The strip remained a protectorate till 1920 when together with interior they were declared colony and protectorate of Kenya. Here the Muslim law of land alienation applied that is land that was cleared of bush and cultivated became the property of the person who performed this task, it remained his even if it reverted to bush but passed from his hands only if he left the country without leaving an agent to tend it. This is the genesis of absentee landlords that stalks the coast of Kenya to date.  The Mijikenda on their part settled on the land either with the knowledge that it belonged to someone else or under the assumption that since it was their ancestral land and it still belonged to them. Under the Muslim tenure there was a distinction between ownership of land and ownership of chattels or crops thereupon. What this meant is that Arab owners granted permission to anyone to cultivate and even build a house but such person would be a tenant at will and could be evicted within one month’s notice. The tenant had liberty to take his hut and crops but could not be compensated for permanent crops such as coconut, cashew-nut, mango, and orange trees. The Muslim law favoured the Sultan’s subjects who could acquire private property but disadvantaged the indigenous communities being non-Muslims and non-subjects. The dispossession continued. Then came the Land Titles Ordinance (LTO) that the colonial authorities enacted to determine the extent of private possessions along the coastal area before alienating land for the crown and give grants to individual settlers. This exercise only recognized Arab and Swahili titles to land, Africans were considered to only have user rights. The Mijikenda and ex-slaves were further dispossessed when land they formerly occupied but were not in the hands of Arabs or Swahilis were declared ‘waste and unoccupied land’ by LTO and were thus given to the crown. Between 1919 and 1926 vast sections of this crown land was surveyed and registered, Arabs and Swahilis were given freehold titles, those who abandoned theirs under Muslim law lost their rights to it and it reverted to the crown. All unregistered land under freehold was deemed crown land. Africans it was assumed held land under communal tenure and therefore in order to give way to European settlement, some Mijikenda were taken to the native reserves established exclusively for them beyond the 10-mile strip. On the eve of independence Arabs issued eviction notices and collected rent from the Mijikenda and ex-slaves who occupied land they thought was abandoned public land or land with no claimants to. The new administration had entered in to a pre-independence agreement with the Sultan conceding to the Sultan’s demands for recognition of private land rights on the coast and adjudication and registration of such rights where this had not been done. All crown land became government land and this sealed the fate of the Mijikenda whose land rights had previously been negated.