Supreme Court opens doors for siblings to reclaim ancestral land

A Supreme Court judgement has given a second chance to people who have lost land to relatives who were holding it in trust to reclaim it. For many years, the practice has been that for one to get a piece of ancestral land, they had to prove that they had actually lived on it for some time or possessed communal land.

Claiming ancestral land, especially for those who have been away for a long time, has been difficult, with courts over time holding that customary law rights are extinguished upon registration of land in an individual’s name. This has seen people dispossessed of their land by relatives who argue that they have been away for long periods and do not, therefore, deserve a share of it.

The Judges ruled that Land in a traditional African setting is always the subject of many interests and derivative rights. Hence, customary law does not vest ‘ownership’ in land in the English sense, in the family, but ascribes to the family the aggregate of the rights that could be described as ‘ownership’.

The judges also ruled that a customary trust, as long as the same can be proved to subsist, upon a first registration, is one of the trusts to which a registered proprietor, is subject under the proviso to Section 28 of the Registered Land Act.

[Source: The Standard, by Kamau Muthoni]