This archive report was first published on 5 September 2019.
September 5, 2019
Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya - Alice Ciamati, a 62-year-old widow, was once living comfortably in a house on a plot of land she had inherited from her husband. However, her life took a drastic turn two years ago when her nephew tricked her into giving away the title deed to her two acres of land.
According to Ciamati, her nephew travelled from Nairobi to Chera village in Tharaka Nithi County, central Kenya, and convinced her to hand over the title deed, claiming it was being checked by the government. She was later told that the deed was fake, and the land had been sold to someone else.
'He told me the title deeds were being checked (by the government). So I gave them to him. I was very happy when he returned them to me,' Ciamati said, sipping tea at a kiosk in the shopping centre.
However, when the new owner came to evict her from her land, Ciamati showed her title deed to the area chief, who confirmed that hers was fake. The experience left her devastated, and she has been living on the streets ever since.
Cases like Ciamati's are becoming more common in rural Kenya, said local assistant police chief Lawrence Micheni. Records at the county criminal registry show that there have been about 11 cases of land fraud in Tharaka Nithi since January, almost double the amount for each of the past four years.
Although the registry data does not distinguish which land fraud cases involve elderly widows, there has been a noticeable increase in 'homeless grannies', who say their land was stolen by family members, said Micheni.
Usually, the familial fraud is committed by young, jobless relatives pretending to be visiting, only to trick widows into giving up their land deeds, he explained. They use the original documents to forge new ones and give the fakes back to the widows, then sell the land secretly and disappear.
Catching the perpetrators and bringing justice to the victims can be a struggle, Micheni noted, as his office does not have the power to settle land fraud cases, which are under the purview of the county courts.
The best the local police can do for widows who have been evicted from their land is offer them three kilogrammes of maize each month, which is donated by the county government.
Josephine Muriuki, director of social development at the labour ministry, said the Kenyan government is trying to find a nationwide solution for growing land fraud against rural widows. In 2017, the state established the Inua Jamii cash transfer programme, which acts as a general welfare fund for all Kenyans aged 70 and above and supports many widows financially.
However, land rights activists say more needs to be done to protect victims. 'What Kenya needs is proper land reforms to make it cheaper and faster for justice to be served to the poor,' said Kamau Ngugi, executive director of the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders.
While Kenya's census data says there are close to 900,000 widows in the country, a report by the Loomba Foundation puts the number higher, at more than 1.4 million. Kenya's constitution states that all women have equal rights to own property, but this often does not trickle down to social norms, with most land in Kenya still held by men.
Only about one per cent of ancestral land title deeds in Kenya are held by women, according to charity HelpAge International. 'Destitution of the elderly is a big problem, not only in rural villages but also among urban populations,' said Erastus Maina, country programme manager at HelpAge in Kenya.
For victims of land fraud, emergency relief and food donations can only provide temporary solutions, said Joyce Wanjiku Kairu, head of Purity Elderly Care Foundation. There is a need to seriously address the longer-term effects of widows losing land and, in some cases, becoming homeless, such as the increasing rates of mental illness and even suicide among victims in rural Kenya.
