Villagers of Mata ward in Taita Taveta demonstrate against a developer who has been allocated a wildlife corridor on 6/3/2023.[FILE/Standard]
300 villagers left homeless after eviction from President Ruto's Taita Taveta farm
Coast
By
Renson Mnyamwezi
| Oct 09, 2025
More than 300 villagers are spending nights in the cold after being evicted from a 1,000-acre farm owned by President William Ruto in Mata village, Taveta, Taita Taveta County.
The villagers said armed police officers stormed the area at night with bulldozers, flattening homes despite existing court orders halting any eviction.
“The police, acting on orders from above, evicted us despite a Voi High Court order stopping the exercise. They ignored our pleas as bulldozers destroyed our houses,” said Nixon Obama, one of the evictees.
The squatters have since pitched tents outside the fence of the vast farm, which they claim is their ancestral land. Obama said the graves and trees in the area prove their forefathers lived there.
“My family has been on this land since 1920. We have nowhere else to go,” he said, accusing local leaders of abandoning them.
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The rich agricultural land has long been the subject of a dispute between the President and squatters, with the case still pending in court. The President reportedly owns about 2,500 acres in the area, located along the Cessi–Jipe road overlooking Lake Jipe and the Pare and Usangi hills in Tanzania.
Hamidas Daudi, another evictee, said women, children, and the elderly bore the brunt of the eviction. “Our homes and food stores were destroyed. The children are not in school, and we are now living in makeshift shelters,” she said.
She added that local administrators visited the site and praised the police for carrying out the eviction, urging them to vacate the “President’s land.”
County Commissioner Josephine Onunga and Police Commander Jonathan Koech did not respond to calls for comment. Deputy Governor Christine Kilalo condemned the eviction as ‘inhuman and barbaric,’ accusing the national government of failing to resolve historical land injustices.
The incident comes amid renewed tensions along the Coast, following recent evictions of over 3,500 squatters in Msambweni, near Voi, despite the government’s earlier promise to settle the landless. Retired teacher Fabian Mwanyalo said successive governments had failed to address historical land injustices.
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