Ruto’s suggestion on IDPs a cynical ploy

Posted  Tuesday, April 19 2011 at 19:27

The government should simply give internally displaced persons the cash to purchase for themselves alternative pieces of land, and free itself of the burden of overseeing resettlement.

That suggestion by suspended minister William Ruto might, on the surface, seem very reasonable.

The MP reckons that the plight of Kenyans enduring hardship in camps after being run of their homes during the post-election violence would be solved in weeks if his proposal was adopted.

Indeed, some innocent Kenyans have spent nearly four long years without homes while the ministries of Finance, Lands, and Special Programmes point fingers at one another over who is to blame for failure to complete the resettlement programme.

There is plenty of land available for purchase in Kenya, so it follows that any displaced person given the money would have no problem securing a place to build his or her own shelter.

However a closer look at the proposal reveals a hidden element.

Like the stalled government resettlement programme, any scheme that focuses solely on settling displaced people away from where they owned land, inadvertently or otherwise aims at legitimising the evictions in the first place.

The IDPs are Kenyans who owned land, lived or worked in specific places within the Republic. They were violently forced out of their homes, and now it is evident they cannot go back despite all the talk about reconciliation and political alliances.

Shouldn’t this reconciliation come with invitations for all IDPs to go reclaim their farms, homes and businesses? And who, presently, occupies the land left behind? Who owns the businesses?

These are the questions we prefer not to confront. However, any talk of reconciliation not accompanied by the “welcome home” mat for the displaced is an exercise in grand deception.