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Integrating Land Issues and Land Policy with Poverty Reduction
and Rural Development in Southern Africa
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| 2. Land Issues |
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The overview paper by Sue Mbaya helps to catalogue key land issues and observes how appreciable differences exist in perspectives on how land is viewed, managed and used between the “settled” colonial states (Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe) and “nonsettled states” (Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zambia) of Southern Africa. Settled states share a history of colonial occupation that has resulted in racially skewed land distribution systems, dual tenure systems, and severe degradation of communal areas. Land issues in the non-settled states tend to be more strongly associated with landlessness, environmental degradation, loss of land to peri-urban settlement, high population growth, unsustainable land use, and weak systems of land administration. Angola and Mozambique are not covered in Mbaya’s country stratification. Both however share similar histories of Portuguese occupation, political instability after independence, and a decade or more of war that has uprooted and dislocated rural populations, destroyed assets, and created trauma on a widespread scale. Land grabbing and the enclosure of customary lands are on the rise in most countries within the region by powerful indigenous elites and corporations that are acquiring land and property at the expense of the poor (Mbaya).
Many of these issues – colonial occupation, appropriation of resources and control of the economy – are observed elsewhere in Africa2, but southern Africa is unique in the intensity and scale of colonial interventions, the persistence of these effects, and the late transition to African independence. While dualistic land tenure systems prevail Africa-wide, there are also differences in the way colonial policy treated customary tenure systems. British colonial law served primarily to acquire land for public purposes and to administer leases to investors and settlers, while customary law applied to indigenous people in “reserves.”3 In the French colonies, the general land policy emphasized assimilation based on the doctrine of “one law for all”, giving all Africans and Europeans the right to obtain concessions and private property if they complied with the Civil Code. The Portuguese colonies (Angola and Mozambique) also emphasized assimilation, but integrated them into the land administration machinery using chiefs and “regulos” to mobilize labor and collect taxes (Graefen).
| Box A: Salient Land Issues, Southern Africa Countries |
- Highly unequal land distribution both in terms of area and land quality, and a system of dual land rights resulting from massive alienation of land to white settler communities
- Severe land shortage and problems of landlessness in communal areas and certain land scarce countries (Malawi)
- Dual economies characterized by historically segmented access to resources and markets between “white and black”, rich and poor, socially advantaged and disadvantaged
- Severely eroded land in communal areas caused by overcrowding, pass laws, inadequate infrastructure, erratic rainfall, and inaccessibility of formerly disadvantaged population to input and output markets
- Weak and uncertain rights of tenants operating under permits on resettlement schemes, certain households and individuals (particularly women) on customary lands, and beneficiaries of land reform schemes operating under various forms of equity sharing
- Inadequate protection of farmworker rights against eviction and substandard farmworker housing on commercial farms. Inadequate protection of rights of citizens and communities against certain traditional authorities
- Land resettlement by large populations displaced by war and colonial occupation
- Loss of high quality arable land to urban and peri-urban settlements
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Regardless of these differences in colonial land administration, the prevalence of dualism between national land tenure legislation and customary land tenure practice in West Africa (French Republic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs) is equally relevant for the customary sectors of Southern Africa, as are the approaches discussed by Delville to move away from legal dualism (see also Julian Quan)4. However, as noted by Cousins, slow progress in addressing tenure reform in communal areas is strongly related to unresolved (and the highly contested) issue of the role of traditional authorities in local governance systems in South Africa, including administration of land tenure.
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Footnotes:
- Despite different legal systems applied by Britain (Southern Africa) and France (West Africa), land tenure policies of both were similar in law and effect. Both powers adhered to the doctrine that all occupied land was held in communal tenure, ownership of customary lands was vested in chiefs as trustees, individuals were granted only usefructory rights, and all vacant land was expropriated for colonial use. Dualistic land tenure systems were manifest within both regions, but in addition conflicts emerged between countries with large white settler communities (Angola, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe) and those with relatively small settler communities (e.g. Rwanda, Malawi, Lesotho, Nigeria). (see Graefen).
- In east and southern Africa, but not in West Africa. See for example the paper by Honorable Professor Kasim Kasanga who talks about the importance of stools and chiefs on customary lands (not reserves) in Ghana.
- According to Delville, five local institutional innovations are undergoing experimentation in West Africa: 1) identifying and mapping (individual and community) land rights; 2) codifying rules and granting legal status; 3) allocating responsibility for making and managing rules to local structures; 4) making land transactions more secure; and 5) developing tenure observatories to monitor land tenure constraints and performance.
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