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The distribution and redistribution of land in Africa
Craig Dowler
June 01, 2006

http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=12042

In researching this editorial, two statements remained with me throughout and seemed to encapsulate the land issue in Africa. One was a British Privy Council decision in 1926 (Subhuza II vs. Miller and Others) that said:

The true character of native title to land throughout the Empire including South and West Africa: with local variations the principle is a uniform one... The notion of individual ownership is foreign to native ideas. Land belongs to the community not to the individual. The title of the native community generally takes the form of a usufructuary right ... obviously such a usufructuary right, however difficult to get rid of by ordinary means of conveyancing may be extinguished by the action of a paramount power which assumes possession of the entire control of the land. (In DFID, 1999, p. 2.)

The other was a statement by a Yoruba chief. When asked who owned the land, he replied: "That land belongs to a vast family, of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are yet unborn" (Berry, 1993, p.106).

The coming together of these two opposed views of land tenure has given many of the countries of Africa the situation that now exists. In some, like Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and South Africa, where the climate was fine and the soil good, settlers took control of the land under versions of European received law, with their emphases on ownership. The natives were pushed into tribal trust lands or communal areas where "customary" or "traditional" law prevailed, and the soil was not usually good. In most of the rest of Africa, where the climate was not so fine, the impact of the European presence was less, but still felt in the form of large plantations devoted to commercial crops for export, such as rubber, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, tea, peanuts and cotton, and in the hard labour needed to produce them. Here the mix of flexible use-oriented customary law and the colonial laws of possession were less compartmentalized, so equity issues were not as pressing as the economic ones centred on resolving uncertainties of land tenure. But in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, though there are tenure problems, emphasis has to be on equity issues like restitution, reform and the redistribution of land.

Before Zimbabwe and South Africa’s current settler-based land problems, there was Kenya, where white settlers were encouraged by Britain to take over the best parts of Kenya’s Central Highlands and the Rift Valley, displacing Kikuyu farmers and reducing them to farm labourers. The belief was that large commercial farms growing crops for export would help defray the costs of the hugely expensive East African railroad from the Indian Ocean coast to Uganda. During both World Wars, the commercial farms of the white Highlands prospered, and after World War II large numbers of post-war immigrants arrived to bolster the number of white farmers and push even more Kikuyu into already crowded native reserves. The Mau Mau uprising of the 1950's was a symptom of this pressure, forcing the British to find a solution. The Swynnerton Plan, financed by Britain, sponsored a pre-structural-adjustment market-based solution. The White Highlands were parcelled out as smallholdings to native farmers to grow commercial crops under contract to marketing boards. People in the native areas were encouraged to register title deeds to customary holdings. Theoretically, then, Kenya would resolve its land issue by giving security of tenure to Kenyans on the European model. An obvious problem, however, would occur with disputes over contracts and titles. The colonial government, in its last years, favoured those loyal to it. Independent governments favoured their supporters. So disputes continued, and were made worse by the pressures of a rapidly expanding population, volatility in the markets for produce, and the temptations that go with government power over land. A recent article in the Review of African Political Economy, "The Ndungu Report: Land and Graft in Kenya," sums up Kenya’s present land situation:

One of the few African countries to enact individual tenure of indigenous land, along with redistribution of chunks of the former "white Highlands," Kenya is faced with landlessness on a large scale and with recurrent land disputes among individuals and between communities. Government has just set in train a national land formation process to try and sort out these underlying problems, including those thrown up by the [Ndungu] Commission [on Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land]. (Southall, 2005, p.142)

After this brief overview of Kenya’s land problems, we move on to the two countries that dominate the news at the moment: Zimbabwe and South Africa. There are those who speak of Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned farms as having accomplished Africa’s first "Agricultural Revolution," if only by accident (Chitiyo, 2003, p.179). That is one way of viewing the violent thrashings of a man desperately hanging on to power. After all, he is cheered wherever he goes in Africa, outside of Zimbabwe, as a champion of Africans against white domination. A strange champion, others might say, who is reported to have invited dispossessed white farmers to reacquire farms from the government under a new policy granting 99-year leases (Carroll, 2006). Then you hear that such an offer was never made, though there are precedents for lease arrangements involving white farmers, coming from Zambia, Mozambique, and Nigeria.

Such vacillation concerning the redistribution of land from white commercial farmers to dispossessed Africans is common. It has to do with the economics of the process. The call for equity and justice demands action; the calculation of the costs, political and/or economic, of such action causes hesitation. Zimbabwe fought its wars of independence over land (Chimurenga). When independence came with the Lancaster House Agreement of 1980, there were funds available from the US and UK to bring about the redistribution of land on a "willing seller, willing buyer" basis. The funds offered were not as generous as those offered Kenya in the late 1950s, and the early take-up was hesitant. The land willingly offered for sale was not that good and the costs of resettlement were much higher than calculated. Further calculations by the Mugabe government of the time suggested that better land with more resettlement costs would threaten the foreign exchange income generated by white commercial farms, so the process went dormant. However, the politics of land redistribution continued with the 1992 Land Acquisition Act: "An attempt to seek a politically acceptable land redistribution program which would still preserve the white commercial farming sector" (Chitiyo, 2003, p.163). What eventually focussed Mugabe’s mind and led to action on land redistribution at the end of the 1990s was threats to his power. Bringing on Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, they began with the demonstrations of war vets, who were bought off and harnessed for Mugabe’s political survival, which was threatened by his referendum defeat and the rise of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on the eve of the 2000 elections. The farm invasions, the election violence and the "slum clearance" that have gone on since, have Zimbabwe "heading for collapse" (Carroll, 2006, p.8). It does not seem to be an economically effective way to accomplish land redistribution, and would seem to be a model that South Africa should avoid, given its leading role in Africa’s renaissance.

South Africa’s land redistribution is beset by the same problems as Zimbabwe’s. The end of apartheid came through negotiations, as did the Lancaster House Agreement. So the "willing buyer, willing seller" method of acquiring land for redistribution was part of that bargain. As well, South Africa’s white commercial farms, though not as large a part of its economy as they were of Zimbabwe’s, still contribute to South Africa’s economic strength. Apartheid was a particularly cruel and unfair system, even more than Ian Smith’s U.D.I. regime. The settlement agreed to by the A.N.C. and the National Party precludes forceful restitution or redistribution of land. Commentators have observed that "in effect, colonial land theft is now preserved by constitutional sanction" (cited in Hall, 2004, p.214).

The South African Land Reform Process has three components:

1. To register land rights to those dispossessed by segregation and apartheid through a Land Resititution Programme served by a specially constituted Land Claims Court.
2. Securing and upgrading the rights of those with insecure rights to land through a Land Tenure Reform Programme.
3. Changing the racially skewed land ownership patterns through a Land Redistribution Programme.

The process has fallen far short of its early promise. By 1999 only 41 of 63,455 restitution claims had been resolved in the Land Claims Court (Hall, 2004). Besides the usual problems of uncertainty of land rights in communal areas, land tenure reform for tenants faces South Africa’s emphasis on property rights and rights of ownership. Redistribution is beset by the usual economic constraints. The government has allotted only 0.5% of its budget for land redistribution (Hall, 2004), and though it has expropriation rights, it is reluctant to use them to acquire land below market rates. How would investors react to a mass exodus of white farmers?

The failure to move land reform forward only makes worse South Africa’s biggest problem, the growing inequity between haves and have-nots. The cities and peri-urban areas are full of the unemployed. Adding the rural poor would take things to the edge of an explosion. At the moment land invasions and other forms of violence take place everywhere in the countryside. The example of Zimbabwe is there. However, in South Africa, ironically, the police are on the side of white ownership against black invasion. Another irony comes out of the government’s emphasis on market-based land policies aimed at equity and efficiency and the avoidance of confrontation. "... There is evidence that white farmers gained more land under these policies than disadvantaged black farmers" (Kagwanja, 2005).

Given all the evidence that the purpose of its land policies are not being fulfilled, South Africa’s government must temper its commitment to neo-liberal ideas, as it has done recently in other areas of social need, and find the political will and money to get land into the hands of those who need it, work on it, and whose survival and dignity depend on it. Recently there have been signs of change. Mbeki’s government has begun to speak of using powers of "eminent domain" to acquire land and promises 30% redistribution by 2014 (South Africa Info, May 5, 2006).

This editorial began by presenting two views of land: one based on ownership, the other on continuity. The issue for most African governments is how to resolve the problems arising out of two such opposite ideas about land tenure, one superimposed on the other. All must achieve some degree of equity and economic efficiency if agriculture is to contribute to poverty alleviation in Africa. In countries with settler economies, like Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and to some extent Namibia, equity is the more pressing issue; elsewhere, though inequities do exist, efficient economic use of land is the first concern. This "elsewhere" covers a wide diversity of countries, climates, and peoples. How can such a generalization be justified? One important book in the field puts it this way:

Yet within such diverse patterns of experience and situations there are generic issues relating to land tenure and land reform processes . . . The common features are a consequence of Africa’s experience with colonialization, the imposition of an alien legal system on top of customary rules for managing people and land, and the many common shifts in policy and approaches to land tenure which have been pursued since independence. (Toulmin & Quan, 2000, p.8).

What are the "generic issues relating to land tenure and land reform processes?" Most lists would include:

• The uncertainty surrounding control of land in many areas of rural Africa
• The need for local decision making about land
• Finding the right balance between food crops and crops for export
• A realization that small holdings can be as productive as large commercial farms
• A need to create non-agricultural employment and better social services on overcrowded arable land
• A way of keeping the peace between herders and cultivators and avoiding ethnic conflict
• A way to enable women to get control of land if Africa is ever to feed itself.

Present African governments, with rare exceptions, rule over countries inherited from colonialists who invented the boundaries, established cities and economies, and designated some areas of land set aside for public uses, such as ports, parks, forest reserves, rights of way, public buildings, etc. Some land was given out as freehold or leased lots in the cities and larger parcels were designated for plantations, ranches, and larger farms. The rest, where the large mass of African peasants live, was under indirect rule and customary or traditional law where land rights are communal. Resolving this complex mix of land tenure arrangements towards agricultural improvement is an ongoing problem for most African countries. The Kenyan model of title deeds and formal registration of communal land is far too expensive and doesn’t lead to resolution anyway. Another problem is that the process gives an advantage to the well-connected, educated urban elite and leaves the people who live and work the land at a disadvantage. One approach that is favoured is the decentralizing of land control. Botswana’s Land Boards are an example that many will follow. However, for that model to work properly, there has to be a guarantee of local control. Land Boards full of government appointees will not likely be sensitive to local needs and issues.

"Resolving this complex mix of land tenure arrangements towards agricultural improvement is an ongoing problem for most African countries."

The years from the 1960s to the 1990s saw a very large drop in Africa’s agricultural output. This was the time of "structural adjustment" with its emphasis on commercial crops for export, often at the expense of food crops. Africa became a net importer of food. With unfair trade regimes and with so many countries pursuing the same markets there was an oversupply, prices dropped and commercial crops became uneconomical. African countries must now try to restore the lost balance between food crops and crops such as coffee, tea, cocoa, cotton, etc.

It is a common belief, in the growing of any crops, that larger farms and plantations have a productivity advantage. However, most of the informed sources in the field disagree, suggesting that the perceived advantage has more to do with ready finances and government help rather than productivity per se. If finances and government support were made available to small farms, the productivity gains would be there, as they were in the 1960s in Kenya and in the same period in Ghana where the cocoa boom was based on small holdings. There is the added bonus of more people involved in production.

However, where land is arable and production is good overcrowding is a problem. Africa’s population is growing faster than in any other continent. Kenya is one example, others are the Great Lakes Region, and the Ivory Coast. In Kenya, the response to overcrowding and smaller farms is what Stephen Orvis in his book, The Agrarian Question in Kenya, calls "straddling." Households take off-farm work "to invest in agriculture and education . . . off-farm income is crucial to survival and accumulation" (p.150). He makes the point that for people to live productively on small farms they need non-agricultural income and good social services. In Kenya schools often get built using the "harambee" system of self-help.

The Ivory Coast and the Great Lakes Region are examples of how destructive land issues can be. In both, overcrowding as well as pastoralist-cultivator clashes have led to intense hostilities stirred up by political opportunism. The Ivory Coast has not experienced the extremes of violence that have occurred in Rwanda, Burundi or the Kivus, but there is a divided country, political impasse and much suffering. It began with the Ivory Coast’s prosperity under President Houphuét-Boigny who, in the glow of the prosperous years, invited herdsmen to bring their cattle from the drought-ridden Sahel to northern Ivory Coast to increase the country’s beef output. At the same time the cocoa boom had moved from Ghana to the Ivory Coast attracting farm workers from everywhere in the region, especially Burkina Faso. As well, the offer of land to the cultivator attracted growers from outside the country: the present north-south divide, with militias and recalcitrant politicians on both sides is one outcome of those years. Resentment of outsiders who came to the Ivory Coast and succeeded resulted in today’s xenophobic violence.

The violence in Rwanda and the Kivus was much greater. Again political opportunism played its part. It has been suggested that one of the incentives for the genocide in Rwanda was the release of overcrowded land. In the Kivus there was a different, though related, set of problems to do with land. They began with the Belgians establishing plantations in the Kivu highlands which, along with forest reserves and national parks, encroached on the communal lands of the indigenous people. Thousands of Rwandans (mainly Hutu) were brought in to work on the plantations. This was in the period after World War I when Belgium was granted trusteeship over Rwanda/Burundi. The situation prevailed until 1973, when Mobutu’s "Zaireanization" movement included a land law declaring all land, plantations and communal land, as belonging to the state. He then parcelled out the land to those whom he could control. The Banyarwanda of North Kivu and the Banyamulenge of South Kivu owed their citizenship to him and were prosperous enough to incorporate modern farming methods. The selection of Kinyarwanda speakers suited Mobuto’s divide and rule strategy at the time; later, when things changed in the 1980s and ‘90s they were dropped and subjected to government-encouraged expulsion orders. But the resentment and hostility of the indigenous people remained and was the undercurrent of the millions of deaths following the genocide in Rwanda, the refugee camps and two Rwandan-led incursions into Eastern DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo).

The issue that remains to be discussed may be the most important of the seven "generic issues" raised: the need for women to be able to inherit and control land in order to lead Africa towards food self-sufficiency. Women, after all, have the job of giving and maintaining life, and so control of the land that supports life seems obvious. However, neither customary nor statutory law makes it easy for women to get control of land. Customary land practice places women, as the equivalent of youth and foreigners, in a secondary category in terms of land tenure. Whatever the intentions of land laws passed by new governments, the predominance of men in positions of power makes change a slow, if not impossible, process. Rwanda, with its 40% women in the legislature and the predominance in numbers of women over men since the genocide, may become an exception. Meanwhile, ironically, women in South Africa have a chance to control land during the current farm occupations (Sihlononyano, 2003, p.149).

Select bibliography and links:

General:

• DFID (Dept. of Finance and Int'l Development). Land Rights and Sustainable Development in Sub-saharan Africa: Lessons and Way Forward in Land Tenure Policy. Sunningdale, England, 1999.
• Moyo, Sam & Peris Yeros. Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Zed Press, 2005.
• Toulmin, Camilla & Julian Quan, eds. Evolving Land Rights, Policy and Tenure in Africa. National Research Institute, 2000.
• UNDP. Land Rights for African Development: From Knowledge to Action. CAPRI Policy Briefs, 2005 (http://www.undp.org/drylands/lt-workshop-11-05.htm).

Kenya:

• Bates, Robert H. Beyond the Miracle of the Market: Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Orvis, Stephen. The Agrarian Question in Kenya. University Press of Florida, 1997.
• Southall, Roger. "The Ndungu Report: Land and Graft in Kenya", Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), no. 103, 2005, pp. 142-151.

Southern Africa:

• Barber, Simon. "Land 'Expropriation' in Context", South Africa Info, 5 May 2006 (http://www.southafrica.info/doing_business/economy/fiscal_policies/land-040506.htm).
• Bowyer-Bower, T. S. & Colin Stoneman. Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Constraints and Prospects. Ashgate (SOAS Studies in Developmental Geography), 2000.
• Carroll, Rory. "Zimbabwe Heading for Collapse: Country Visibly Falling Apart", Guardian Weekly, 28 April - 4 May 2006, p. 8.
• Chitiyo, Knox. "Harvest of Tongues: Zimbabwe's 'Third Chimurenga' and the Making of an Agrarian Revolution", in Lee & Colvard (see below), 2003, pp. 159-193.
• Hall, Ruth. "A Political Economy of Land Reform in South Africa", ROAPE, no. 100, 2004, pp. 213-227.
• Lee, Margaret C. & Karen Colvard. Unfinished Business: The Land Crisis in Southern Africa. African Institute of South Africa (AISA), 2003.
• Melber, Henning. "Land & Politics in Namibia", ROAPE, no. 103, 2005, pp. 135-141.
• Moyo, Sam. The Land Question in Zimbabwe. SAPES, 1992.
• Sihlononyano, Mfanisoni Fana, "Land Occupations in South Africa", in Lee & Colvard (see above), 2003.
• Van Zyl, J., J. Kirsten & H. P. Binswanger. Agricultural Land Reform in South Africa. OUP, 1996.

West Africa:

• Berry, Sarah. No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-saharan Africa. University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
• Chaveau, Jean-Pierre. "How Does an Institution Evolve? Land Politics and Intergenerational Relations and the Institution of Tutorat Amongst Auchtones and Immigrants (Gran Region Cote d'Ivoire)", in Kuba & Lanz (see below), 2006, pp. 213-224.
• Delville, Philippe Lavigne. The Dynamics of Land Tenure in West Africa. James Curry, 2002.
• Kuba, Richard & Carola Lanz. Land and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa. Brill, 2006.
• Great Lakes & Eastern DRC:
  Mamdani, Mahmoud. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Marysse, S., S. Tofaan & Filip Reyntjens. The Political Economy of the Great Lakes Region in Africa. Palgrave, 2005.
• Van Acker, Frank. "Where Did All the Land Go? Enclosure and Social Struggle in Kivu (DR Congo)", ROAPE, no. 103, 2005, pp. 79-98.

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