The first time I took my son to Kenya to go visit his family there, one thing really shocked him when we were driving past Kericho tea farms and he was only 7 years old. He saw the big houses where the managers and owners at the tea farms live and the tiny little wood houses where the workers there lived at. He asked me how is that possible.
I told him those who own the farms are white people from England and that is why they live in big mansions and they give something better for the managers who are Kenyans but as far as the tea pickers, mostly women, are concerned they don’t give a shit.
The workers are part of their property just like the huge farms and land that they just grabbed from Kenyans. The boy was stunned and when we came back going to Nairobi he asked me if he can get out and see the place called Kericho tea farms. I told him fine but he couldn’t talk to the workers. The place is very tightly controlled.
That young man is now 25 years old and when I saw that sad story about the same Kericho tea farms I felt oh my goodness I have to have that discussion with him again. So that is going to happen. I don’t have a choice and the man loves his country called Kenya. He is going to ask me what the hell is going on there with women being sexually abused. His Eritrean mother would be completely outraged about that.
What is really annoying about this whole sex story is not just the abuse the women workers face at the Finlays tea farms. It is the hypocrisy of the British colonial thieves who stole the whole country and still own some of the best lands in our country. So BBC comes around to investigate sex abuse in the farms, fair enough.
When will the BBC investigate the British and Finlays stealing our land and keeping it now for more than 220 years since they came to Kenya in 1896? When is that massive theft going to be investigated and the land given back to Kenyans?
British-based Unilever International owns the Kericho tea farms which they never paid even one penny for as it was grabbed land by the British colonial government the same way they grabbed farms in Mt. Kenya region for coffee. It is a shame that 60 years after independence, colonial thieves still own our best lands and treat Kenyans who work there like dirt.
In the 2010 Kenyan constitution which many human rights activists in Kenya including fake ones love to talk about Kenya established the National Land Commission (NLC) and one of its major objectives was to take back land stolen by the British colonial government and Kericho tea farms was on top of that list. Instead, the NLC has turned into a complete criminal institution itself and it has worked very well for Unilever and Finlays. NLC told Unilver they can keep the land and did not have to pay a single shilling for that.
In which other country in the world do we have foreign colonial land thieves owning a whole country which claims to be independent? Only in Kenya. Our governments from Jomo Kenyatta to Moi, to Kibaki, Uhuru, and now their little project called Ruto have made sure our country is owned by thieves as long as they get something out of it. In fact, the NLC has been very instrumental in helping William Ruto grab land even after the 2010 constitution.
It was the NLC that tried to hand over the Weston Hotel land stolen from the Kenya Communications Civil Authority (KCAA) to Ruto when they made a ruling that Ruto can pay something small to KCAA. The Court of Appeal rejected that and told the NLC that they have no jurisdiction over the Weston Hotel issue.
NLC finally admitted that they had no authority on the matter. Now we are waiting for the DPP to withdraw any cases regarding Weston Hotel so Ruto can have it with no problems.
So yes, let’s deal with the sexual abuse at Finlays but anybody thinking the DPP is going to do that is a waste of time. The only reason this matter is even in the news is because some big names are refusing to buy our stolen tea from Finlays. They would care less if that was not the issue.
The bigger issue we have to deal with is for Kenya to take back its land from Finlays. How long do we have to wait for that? Those women being sexually abused there should own that land and be picking their own tea and selling it.
Kenyans actually don’t even drink their own tea unless you are very rich. The tea Kenyans drink is called Shifting which is the garbage tea leaves that workers drop off and step on while making tea to be sold in England.
So the British took our land, they took our tea and now they have established a sex abuse factory called Finlays. What else do they have to do before we say enough is enough?
