William ole Ntimama is one of the government's cleverer and more controversial senior figures. In 1994, Maasai warriors acting at his instigation forcibly and bloodily evicted thousands of Gikuyu smallholders who had settled in a water catchment area around Enoosupukia. This affected the political demographics of the area and turned Ntimama into one of the most vilified public figures in Kenya.

In the early 1990s, assorted campaigns of ethnic cleansing were serenading the return of multiparty politics in what was seen as a determined effort by key members of the ruling elite to reduce Kenyan politics to an ethnic zero-sum game. The political results of this not unsuccessful policy continue to be felt today.To his credit, Ntimama remains a forceful and persistent advocate of the rights of the Maasai vis-?-vis environmental issues and the like. When I heard from him recently, he was livid at the government's latest plans to reduce still further Kenya's already depleted forest cover.

A couple of weeks ago, the government announced through a gazette notice by the Minister for Environment, Mr Francis Nyenze, that it had "degazetted" over 68,000 hectares of indigenous forests around Kenya.

With so many of the parastatals privatised or run into the ground, the primary sources of patronage resources left today are land and public procurement contracts. The latter, however, as the last remaining parastatal cash cows, find themselves under an extreme level of public and donor scrutiny.

It is not really practical for donors to keep a close eye on the allocations of public land around the country the way they can on the management of parastatals and the awarding of public procurement contracts. This means that land allocation remains the easiest tools of patronage in the current environment, to be dished out to reward political loyalty and consolidate political support where it is flagging.

Nevertheless, the number of NGOs focusing on this issue has risen in recent years, though Prof Wangari Maathai's Greenbelt Movement remains the most prominent, explaining her arrest last week as she led protests at the new forest excision plans. Of the total forest cover degazetted, according to Sam Mwale, chairman of the conservation committee of the East African Wildlife Society, 70 per cent is from the Mau forest – a move that will have a tremendous impact on Ntimama's constituents and Kenyans at large.

By last week the outrage had grown to a new crescendo with farmers of the Sagana Settlement Scheme storming the Hombe Forest to uproot beacons erected by some fast-moving surveyors. Minister for Lands and Settlement Joseph Nyagah then made the rather blithe comment that still more land was due to be degazetted and that "the ongoing exercise [was] to clearly define forest boundaries."

The official excuse for the state's decision is the need to settle landless Kenyans – an important objective. However, we must distinguish between "landless Kenyans" and "private developers" – a political term in this country, denoting the beneficiaries of patronage. The widespread fear is that the excisions are being conducted now with an eye to the general election next year.

It is now clear that, with the economic liberalisation-induced attrition of patronage resources over the past 15 years, the environment is becoming, as it were, the safety valve for corruption, greed and incompetence in Kenya, with the allocation of land being used as a bribe meant to shape political choices on the part of beneficiaries. Of the recent degazetting of forests, therefore, one can argue that there never was a bribe so gigantic or so terrible in its implications.

But the government's decision to chop up and dish out this country's already alarmingly depleted forest coverage by a further 10 per cent is also uniting, ironically, environmental activists with senior government hawks like Ntimama. This means that there are still issues out there that can unite Kenyans in a manner unseen since the US Embassy bomb blast in 1998.