DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2016.v04i04.008

Pages: 362-369

In this paper, we discuss the relationship between the perennial land grievance, the attendant discourses and the ethnic conflicts that occurred in the Rift Valley region in the 1990s of the last century and also continue to occur intermittently now. Land is a very weighty issue that in fact the ethnic conflicts in Njoro-Molo area (a remarkable area of these clashes in the Rift Valley) have also been referred to as “land clashes”. The land grievance is very cryptic and multi-layered. It can be traced to the colonial era, where the colonial regime alienated land from the indigenous populations. As a result some of the victims of the alienation found their way in the Rift Valley. It has again been perpetuated in the post-independence period where the ruling elite (with ethnic masks) have not meaningfully addressed the problem. Analytically, using a Discourse-Historical Approach perspective, the land grievance antecedents the following broad discourse topics: land and the discursive construction of identity, indigenous and “foreigners” and historical injustices. These discourse topics are also linked to Discourse-Historical Approach discursive strategies. It is anticipated that this paper sheds sufficient light on the festering land question not only in Kenya but also in other sub-Saharan African nation-states that have similar situations.