settler agriculture, an economic history of Kenya, edited by W. R Ochieng and R M Maxon East African Educational Publishers Ltd, Nairobi, Kenya.
In many places where rainfall was not adequate, the settlers had to find their own means of water supply. For example, Lord Delamere, one of the first and most influential British settlers in Kenya, in 1914 planned a water supply from the Rongai River to his Soysambu farm. Water was piped for 26 kilometres and thirty-nine tanks were built at regular intervals so that homesteads could be dotted along it.
The cost was considerable, about £12,000.
As the towns rapidly grew, population increased and the British administration gained more control over the inhabitants. The political administration was fast shifting from the decentralized tribal administration into centralized administra-tion under the British rule. The following years saw the beginning of the process of subjugating the local indigenous peoples to colonial rule and administration. The process of land acquisition gained momentum with the construction of the railway from Lake Victoria to the coast in 1904 opening up the highlands to farming, and leading to the establishment of Native Reservations to house the local peoples.
Considerable number of Indian labourers was imported into the area to assist in the railway construction adding to economic, social and political tensions and demands.
World War 1 saw conflict in the region between the British and German colonial powers with severe damage to the agricultural base of the economy. However, after the war, the economy began to revive and stabilise, the desire to entrench political domination grew and resulted in the declaration of the Kenya Colony in 1920. The local Legislative Council was the scene of competing demands for power between the European and Indian settlers, whilst the African population became the subjects of Trusteeship. By 1920, Kenya became a crown colony. The social economic and political (including water supply, sanitation and pollution control) development of Kenya closely followed its colonisation pattern. After independence in 1963, Kenya inherited, maintained and worked on improving them. However, there was a slight change on prioritisation.
1.2 Population
Estimates of the population of Kenya have been made since the end of the nineteenth century. Many of the early travellers hazarded guesses as to the numbers of people living in the countries (East African) through which they passed17
The first official estimates were those made by Sir Arthur Hardinge (First Commissioner and Consul General) for Kenya. He placed the population at 2.5
17 Blacker J. G. C (1969). East Africa: Its peoples and resources. Oxford University Press, London.
million. Between the wars (World War I and II), the population figures continued to be based principally on the number of taxpayers18.
The first census of the non-African population was held in 192119. In 1948, the East African Statistical Department was created as one of the services of the East Africa High Commission and a full census of the population for Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika including Zanzibar islands was conducted. Kenya’s population was found to stand at 5.4 million of whom 154,846 were non-Africans20.
The first census of the non-African population was held in 192119. In 1948, the East African Statistical Department was created as one of the services of the East Africa High Commission and a full census of the population for Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika including Zanzibar islands was conducted. Kenya’s population was found to stand at 5.4 million of whom 154,846 were non-Africans20.