Internal Migration and Ethnic Conflicts in South Western Kenya: A View from Gucha District

Valerie Golaz, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Historical background During the British colonization, population movements were strongly controlled in Kenya. One needed a kipande and a good reason to be allowed to travel from one African reserve to another, from a rural area to a town or to a white farmer’s estate. Following independence, administrative restrictions to migrations progressively weakened. Some Africans moved out of their former reserves and managed to acquire land in the former White Highlands on settlement schemes through land-buying companies. These companies were organized on an ethnic basis. The once very controlled mobility of people started increasing, concerning both rural and urban destinations and people actually settling at their destination. The politically-instigated clashes of the 1990s disorganized this pattern of settlement. In 1992, just before the first Kenyan general elections, waves of violence irrupted along internal administrative boundaries and in the settlement schemes of the Rift Valley Province. Clashes led to fighting between different ethnic groupings each claiming their right to the land. The first grouping made of people of Bantu and Nilotic origin (mainly Kikuyu, Luhya, Luo, and Gusii) were claiming their right of ownership of land though acquisition, sometimes several generations ago, the other made of Nilo-hamitic communities (Maasai and Kalenjin mainly) claiming an ancestral pre-colonial right to the land. In places, the fighting was openly meant to chase part of the local population. A number of people died during the clashes and many people were displaced, thousands being sent back to their “former Reserves”. This is the background to Gusii mobility. From the start of the colonial rule, the pattern of settlement in Gusii country, in the South-Western highlands of Kenya, its high densities and high rates of population growth, attracted the attention of local administrators. Boundaries for a Gusii reserve were defined, and it was fully occupied by the end of the 1940s. In spite of a growing scarcity of land, the Gusii people seem to have never showed any strong desire to migrate from their ancestral land. The low out-migration rates of the Gusii are often mentioned, but rarely quantified. Yet, it is well known that most of the workers on the tea estates in Kericho are Gusii, for example. After the clashes, the Gusii were mentioned as some of the victims. This paper addresses two main issues: it tries to analyze and replace in time the growth of out-migration for the Gusii, and measure the consequences of the clashes on Gusii mobility. Data and Methodology Migration and mobility generally speaking are difficult to measure. For that purpose, event history analysis has proved to be one of the most profitable techniques. It can be used to study human behavior, taking into account individual characteristics, fixed and time-dependent. It enables the understanding of the upcoming of a specific event in one’s life course. This paper is based on an event history survey conducted in 1997-1998 in Magenche, on the Southern boundary of the former Gusii reserve. A sample of 618 men and women, representative of the local population of 15 years and above, was interviewed, and the collected life histories include family life events, land status changes, migrations and economic activities. This quantitative data set is supplemented by in-depth interviews led during an 8- month stay in the area. Findings If most of the men interviewed have spent some time in migration, very few have stayed away from their land more than a couple of years. Apart from the “élite”, young migrants are usually attracted by close by destinations, where they benefit from long-established networks, more than by big towns. The 1980s are marked by the exponential growth of the Gusii out-migration. Yet, even though the Gusii migrants leave younger and younger, the length of stay in migration remains the same. The ethnic clashes that irrupted in Rift Valley Province between 1991 and 1994 have had a strong impact on migration and settlement. Firstly, during the turmoil, people had to flee the clash-affected areas, and take refuge with relatives, in the former reserve considered as their ‘home’. Out migration abruptly came to a stop, for reasons related to insecurity. Secondly, even when peace was officially back, people started migrating again. But the data show that out migration reached the level it was at before the clashes, but never grew again.