When the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) moved into part of Muthaiga Golf Club and forced the temporary closure of eight holes, the confrontation initially appeared to be yet another land dispute in Nairobi.
KFS claimed that approximately 21.8 hectares occupied by the club formed part of gazetted Karura Forest. The golf club insisted the land belonged to it.
This is more than a quarrel over a boundary. It is a contest over who controls the history of the capital city, whose maps and records should be believed and which version of the Nairobi’s past should determine the ownership, and future, of its remaining green spaces.
Nairobi lacks a city historian and a properly constituted municipal archive where residents can trace changes in land ownership, boundaries and planning.
Without institutional memory, every dispute becomes a battle between competing documents and selective histories. It becomes difficult to establish where historical fact ends and land-grabbing begins.
The dispute pits two institutions born under colonial rule against each other. Muthaiga Golf Club occupies one of Nairobi’s oldest planned estates. Karura predates the capital city itself, though its modern legal boundaries were surveyed and gazetted by the colonial government.
It is a chicken-and-egg story: did the golf club encroach upon the forest, or did later surveys extend the forest boundary over land already claimed by the club? Which colonial record should prevail when two institutions created by the same administration produce competing histories?
Both sides must produce their oldest plans, surveys and titles. The question is which history the state will recognise.
Muthaiga does not necessarily have the stronger claim because it predates KFS, which inherited earlier forest authorities’ responsibilities. Public land does not cease to be public because its custodian changes its name. What matters is whether the land formed part of Karura, was validly removed and is supported by the original surveys.
According to KFS, Karura was surveyed in the early 1920s, declared a reserve in 1932 and reaffirmed as a central forest through Legal Notice No. 174 of May 20, 1964. It claims LR No. 13134/3 extends approximately 21.8 hectares into the gazetted forest.
Those claims must be tested against the original cadastral maps, deed plans, survey computations, titles and gazette notices. Memory, longevity and prestige cannot settle the matter. Nor should enforcement be selective.
If KFS is restoring Karura’s historic boundaries, it must explain if neighbouring properties are similarly affected. The same documentary standard must apply along the entire forest boundary.
The Gate A entrance to Karura Forest along Limuru Road.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group
Current jurisprudence gives this historical contest sharp legal consequences. Article 40(6) of the Constitution withholds property protection from land found to have been unlawfully acquired. Section 26 of the Land Registration Act treats a certificate of title as prima facie evidence of ownership, but allows it to be defeated where acquisition was illegal, unprocedural or part of a corrupt scheme.
In Dina Management Ltd v the County Government of Mombasa, the Supreme Court held that once the root of a title is challenged, producing the title deed is not enough.
The proprietor must go behind it and show that the original acquisition was legal, formal and free from encumbrances. The Court of Appeal has continued to apply that rule. If the original allocation was unlawful, later transfers – even to an innocent purchaser – cannot cleanse it. Put simply, a title soiled at its source cannot become clean merely by passing through other hands.
That is why this dispute is ultimately a battle of two histories. KFS must establish the legal history of the forest boundary. The club must establish the legal history of its parcel. A title is only the last page; the dispute will be decided by the pages that came before it.
Everyone knows that the grabber in Nairobi rarely arrives armed with an axe. He arrives carrying paperwork. A title appears. A boundary moves. A survey plan is amended. Public land acquires a private land-reference number. An open space becomes “unallocated”. By the time bulldozers arrive, the forest has already been felled on paper.
Much of Nairobi’s green heritage disappeared this way, not in one dramatic act, but through decisions hidden from public view. City Park deteriorated, Ngong Road forest was fragmented and other spaces vanished beneath development.
Karura nearly suffered the same fate. During the 1990s, portions of the woodland were secretly allocated to private developers. Survey plans and titles were prepared and trees cleared. Had the process gone unchallenged, the destruction might later have been presented as lawful development.
Prof Wangari Maathai understood that the struggle was not simply about trees, but the capture of the state and its records. When campaigners attempted to plant trees in Karura in January 1999, they were attacked. The violence revealed what bureaucratic language concealed: public forest was being transferred under political protection.
Karura has survived because citizens refused to accept that a title deed automatically represented justice. That history should guide the present dispute, but it should also make us cautious. Muthaiga Golf Club should not be condemned merely because it is old or prestigious.
If it has a legitimate title, it must be examined fairly. Equally, Karura’s defenders should not be dismissed because its boundary originated in the colonial period.
The evidence must be opened to the public. And this is what we need to do: KFS should publish the 1923 survey, the 1932 proclamation, the 1964 legal notice and the current boundary map. Muthaiga Golf Club should produce its original title, deed plan, the survey history of LR No. 13134/3 and evidence that the land was lawfully separated from Karura.
An ariel view of the Muthaiga Golf Club course. Inset are KFS officers on a section of the club's course.
Photo credit: Pool
The Director of Surveys and Chief Land Registrar should reconcile the records publicly, tracing every alteration, excision and replacement title.
For far too long, Nairobi’s history has been controlled by those with title deeds, maps and privileged access to government registries. The public encounters the result only when a fence appears or trees are felled. The archive is treated as private property even when the land may belong to the public.
This secrecy produces a city without a shared memory. Every generation fights the same battles because nobody can easily determine where a forest, wetland or public park originally began. Confusion becomes commercially useful: where boundaries are obscure, the powerful prosper.
The Muthaiga Golf Club and KFS dispute offers an opportunity to do more than determine ownership of 21.8 hectares. It should establish a principle: all records affecting public forests and urban green spaces must be digitised and opened.
Nairobi needs a public historical atlas showing the changing boundaries of Karura, Ngong Road forest, City Park, Nairobi Arboretum and other protected spaces. It should identify every excision, allocation and change of user, who authorised it and who benefited.
Without such an archive, Nairobi will continue to be grabbed twice; first in land and then in memory.
The colonial government drew boundaries to control land and people. The post-colonial elite learnt that those lines could be quietly altered for profit.
Whoever emerges victorious in the Muthaiga-KFS dispute, the larger question will remain: who has the power to tell Nairobi where its forests once stood?
If that power belongs only to officials, surveyors and private title holders, the city’s remaining green spaces will never be secure. If the records belong to the public, history itself can become a line of defence.
John Kamau is PhD candidate in History, University of Toronto. Email: [email protected]
