• Land control boards help to control transactions on agricultural land around the country.
• The establishment of County Land Management Boards is a work in progress, and once established, these boards will take a long time to perfect their operations.

If it were not for the Government Printer’s omission, Land Control Boards would have stood dissolved on May 2, 2012, when the Land Act No 6 of 2012 commenced operation.

A simple amendment in Parliament, which the 26th April edition of Hansard indicates was meant to be for clarity, had required that the Land Control Act (Cap 302), under which land control boards operate, be added to those laws to be repealed.

But this amendment was not carried in the published version of the Land Act. I do not agree with it.

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And, reading through the entire Hansard record on the Bill, I am convinced the amendment’s mover did not quite comprehend the dramatic consequences the amendment would have occasioned.

The 11th Parliament should give the matter a good look.

CONTROL TRANSACTIONS

Land control boards help to control transactions on agricultural land around the country. Most of these transactions are mainly on private freehold land derived from the adjudication of former trust lands and happen at the very local level; far away from the former district headquarters where land registries are located.

A small proportion of the transactions are on agricultural leasehold land in the former “White Highlands”. Therefore, the bulk of land control board business regulates the routine dealings by citizens at the lowest level.

Land control boards give these families a valued opportunity to intercede in the event that anyone attempts underhand deals on their land. The boards provide local leaders with a chance to mitigate unwarranted sales, subdivisions or charges on agricultural land. These are noble reasons.

And they are perhaps why, in discussions on the National Land Policy, the Land Control Act was not considered for repeal and hence the relevant Sessional Paper doesn’t include any such proposal.

Moreover, the substance of the Land Act doesn’t imply the need for the law’s repeal. But the ad hoc manner in which the amendment of the Land Control Act was suggested during parliamentary debate on would have occasioned a major institutional vacuum.

Attempts to repeal the law must be informed by more comprehensive drafting and, preferably, pre-consultations with users and the drivers of land control boards.

There are some, particularly among practising professionals, who have argued that the functions of land control boards can be performed by county land management boards to be established at county level. This argument can be challenged on two fronts.

One, the establishment of these boards is work in progress, and once established, these boards will take a long time to perfect their operations.

Besides, due to obvious resource and technical capacity limitations, the boards can only have presence at the county headquarters for a start. It will be long before they devolve into rural Kenya.

Asking our rural citizenry to travel to county headquarters for simple transactions on their parcels of land would be adding to their agony under our demanding land administration system.

The county land management boards are also likely to wear a fairly elitist face, and hence look unfriendly to locals. Landowners appearing in land control boards usually relax on finding familiar faces of their chiefs and village elders during proceedings.

But more worrying is the constitutional aspect. The county boards are organs of the National Land Commission, whose mandate is to manage public land.

Most transactions relate to private freehold agricultural land. Attempting to bring such transactions under the purview of the land commission would bring about unnecessary legal challenges.

Quite a number of land boards have been accused of corruption. They have been misused by some members of the Provincial Administration to do favours and on occasion, the boards have failed to regulate the wanton subdivision of agricultural land.

But the wider picture reveals that land boards have served the purpose for which they were formed. Any interventions should, therefore, seek to address operational malpractices without excluding the familiar faces.

Mr Mwathane is a licensed surveyor. ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )