Tài liệu The Struggle over Land in Africa doc

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Published by HSRC Press

Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

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First published 2010

ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2322-6

ISBN (pdf) 978-0-7969-2323-3

ISBN (e-pub) 978-0-7969-2324-0

© 2010 Human Sciences Research Council

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Contents

Tables and figures vii

Acronyms and abbreviations viii

Acknowledgements x

Foreword xi

Introduction: The struggle over land in Africa: Conflicts, politics and change 1

Ward Anseeuw and Chris Alden

Theme 1: Ethnic and indigenous land conflicts

1 ‘Indigenous’ land claims in Kenya: A case study of Chebyuk, Mount Elgon

District 19

Claire Médard

2 Shades of grey: Post-conflict land policy reform in the Great Lakes Region 37

Chris Huggins

Theme 2: Between ‘traditionalism and modernity’: Insecurity, privatisation

and marginalisation

3 The politics of communal tenure reform: A South African case study 55

Ben Cousins

4 Karal land: Family cultural patrimony or a commercialised product on the

Diamaré Plain? 71

Bernard Gonné

Theme 3: Renewed land interests, land use, and conflicts

5 The conflicting distribution of tourism revenue as an example of insecure land

tenure in Namibian communal lands 85

Renaud Lapeyre

6 Land rights and enclosures: Implementing the Mozambican Land Law

in practice 105

Christopher Tanner

7 Biodiversity conservation against small-scale farming? Scientific evidences and

emergence of new types of land crises 131

Catherine E Laurent

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Theme 4: State building, politics and land

8 The role of land as a site and source of conflict in Angola 147

Jenny Clover

9 Two cycles of land policy in South Africa: Tracing the contours 175

Ruth Hall

10 A legal analysis of the Namibian commercial agricultural land reform

process 193

Willem Adriaan Odendaal

Theme 5: Land policy development, planning and (non-)inclusiveness

11 The Ituri paradox: When armed groups have a land policy and

peacemakers do not 209

Thierry Vircoulon

12 Understanding urban planning approaches in Tanzania: A historical

transition analysis for urban sustainability 221

Wakuru Magigi

Theme 6: Regional scopes of land conflicts and changing norms

13 The Zimbabwe crisis, land reform and normalisation 245

Sam Moyo

14 Regionalisation of norms and the impact of narratives on southern African

land policies 265

Chris Alden and Ward Anseeuw

Contributors 279

Index 281

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vii

Tables and figures

Tables

Table 5.1 Leisure tourists in Namibia, 2001–07 87

Table 5.2 Annual revenues in 2005 for 44 conservancies, Namibia 93

Table 5.3 Insecure rights and conflicts, Namibia 95

Table 6.1 Community land delimitations under way and completed,

Mozambique, June 2003 112

Table 6.2 Allocation of public sector resources to community land delimitation

through PAAO SPGC budgets, Mozambique, 2001–03 113

Table 6.3 Land concentration indicated by new land applications up to March

2000, Zambezia Province, Mozambique 117

Table 6.4 Land concentration trends in Gaza Province, Mozambique,

2004–05 118

Table 11.1 Militias operating in Ituri, DRC, 2003–04 211

Table 13.1 Key conflict arenas and transition issues, Zimbabwe 258

Figures

Figure 4.1 Location of Diamaré Plain, Northern Cameroon 72

Figure 4.2 Annual evolution of the purchase price ( _1

4

ha) in Diamaré Plain 76

Figure 4.3 Spatial distribution of land in karal areas of the Far North

Province 77

Figure 4.4 Evolution of the number of contract papers in Salak, 1995–2001 78

Figure 5.1 Rent generation from natural assets, by multiple users and its

distribution 88

Figure 5.2 Application process for a right of leasehold, Namibia 91

Figure 5.3 Territorial re-appropriation of natural resources: Communal land

conservancies in January 2006 93

Figure 12.1 Formal and informal neighbourhoods in Dar es Salaam city 224

Figure 12.2 Land regularisation outputs, Tanzania 230

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viii

Acronyms and abbreviations

AALS Affirmative Action Loan Scheme (Namibia)

Agribank Agricultural Bank of Namibia

ANC African National Congress (South Africa)

APC Congolese People’s Army

CBNRM Community Based Natural Resources Management programme (of the

Ministry of Agriculture) (Mozambique)

CBTE community-based tourism enterprise (Namibia)

CFJJ Centre for Juridical and Judicial Training (of the Ministry of Justice)

(Mozambique)

CLDC Community Land Development Committee (Tanzania)

CLRA Communal Land Rights Act (South Africa)

Codesa Convention for a Democratic South Africa

CTC CT Consulting

DfID Department for International Development (UK)

DLA Department of Land Affairs (South Africa)

DMG Daureb Mountain Guides (Association) (Namibia)

DNFFB National Directorate for Forests and Wildlife (Mozambique)

DRC Democratic Republic of Congo

DUAT Direito de Uso e Aproveitamento de Terra (Land use and benefit right)

(Mozambique)

EBM evidence-based medicine

EBP evidence-based policy

EPM Environmental Planning and Management

ESAP economic structural adjustment programme

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (of the United Nations)

FAPC People’s Armed Forces of Congo (Forces Armées du Peuple Congolais)

FNI Front for National Integration (DRC)

FPDC People Forces for Democracy in Congo

FRPI Front for the Patriotic Resistance in Ituri (DRC)

IDP internally displaced person

IMF International Monetary Fund

LAPC Land and Agriculture Policy Centre (South Africa)

LRAD Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (South Africa)

MDC Movement for Democratic Change (Zimbabwe)

MET Ministry of Environment and Tourism (Namibia)

MINADER Ministério de Agricultura e Desenvolvimento Rural (Ministry of

Agriculture and Rural Development) (Angola)

MLHSD Ministry of Lands and Human Settlement Development (Tanzania)

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ix

MONUC Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies en République démocratique

du Congo (Mission of the United Nations Organisation in the

Democratic Republic of Congo)

MP Member of Parliament

MPLA People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola

NAFU National African Farmers’ Union (South Africa)

NGO non-governmental organisation

NLC National Land Committee (South Africa)

NMC National Monument Council (Namibia)

PTO Permission to Occupy

PUSIC Party for Unity and Safeguarding of the Integrity of Congo

RPF Rwandan Patriotic Front

SADC Southern African Development Community

SAP structural adjustment programme

SLAG Settlement Land Acquisition Grant (South Africa)

SUDP Strategic Urban Development Plan/Planning

Swapo South West Africa People’s Organisation

TA tribal/traditional authority

TCOE Trust for Community Outreach and Education (South Africa)

TLGFA Traditional Leaders and Governance Framework Act (South Africa)

UCLAS University College of Land and Architectural Studies (Tanzania)

UDASEDA Ubungo Darajani Community Development Organisation (Tanzania)

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

Unesco United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Unita National Union for the Total Independence of Angola

UPC Union of Congolese Patriots

WSSD World Summit on Sustainable Development

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Zanu-PF Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front)

x

Acknowledgements

Land issues and conflicts occur all over the African continent, all the time. Stories

regarding land mushroom on a continuous basis. Although many of them are not

new, they continue to change and are extremely complex and embedded. This leads

to difficulties in dealing with them and results in questions around the legitimacy

of forms of conflict intervention and prevention, many of which do not take into

consideration the major – and thus potentially recurring – causes of conflict. It is on

this basis that the conference forming the foundation of this book was organised.

Supported by the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS-Research) – in partnership

with the French embassies of Pretoria, Harare, Gaborone, Windhoek and Maputo;

the office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Harare;

the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD);

the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); and the University

of Pretoria (UP) – The Changing Politics of Land: Domestic Policies, Crisis

Management and Regional Norms conference gathered in Pretoria on 28 and 29

November 2005. Papers were selected by a scientific review committee composed of

members of all funding institutions, and included the main research institutions and

organisations specialising in these questions (UP and the University of the Western

Cape, both from South Africa; CIRAD; French Research Institute for Development;

French National Institute for Agricultural Research; the Institute for Security Studies;

the African Institute for Agrarian Studies of Harare; the Legal Assistance Center of

Windhoek; Human Rights Watch; etc.). This book is a collection of updated versions

of most of the papers presented at the conference.

We would like to convey our gratitude to all the funders, as well as to the many

contributors and participants, who made it possible through both the conference

and this publication to present the state of knowledge on land issues and conflicts in

Africa. They also made it possible to keep alive a necessary debate on land questions

in Africa, despite the sensitive context and acute controversies.

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xi

Foreword

Sustainable growth and development in Africa as well the continent’s

contribution to the world economy in the 21st Century will continue to

depend largely on the manner in which land and land-related resources are

secured, used and managed. This will require that these issues be addressed

through comprehensive people-driven land policies and reforms which confer

full political, social, economic and environmental benefits to the majority of

the African people.

Thus concludes the historic Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa,

adopted by the Heads of State of Africa meeting in Sirte, Libya, in July 2009.

The Framework was prepared under an initiative led by the African Union and

involving most of Africa’s prominent land experts, including some of the authors

in this book.

The Struggle over land in Africa is a timely and important accompaniment to the

growing number of continental-level and national policies on land. Questions

about rights to land and natural resources are emerging as a central component of

policy and decision-making on development, poverty reduction and peace building.

However, as the authors of this book clearly demonstrate, getting beyond noble but

broad statements of consensus and into concrete questions of how land should be

best used, owned and controlled, and by whom, reveals a complex, highly contested

and often conflictual terrain.

Land policy in Africa is changing. The market-centred land tenure reforms of

the 1980s and 1990s are beginning to lose ground to the more people-centred

tenure reforms of the last decade. Land policies and laws in Africa are, in theory,

increasingly capable of serving the needs of ordinary land users by accommodating

difference, plurality and more decentralised forms of land governance. Concepts

of governance are also evolving. Governments are more willing to reach beyond

their own corridors to recognise the legitimate roles of civil society and local-level

institutions in making decisions on land use and ownership. At the same time, there

are an increasing number of voices who believe they have a right to be heard in

defining land policy or influencing its implementation, including well-networked

civil society organisations, social movements and producer organisations.

Nonetheless, slow shifts towards the democratisation of land governance in Africa

are happening within economies and societies characterised by growing gaps

between those with the political and economic power to lay claim to land, and

those without. With persistent efforts at agrarian reform few and far between, the

current trend is towards increasingly polarised patterns of land ownership, and thus

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xii

increased potential for conflict. Conflict is both a symptom of persistent inequalities

and an opportunity for the powerful to consolidate their holdings of land and

valuable resources.

The scramble to lay claim to land, in which 80 per cent of Africa’s land users access

land through customary mechanisms, is a profoundly unequal one. How can

the enclosure of Africa’s land become less of a vehicle for concentration of land

ownership and more of an opportunity for those that use the land – women, family

farmers, pastoralists, first peoples, tenants and the landless – to gain secure land

tenure at collective and/or individual levels? Great strides have been made in the

last decade in developing innovative methodologies for participatory and low-cost

registration of tenure rights. However, as the chapters of this book make clear, even

progressive land policies and the availability of necessary tools for pro-poor land

registration can become vehicles of the powerful for their own advantage.

One of this book’s major contributions is a systematic analysis that looks not just at

competition, but also at confrontations, over land. It does so within an analysis of

rights and power relations, political and policy frameworks, culture and values. It does

not offer simple solutions, emphasising that the volatile dynamics of land conflict do

not always conform to the conventions of logic. Ignoring these complexities can lead

to well-conceived tenure reforms simply fuelling land-based conflict.

Securing equitable access to and control over land means securing peace. It is also

central to enabling women and men to exercise their fundamental economic, social,

political and cultural rights, including the universal right to be free from hunger and

poverty. This was the rationale for the creation of the International Land Coalition

more than a decade ago, and it is the driving force behind many organisations and

individuals across the African continent who work on questions of land tenure. The

authors and contributors to The Struggle over land in Africa present an illuminating

set of perspectives and analyses that provide essential pointers to understanding and

establishing the conditions that will promote peace and a measure of lasting security

in the livelihoods of ordinary women and men across Africa.

Michael Taylor

Programme Manager, Africa and Global Policy

International Land Coalition Secretariat

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1

Introduction

The struggle over land in Africa:

Conflicts, politics and change

Ward Anseeuw and Chris Alden

While rarely reaching the proportions experienced in Darfur or Rwanda, conflicts

linked to the acquisition and use of land are part and parcel of the African political

landscape. The power of the land issue to invoke emotional responses and political

action spills over into questions of ownership, usage, development practices, resource

management and, ultimately, citizenship and identity politics. The failure of African

governments to recognise and resolve lingering disputes emerging from the land

question has triggered extended protests and violence, disrupting vital production

and in some cases even destabilising once venerated economic and political ‘success’

stories in Africa. The inability of the international community to develop policies

and programmes which effectively integrate these concerns into their development

focus inadvertently renders their efforts stillborn.

A brief survey of conflicts in Africa illustrates these profound linkages between land

and the onset of violence and political strife. For instance, the civil war that started

in 2002 in Côte d’Ivoire, although apparently winding down, reflects dynamics

around land and identity. The land issue remains sensitive in this mainly rural

country, where about 40 per cent of the population is of foreign descent (mostly

Burkinabe but also Malian and Guinean) (Chauveau & Colin 2005: 3). Land

debates also mushroomed in Nigeria, where the power of the oil resources has had

a disastrous impact on land practices. The dispossession of local tribes in the Niger

Delta and Niger River states in pursuit of oil production has led to a rising tide of

violence since 1999 (Akpan 2005). In Kenya, extreme inequality and landlessness

have unravelled the so-called successes of the post-settler ‘Million Acre Scheme’,

with Kenya’s landless now threatening land invasions (Yamano & Deininger 2005).

Indeed, Kenya’s 2007 post-electoral conflicts are directly linked to the threat of

land invasions. In Zimbabwe, another type of land war is ongoing. What was once

considered to be a shining example of democratically inspired reconciliation is now

characterised as a failing state (Chitiyo 2003). Although the land question has not

descended into civil war, Robert Mugabe’s fast-tracked land reform programme has

decimated agricultural production and forced almost a quarter of Zimbabweans to

become dependent on food aid. In neighbouring South Africa, the ANC promises

of land reform remain unrealised. The mere 4 per cent of land redistributed since

the first democratic elections and, concurrently, the growing inequalities within the

society, coupled with the murder of 1 500 white farmers since 1994, all underscore

the continuing sensitivity of the land question. Against this volatile backdrop, the

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THE STRUGGLE OVER LAND IN AFRICA

2

decision to implement expropriation acts in South Africa and in neighbouring

Namibia could arguably still trigger Zimbabwe-like situations in these countries

(Alden & Anseeuw 2006; Lee 2003). And even in Botswana, land pressures have

caused citizens to echo a localised version of the anti-settler discourse circulating in

other parts of the southern African region. Given that the country has historically

espoused a deliberately non-racial, universalistic form of liberalism, the shift in

discourse on land is particularly significant. Other examples are not lacking.

In many cases, such as Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya and South Africa, the movements from

war to peace, from segregated development to inclusiveness, from obstruction to

democracy, have (initially) resulted in tangible economic and social improvements

in the lives of individuals and communities. And yet, for all the successes that can be

pointed to, there remain numerous instances where peace retains only a tenuous grip

on society or conflict has reasserted itself. A common denominator of those states

that have succumbed to political violence is the failure to address the issue of land.

Conflict, and land conflicts in particular, as noted by Chauveau and Mathieu (1998),

are seldom analysed or documented. Understanding this volatile dynamic between

land, competing usages and the ensuing (and conflicting) claims to control is,

however, not straightforward; the causes and developments of land disputes do not

necessarily conform to the conventions of logic. In this sense, the absence of any

systematic analysis of land conflicts, and the integration of these insights into sound

policies and post-conflict reconstruction strategies, potentially contributes to the

perpetuation of the conditions which fuel conflict.

But why is land so important? It is a primary and fundamental but also highly

symbolic resource for the vast majority of African peoples, representing a key

building block for so-called traditionalist societies and economies. Being a valuable

and immovable resource of limited quantity, land is not only fundamental to the

livelihoods of most Africans, but also represents a precious reservoir of natural

resources. Land is a core element in the complex social relations of production and

reproduction (Pons-Vignon & Solignac Lecomte 2004). At the same time, ancestral

land impacts on people’s identity – on the ways they are bound to the land and relate

to their natural surroundings, as well as to fundamental feelings of ‘connectedness’

with the social and cultural environment in its entirety (Nikolova 2007). As

economic, symbolic and emotional aspects are at stake, land is often at the source of

violence and is also an essential element in peace building, political stabilisation and

(socio-economic) reconstruction in post-conflict situations.

This book analyses the role of land as a site and source of conflict, especially with

regard to policy development, crisis management and (post-conflict) reconstruction.

Its central aim is to gain insight into the nature of policy-making concerning land,

not only at national level but also in terms of the broader African state system,

and the challenges facing it – in the form of new norms of governance of state and

markets. The modalities and the exteriorisation of these conflicts differ from one

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INTRODUCTION

3

case to another and from one area to another. Besides highlighting the diversity and

importance of the land conflicts in Africa, the book draws attention to the diverse

and often complex root causes of these land questions – a complexity that is often

neglected. By adopting a continental perspective, the various chapters analyse land

conflicts and their factors and compare responses to internal crises across a range of

countries drawn from all regions of Africa. The chapters are updated contributions

selected from the international conference The Changing Politics of Land: Domestic

Policies, Crisis Management and Regional Norms, held in Pretoria in November

2005, and include authors from the academic, diplomatic, political and civil sectors.

The conference, which was subject to a rigorous selection process, emphasised

academic excellence without neglecting the necessary debate on land issues despite

a context of acute controversies.

Examining land conflicts in Africa is a challenging task, as the contexts in which they

take place are continuously changing, so altering the nature of the conflicts themselves.

While questions traditionally related to land – such as scarcity of and competition for

land, monopolisation of natural resources, and ethnic conflicts – remain important

in the present context, new aspects also play a role: ecological aspects, divergent

economic interests, minority rights and heterodox land tenures, and urban conflicts.

Also, the appearance of new norms becomes evident: environmental and sustainable

development criteria, new North–South relationships and power structures, the

rise of anti-imperialism and anti-liberalism. This increased complexity implies

the need for mobilising and combining an increasing number of approaches and

instruments in order to understand the bases of the land questions in Africa. While

deploying political economy as its main point of intellectual departure, the book

nonetheless presents a multidisciplinary approach to understand the full range of

issues around land and conflict, as well as the accompanying implications for policy.

By taking cognisance of economic policy, institutional economy, international

relations, sociology and anthropology in approaching land, a more constructive

and ultimately more viable source for policy appears than is presently the case. The

different chapters demonstrate unequivocally that simplistic interventions currently

employed by multilateral agencies – based on, as emphasised by Huggins (Chapter

2), the naïve one-dimensional ‘black or white’ or ‘all or nothing’ approaches – should

be questioned. In fact, in many respects, by ignoring deeper causal factors, much

contemporary policy on land and conflict only serves to defer – if not perpetuate –

the rationale for the further recurrence of disputes.

The book is divided into six themes in an attempt to group causes and structural

factors:

• Ethnic and indigenous land conflicts (Chapters 1 and 2);

• Between ‘traditionalism and modernity’: Insecurity, privatisation and

marginalisation (Chapters 3 and 4);

• Renewed land interests, land use, and conflicts (Chapters 5, 6 and 7);

• State building, politics and land (Chapters 8, 9 and 10);

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