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The Land Question and Tenure Issues in Eastern and Southern Africa

Sam Moyo*

Introduction

Africa’s land question is receiving growing research and policy attention because of persistent food insecurity and increased conflicts over land rights (Moyo, 2004). The literature however, does not adequately address the precise nature of the land question in Eastern and Southern Africa. The complex social and political contradictions of colonial and post-independence land policies have increasingly derogated the land rights of the poor, fuelling popular demands for land reform (Moyo and Yeros, 2004). The response of the African state to these emergent land questions has not been adequate.

Empirical evidence from Eastern and Southern Africa suggests the emergence of increased rural land concentration alongside increasing ‘illegal’ land occupation by various populations marginalised from land by a growing number of agrarian capitalists, elites and state agents (Moyo, 2004). This, coupled with vague land rights, inheritance rights and exclusion, which arise from changes in African land tenure systems, unequal gender relations, and class differentiated access to the means of production, suggest a peculiarly African land question (Ibid). Increasing urbanization in eastern and southern Africa is reflected in growing pressure on urban land in proliferating slums and informal settlements (Simone, 1998) and in coastal settlements (Kanyinga, 2000). More and more households depend for their basic social reproduction on farming land. Voluntary and involuntary internal migration and displacement reinforce inequalities in land control and land conflicts (Moyo, 2004). The land question is also “embedded” in the control by external capital and the state of extensive lands with minerals and other valuable natural resources. External financial and development aid institutions have influenced some of these land conflicts, especially by promoting the marketisation of land tenure. A new generation of land policies have tended to justify unequal land control and led to new land struggles of varying intensity in rural and urban areas.

The land question also reflects the scarcity of arable and irrigable land resources, as well as an agricultural crisis, characterised by the lack of agricultural technological transformation and agro-industrial articulation. Demographic growth and the concentration of arable land holdings, has led to land scarcity in various localities, despite the incidence of land use intensification in some countries (Moyo, 2004). Extensive degradation of fragile land resources under these conditions results from the contradictions of extensive land use and low productivity, constrained by slow technical change and ineffective relations of production. ‘Poverty reduction strategies’ have neglected the role of access to land, financial and human resources in effective land use by promoting extroverted land use under unequal trade relations.

Social and economic sources of struggles for land in eastern and southern Africa suggest that changing land questions, which traverse class, ethnic and gender cleavages, increasingly dominate politics, the state and social movements. This paper reviews the land questions of unequal distribution, insecure tenure and misdirected land use policies, including the role of the state in land reform, and the social forces which challenge unequal land relations.

Land Distribution Inequalities

Land distribution inequalities in the region vary in their broad character depending on the extent of colonial history, foreign ownership and internal class and ethno-regional differentials.

Settler Colonial Land Expropriation and Racial Land Inequalities

Settler land expropriation varied in Eastern and Southern Africa. It was most extensive in Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and occurred to a lesser extent in Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Tanzania and Zambia. The largest scale of white settler land expropriation occurred in South Africa, where 87% of the land was alienated in the 18th century. In Zimbabwe, an estimated 3,500 white Zimbabwean farm landholders had British and South African dual citizenship. The definition of indigeneity remains contested by white minority groups who are citizens by birth or naturalization. These land distributional patterns had far reaching effects on race relations and socio-demographic features such as wealth, income, employment distribution and patterns of economic control. After independence white settler populations tended to decrease although the proportion of land held by white minorities has not decreased proportionately. Instead there has been a gradual increase in foreign landholdings in countries such as Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi, in the context of renewed interest by international capital in natural resources, tourism and mining (Moyo, 2003).

Racially based differentiation of economic power and wealth associated with some degree of land control remains a source of land conflicts. Even in some non-settler African countries, small foreign immigrant populations such as the Asians in East Africa tend to become associated with large freehold and leasehold landholdings. In Malawi, during the last three years, long-term Asian residents have increasingly been identified as ‘foreign’ landowners, largely on racial and dual citizenship grounds, given that land policy reforms prohibit foreign land ownership. Absentee land ownership exacerbates feelings against foreign land ownership. In Namibia, corporate ownership of lands hides the influx of foreign landowners, particularly those who are shifting land use from agricultural use to tourism.

Class Based Land Inequalities: Land Concentration from ‘above’ and ‘below’

Land distribution problems in non-settler countries occurred initially through rural differentiation processes, which increased in the 1970s and escalated in the 1990s. The maturation of an African petit bourgeoisie after independence saw new landholding concentrations among retired public servants, professionals, indigenous business people and other urban elites. These social forces emerged from earlier nationalist, political and administrative leadership, ‘traditional’ elites, and new post-independence middle class elements whose accumulation treadmill focused on agrarian exports. Such rural differentiation, alongside the growth in the number of poor rural peasants and semi-proletarians, who ‘straddle’ the rural and urban divide, explains the demand for land reform policies in favour of elites. Evidence from Kenya, Malawi, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zambia also reveals that rural land inequality has grown in line with structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). Differential access to land and the growth of land concentration has emerged from ‘below’ and from ‘above’.

In Kenya colonial land injustices and current land policies have led to increased differentiation in the control of, and access to land. Increasingly land ownership patterns are derived from endowments arising from class differentiation strategies, which emerged in the colonial era (Kanyinga and Lumumba, 2003), and have lead to growing landlessness. Thus 20% of the Kenyan population own over 50% of the arable land, while the rest own an average of one acre, and 13% are landless, or not having any protectable right over land, are referred to as “squatters,” “trespassers” or “adverse possessors” (Ibid). The more critical route to land concentration has thus arisen from ‘above’, through land policies and land allocation systems, which favour elites in both rural and urban areas. For example, since Kenya’s land law grants enormous powers of control of land to the President who holds land in trust for the state, the President tends to grant land to a few individuals and corporate interests. This process has affected the majority of the lands utilized by pastoralists who occupy and use over two thirds of the Kenya landmass (Ibid). Thus from ‘above’, land allocation and land reform policies have tended to promote land accumulation by the direct official provision for, and private ‘grabbing’ of large landholdings by the elite.

From ‘below’, processes of local agrarian and power differentiation have encouraged local elites to amass larger landholdings amidst growing land scarcity, land shortage and landlessness. This entails widespread comprehensive situations in which local rural agrarian capitalists have emerged and acquired larger than average tracts of land, based on internal social differentiation processes. These include resource accumulation from land ‘grabbing’, various state resources, the accumulation of petty agricultural savings, wages and remittances, and other non-farm sources. Local land concentration also entails situations in which traditional leaders, elders and primary indigenous settlers have hoarded larger than average land parcels of better quality. Land tenure reforms tend to formally recognize discriminatory customary tenure rules or to condone their persistent abuse by local elites and local state functionaries, as well as introducing statutory tenure for the benefit of these elites. While unequal land holding structures are not as extreme as in the white settler territories, the process of land concentration now occurs on a significant scale.

Ethnic and Regional Differentiation in Land Control and Inequalities

Colonial and post-independence land policies also tended to partition national economies into ethno-regional enclaves of unequal growth, where land and resource concentration occurred alongside marginalized regions. Land conflicts within Ethiopia for example commonly take the shape of ‘ethnic’ struggles among pastoralist groups competing for the control of grazing lands and water supplies, especially during droughts (Flintan and Tamrat, 2002). Such land conflicts escalated following the demarcation of boundaries which fragmented pastoral groups and impeded cross border movements which essentially undermined the viability of customary land and resource-use systems (Ibid). Territorially based ethnic clashes over land have been reported in Kenya, where the Kalenjin and the Maasai decried Kikuyu settlement of their land, while the latter asserted their citizenship as conferring rights to such land.

Historical colonial alliances over the control of land explain some of these land conflicts. The alliance between the British administrators and the Yao elite in Malawi for example, deepened when the latter were chosen as the instrument of indirect rule (Vail and White, 1989). In some countries, the spatial re-ordering of villages and families was instrumentalised by the colonialists to consolidate ethnic based power structures of their choice, and to create a framework within which taxes could be collected, migration regulated and selected land allocation strategies pursued to suit their interests. Thus, many African social or ethnic conflicts over socio-economic dominance are governed by the unequal control over land and natural resources, depending on the histories of land control, farming systems and political structures.

Various studies by Shivji and Kapinga (1998) and others on pastoral land rights in East Africa, the Horn of Africa demonstrate the general tendency for pastoralists to be displaced from land, and their livelihoods disrupted, fuelling conflicts over access to land, land use contradictions and intensified competition for water and livestock resources. Land distributional conflicts affecting some ethnic groups, especially minority ‘indigenous’ groups (such as the San/Bushmen in Botswana; Herero in Namibia; Maasai in Tanzania and Kenya; etc ) are common in some countries, especially where post-independence land expropriations by the state have facilitated or led to the reallocation of land to local elites and foreign capital.

Foreign Control of Land: Embedded with Mineral and Natural Resources

Unequal land distribution also arises from the growing tendency for land to be concessioned and sold to foreign companies, through investment agreements in agriculture, tourism, forestry and urban land. Multinational companies have become a critical force in the unequal control of land, emphasising the importance of the international dimension of the land question. The increasing control of large swathes of land and natural resources for tourism in Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia is one source of land and resources conflict.

Although some countries have land policies which forbid foreign ownership of land, new incentives and concessioning mechanisms have been put in place to allow foreigners access to land. For example, in Tanzania foreigners can now access land for a lease period that can go up to 99 years, subject to the foreign investor entering into a joint venture with locals, as represented by the village government or the village cooperative society (Shivji, 1998).

Increased privatisation of state lands as part of the foreign investment drive has crowded out the poor on to the worst lands. In Mozambique, although all land is constitutionally state land, “privatisation” of land started in 1984 through leasing, as part of its structural adjustment programme. This has created grounds for racial animosity as foreigners and white South Africans dominate such investment. Confrontation over land in Zimbabwe has seen the emigration of white Zimbabweans to Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. Officials there have called for greater social integration of in-coming white farmers to avoid creation of “white islands” as they anticipate animosities defined by race and citizenship.

Unequal Land Rights, Discriminatory Tenure Systems and Land Market Concentration

Contemporary land tenure systems, whether founded on customary systems of regulation or on statutory formal systems of tenure, are embedded in unequal and discriminatory power structures and procedures, which allocate land unequally on the basis of class, gender, ethnicity and other forms of social hierarchy (Moyo, 2004). By commodifying land, through land tenure reforms and new land administrative systems, land concentration along class hierarchy, has been speeded up. Land alienation and marginalisation of the rural and urban poor, is accompanied by weakening capacities of local administrative systems to protect local land rights. Attempts to spread freehold land tenure systems across customary land tenure regimes originate from the central state elites and international finance capital, and through this consolidate the powers of the elites, traditional leaders and officials over land allocation and adjudication systems.

Colonial powers initiated and nurtured the notion of customary tenure with key distortions: community rights became so one-sided that they were no longer in agreement with the concept of individual rights; the definition of customary authorities confused ritual powers with proprietary rights; and the community was identified with the tribe, hence all migrants who did not belong to a particular tribe were viewed as strangers and had no traditional right to access land (Cheater, 1988). Colonialism defined land as a communal and customary possession (Mamdani, 1996), and thus customary tenure was related to both personal relations (marriage, succession, movement) and access to productive resources. But this custom was enforced by colonial governments in order to control the colonial state and the natives, through ‘containerisation of the subject population’ (Ibid). These ownership and inheritance rules discriminated against women and weaker ethnic minorities.

The current focus on decentralising land administration has shifted the balance of power and social control of land and resource allocation between central elites and local power structures, and strengthened advocacy for formal statutory land titling. Yet the majority of rural Africans hold land on the basis of customary rights rooted in notions of ‘community’ and kinship, and through derived rights, including a series of informal contractual relations (such as sharecropping) with those who hold primary rights. Nonetheless the state has not demonstrated a capacity to implement such land tenure administrative reforms, let alone to impose control of land use practices in most rural and some peri-urban areas. Nor have existing systems of adjudicating land disputes been able to resolve current and past land problems. The legal framework for land adjudications has tended to be biased towards the market and the state (Shivji et al 1998). Land courts remain elitist and western in orientation and are inaccessible to the victims of past and present violations of land rights, especially where indigenous and ‘local’ land had been expropriated. This undermines the capacity of the poor to produce their own food in contested land and to fairly allocate land rights in the family and the community, within a framework of gender based equity.

In post-independence Tanzania, the land laws inherited from colonial governments reinforced the perception that all lands not occupied under granted rights of occupancy (right to use and occupy land for a specified period up to 99 years) were ‘public lands’ at the disposal of the President (Shivji, 1998). Customary occupiers held such land not as a matter of legal right, but at the discretion of the President (Ibid). Outside of freehold systems, access to land in Africa varies between men and women (the social classification of women, e.g. married or unmarried women) and also overlaps, a situation that often leads to the development of conflict over land and other natural resources. The discriminatory role of customary tenure along social and gender lines is a direct product of colonial manipulation, given the distortions of custom that came with conquest (Ibid).

Land tenure under a market economy modified the concept of property from control of wealth based upon social, cultural, and use values (e.g. to provide food and shelter) to the ownership of material and marketable goods (Lastarria,-Cornhiel, 2002). As a consequence rural societies cannot enforce their rules and practices of allocating community resources such as land, based on the need to provide resources to community households for their welfare and sustenance. Such changes are often at the cost of women and minority ethnic groups, who are considered secondary members of the community (Ibid).

These land tenurial and distributional depravations have yet to be fully recognised in democracy and governance discourses (Moyo, 2004), since land rights are not quite perceived as being embedded within human and/or social rights, (Moyo, 2001). Yet land rights are a fundamental means of social and economic reproduction as rural livelihoods depend on having a secure place to live, free from threat of eviction and with access to productive land and natural resources. Land tenure reforms which do not guarantee such basic living conditions become a key source of conflict. Yet the reform of customary systems of tenure in Africa has not been ‘adaptive’ but was intended to be ‘replaced’ by freehold systems (Bruce and Migot-Adholla, 1994). Barrows and Roth (1990) advocate land privatisation and titling only under circumstances where tenure is already evolving towards individualised holdings, based on the need for land to serve different purposes under different circumstances. This is justified by invoking the flexibility of indigenous livelihood strategies.

However, where customary land tenure systems are dislodged, land concentration displaces significant populations on to marginal land around largely mountainous areas, given scarcity of arable land. In fact, in Swaziland and Malawi, the struggle for equitable land ownership tends to invoke the increased control by traditional leaders of land allocation processes (Mashinini, 2000). In the 1980s the government in Tanzania practised the concept of village titling to encourage investment in land through the perceived security conferred by individualisation. In this system villages would be given titles of 99 years, and villagers’ subtitles ranging from 33 to 99 years (Shivji, 1998). This tenurial system was fraught with ambiguities and was the direct cause of new land conflicts, in spite of the expectation that newly formed village institutions (councils, land committees and assemblies) in which titles to village land were to be vested, would resolve such conflicts.

Formal and informal land markets have instead been growing in Eastern and Southern Africa. The increased incidence of land transfers through private purchases tends to be associated with growing population pressures and expanded agricultural commercialisation, as observed in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia (Migot-Adholla et al., 1991; Place, 1995; Andre and Platteau, 1995). Land purchases are considered to be stronger in Eastern Africa than elsewhere. Land transactions are said to have a positive impact on the capacity of individual households to mobilise food for their survival from year to year, although evidence also shows that land selling households end up being co-opted into the labour market and are unable to sustain their livelihoods (Ibid). Individualisation of property rights and the evolution of land markets in customary lands, tend to be considered ‘natural’ phenomena in Africa. Migot-Adholla et al. (1991) note that by 1930 in Machakos (Kenya), customary tenure already recognised private rights, particularly to cultivated land, which could be sold, inherited or loaned. However, they concluded that there was a very weak relationship between individualisation of land rights and agricultural yields in Rwanda and Kenya, since indigenous land tenure institutions do not appear to constrain agricultural productivity, and farmers feel sufficiently secure in their ability to continuously cultivate their land, regardless of the land tenure category.

Informal land purchases and rentals obtain in the region, especially where transfers involve non-family or un-related individuals. Limited duration arrangements include fixed rentals, sharecropping arrangements, pledges, accessing rights over perennial crops without the land, and the use of numerous forms of payment or compensation. Similarly, land sales do not always involve a one-time exchange of cash for complete land rights. Tenancies may evolve into purchases among migrants. Land sales may involve an indefinite transfer of a certain bundle of rights, and compensation may be in the form of in-kind gifts rather than cash. However, formal land markets in Africa have developed through land registration initiatives, especially during the colonial period, although in Tanzania, land sales in the Sukuma area were identified already in the late 1800s (Malcolm, 1953).

Land tenure systems which permit outright alienation of land, can result in the permanent loss of livelihood among the distressed poor, where the sale of land is usually at prices below the market value, to the benefit of wealthier members of the community (Watts, 1983; Mamdani, 1986). Basu (1996) notes that, even in contexts where land can be sold, land markets are often inactive except for distress sales, meaning that land losses may be irreversible. Carter and Wiebe (1990) note that, even under circumstances less severe than famine, poorly endowed, food-insecure households, irrespective of output per unit of land, may be forced to invest more in ‘self insurance’ (such as maintenance of substantial food reserves or allocation of land to low risk, low return crops such as cassava) rather than investing in the productivity of their agricultural holdings or purchasing land via an active land market.

Land tenure reforms tend to reinforce land concentration and exclusion processes through policy mechanisms which justify open access to land and protect the rights of urban based elites, state enterprises and foreign ‘investors’. New forms of state-led land leasing and concessioning, freehold land markets creation and the reform of customary tenures drive the concentration of land from ‘above’. Land tenure reforms have also served to formalize, increase and protect land concentration from ‘below’, in a more term process of growth of petty commodity production.

Both customary and statutory tenures have in this way been used to promote land concentration and exclusion in general.

Extroverted Land Use Policies and Discriminatory Land Use Regulations

In Southern and Eastern Africa shifts in land use patterns have become a widespread, albeit highly contested phenomenon. Land use policies increasingly uphold a moral and socio-economic value in which allocating prime land to wildlife and tourism uses is considered of greater utility than the utility of land for the majority of human beings (small farmers). Thus a few individual large landholders and the animals themselves are privileged! The general tendency therefore is to exclude the peasantry from vast tracts of land and natural resources, based upon the argument that such lands are too marginal for intensive crop and livestock farming and that, rather than invest in such land, it should be left to natural uses such as wildlife (Moyo, 2000). Policies and regulations which, directly or indirectly, orient land use towards minority elite and external markets have thus become a major site of contestation, and define the land questions. The preferential allocation of state resources to the reproduction of nature in state lands, parks and forests tends to emphasise the short term commercial and macro-economic value to the state, elites and foreign capital, rather than rural poverty eradication.

Land use policies which focus on commercialising agricultural production have also tended to drive unequal land tenure reforms. Maxwell and Wiebe (1998) give an example from the Kenyan land reform, which sought to introduce private and individualised land property, so as to consolidate land holdings, in order to promote economies of scale in land use and agricultural investment and to develop ‘commercial farming’, as well as to reverse the fragmentation of holdings that had developed because of inheritance rules and heavy population pressure. These reforms were based on the view that large sized farms are critical for agricultural export growth and that small producers should focus on production for own consumption and domestic markets. Indeed, relatively larger landholdings under freehold or leasehold tenure, are supported by the state, because of their perceived superiority in agricultural production export. But, almost all the coffee exports in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ethiopia are grown by smallholders on customary land. The same is true for tea, beans and various horticultural productions in Kenya. In addition, there are many smallholder cotton farmers in various Eastern and Southern African countries. Yet, the diminishing production of food for own consumption has become a critical source of insecurity for the majority of people.

Existing land-use regulations and planning frameworks thus tend to be an ideological tool for maintaining the unequal distribution of land and inequitable security of tenure. The regulation of land-use, usually rationalised on the basis of the need to protect legitimate public interest, is often unevenly applied to different tenure systems, and through this, to different classes of landowners and land-use systems. Land use regulation is often unfairly and inequitably applied to the peasantry. In analysing the various forms and types of regulation governing land-use it is important to go beyond the stated formal rationale of sustainable development, to uncover the origins and value systems implicit in such regulations. In many cases, the imposition of land use regulations is intended to protect the interests of emerging agrarian capitalists rather than the national or public interest of the poor peasantry. In other cases, the regulations may, in theory, protect the public interest but, because of unequal land distribution, the impact of such regulations might be to deny the excluded peasantry of their legitimate rights to state support. Moreover these land use policies and regulations do not necessarily promote efficient utilisation of land and labour resources, nor improve national welfare in general.

Gender Land Inequalities and Tenure Insecurity

Cutting across unequal and discriminatory patterns and structures of land distribution, land tenure and land use, are the land questions of gender inequality (Moyo, 2004). The key land question here is that women’s access to and control of land is inadequate and constrained by various customary and generally patriarchal social relations. In general the land rights of women who hold land are extremely insecure, while women provide labour for farming under severely exploitative relations of production and social reproduction. The main sources of this unequal land distribution and tenure problem are the dominance of patriarchal and customary land tenure systems and local authority structures. These perverse social relations, which also obtained in different form during pre-colonial society, were contrived during colonial and contemporary times by the male dominated central and local state power structures. Unequal gender relations in land control and use have over time worsened and deprived women of their land rights in many parts of the region, reduced the extent and quality of the land rights that they continue to hold, and failed to cater for the new forms of land rights and growing land needs of women. Women’s land rights are inadequate to meet their unfairly ascribed roles as agricultural producers and custodians of children and family livelihoods in rural and urban areas. Unequal gender relations in land control, however, have deep roots in class, race and ethnic aspects of African society.

The widest source of gender discrimination in land control is in the agrarian sphere, given the dominance of agriculture in the African economy. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa dominate the small-holder sector and account for more than three quarters of the food produced in the region. The attempt to modernize customary tenure systems in order to stimulate market economic activities through private land property, in countries such as Kenya and Uganda attempted in the 1950s and 60s, and then in other countries in 1980s, have had far reaching negative effects on gender relations with regard to land. Although, women constitute the majority of the population in most countries (e.g. in East Africa - Kenya 50.5%, Tanzania 51% and Uganda 52%) and women are critical to the agricultural economy, they enjoy limited land rights (Lumumba, 2003). For instance in Kenya less than 4% of the women have title deeds to land registered in their names compared to 7% in Uganda and 10% in Tanzania (Ibid). And, according to May et al. (1995), “women … in South Africa … [face the most severe]… spatial and economic marginalization [among] rural African women… [because] … women, who have the primary responsibility for household reproduction, … have limited direct title or control of land. Such access to land rights is only through their husbands or families”.

The deprivation of women’s land rights (control and use), through customary and currently practiced procedures regarding land inheritance and property distribution after divorce is, however, the most widely contested issue between women and patriarchal state institutions (Tsikata, 2001). Men remain central heirs and holders of land rights in patrilineal communities under customary land tenure regimes, as well as in so called formalised property tenure regimes. These unequal gender relations of access to land in a context of land concentration and privatisation of land tenures is so deeply entrenched that it underlines the importance within the land question of the land use policies discussed above.

As a result of growing struggles for the redress of gender unequal land rights across the continent especially through the expansion of women’s NGO networks, African land policies are increasingly being ‘engendered’ (Hilhorst, 2000) to improve the position of women in relation to access and control of land. While at the legal and policy level, progress has been achieved, the implementation of equitable land policies has failed because of the rigidities of customary land tenure systems as well as the pervasiveness of patriarchal values in society in general and in the state machinery. Gender bias in land policies demonstrates how deeply rooted land conflicts can be manipulated mainly by male politicians, who in rural areas seek to co-opt traditional authorities (Moyo, 2004). The centrality of the latter institution in defining patterns of gender inequity in land control, explains why advocacy for women’s land rights in the form of freehold or leasehold tenure has become the focus and is intended to achieve the wider goal of releasing women from the shackles of traditional authority structures.

The social structures, which influence unequal gender relations in access to and control of land should be understood in the dynamic context of the evolution of the broader land questions facing the region. The scope and security of women’s land rights has tended to be disproportionately marginalised in this context. Struggles to reverse these patterns of unequal land rights confront complex resistance from central and local state structures, while most of the visible popular land reform movements tend themselves to be male dominated and patriarchal in focus. The predominantly male scholarship on the land question has neglected this plight.

Land Reforms

Redistributive land reforms

Land reform experiences in the Eastern and Southern African region exhibit a changing divide between radical nationalist-cum-socialist redistributive land reforms and liberal approaches (Moyo, 2004). Where national liberation was decisively concluded, such as in Mozambique and Angola, the land distribution question appears to have been broadly resolved, although new sites of localised land concentration have emerged. Where liberation was relatively partially concluded, as in the main settler territories of Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, negotiated settlements left both the national question and land question relatively unresolved. In particular the racial dimensions of the national question were not adequately addressed, as structures of wealth, income and land distribution remained intact, and protected by liberal democratic constitutions and market principles.

The ‘radical’ land reforms entailed the nationalization of colonial, foreign and settler landholdings as pursued in Tanzania and Zambia during the 1960’s and early 1970s, and in Mozambique and Angola (from the mid-1970’s). Whereas Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique had pursued ‘socialistic’ land and agrarian reforms based upon developing largely state marketing systems and land settlement and use reorganization (villagisation and rural development in Tanzania and resettlement and integrated rural development in Zambia), Mozambique pursued land nationalization with more intensive attempts at socialistic transformation, using state and cooperative farms. Angola which started off mired in civil war did not pursue further significant land reform after land nationalisation (Ibid). However, civil war in the lusophone territories, fuelled by South African destabilization and their relative international isolation, contained radical agrarian reforms. Furthermore, ‘post-conflict’ land tenure reforms re-introduced some land concentration.

In contradistinction to this, more liberal strategies of land reform were adopted in the colonial ‘protectorates’, which predominantly faced indirect colonial rule accompanied by minor degrees of white settlerism alongside colonial cheap labour migrant systems (e.g. Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi) (Ibid). Here land reform involved a limited degree of market based expropriation of settler lands, accompanied by market led compensation with some colonial finance, as was the case in Swaziland and Botswana. The expropriated land was ‘indigenized’ as large farms, with limited foreign and white minority-dominated large scale land ownership and estate farming remaining, alongside the emergence of state farms and resilient peasant and pastoral agrarian structures. Liberal approaches to land reform consisted mainly of limited market led land re-distribution efforts and attempts to modernize peasant agriculture, within a contradictory context of imbalanced public resource allocation, focusing on the large scale indigenized and state capitalist farming sub-sector, and agricultural export markets (Ibid).

Zimbabwe and Namibia since the 1980’s used the liberal “state centred and market based” approach to land transfers. Land was acquired by the state for redistribution on a willing-seller-willing–buyer basis, meaning that land identification and supply was market-driven. The governments identified the demand for land and matched it with the private supply. These programmes were slow in redistributing land, except during the very early years in Zimbabwe when this approach was accompanied by extensive land occupations on abandoned white lands. The use of compulsory land acquisition by the state with or without compensation for land and improvements was pursued mainly in the early independence periods, where expropriations with varying levels of compensation were adopted in Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, and since the 1990s mainly in Zimbabwe. This approach involves direct intervention by government in the identification of land for acquisition, and compensation is determined by market prices, in relation to demand for land.

Another liberal approach to land redistribution, tried to a limited degree in both South Africa and Zimbabwe in the context of testing “alternative” approaches, is the market assisted land reform approach, espoused by the World Bank. This land reform approach is meant to be led by the private sector, communities and NGO’s, who identity land for transfer and beneficiaries to purchase it within a market framework. Very little land has been redistributed through this approach so far, and this is mainly in South Africa. This approach is to be implemented in Malawi from 2004, using a World Bank grant, in the context of usual macro-economic policy conditionalities. Finally, a community-led land self-provisioning (Moyo, 2000) strategy, has been followed mainly in the form of “illegal” land occupations by potential beneficiaries. This approach has tended to be either state facilitated and formalized, or repressed by the state at various points in time (Alexander, 2003; Marongwe, 2003; Moyo, 1995).

Land redistribution programmes increasingly combine these methods, although the market based approach has remained dominant, given greater donor support for it. However, it is doubtful whether land reform without strong state intervention in the land markets is feasible, given the legacy of inequitable social capital and financial markets. Indeed, neo-liberal land reforms have tended to fuel renewed land struggles, whose conduct confronts issues of democratic change, as the Zimbabwean ‘dissidence’ on land reform shows.

Customary land tenure administration reforms

Because the literature on Africa’s land reforms focuses on land tenure problems, it tends to identify weak land administration systems and the need for their reform as the main issue of concern, rather than the land redistribution issue (Moyo, 2004). Land administration reforms tend to be proposed within a neoliberal conception of good governance, focusing on the decentralisation and democratisation of land institutions, to enhance land administrative efficiencies, broad based representativity of local structures of land control, and civil society participation in land administration, within a framework of introducing formal and statutory law in land management systems (see Quan, 2000; Adams, 2000). The main purpose of these proposed land governance system reform is to develop ‘secure land tenure’ regimes, implicitly to make the institutions benign to land and rural market processes.

There is no doubt however that African land management institutions pose vexing problems, and that these constitute an important aspect of the land question. The institutional frameworks for land administration are exceedingly complex and fractured (Shivji, 1998; Palmer, 2002). In Ethiopia, the Agricultural Land Law of 1975 removed land ownership and land allocation powers from traditional authorities, and individuals were required from then on to register their land, while restricting both the size of landholding and the period of the usufruct rights. (Submarian, 1996). The costs and time required to register the land became a major barrier, while titles were disproportionately allocated to outsiders, town dwellers, and the state, and cooperative farms displaced small farmers.

In many African countries the dual legal system which presides over land conflict management and adjudication has been the source of many conflicts and contradiction over land rights (see Tsikata, 1991; Shivji, 1998; Lastarria-Cornhiel 2002). Customary law in land matters in southern Africa, for example applies mainly to indigenous Africans, while the formal legal system is reserved for white settler land markets. African countries with ethnic or religious groups that practice different customary systems may or may not recognise the dominant systems of customary adjudication. In countries with significant Muslim populations their adoption of Islamic family law in predominantly Muslim regions contradicts customary laws and received legislation on land that applies to other regions with different legal traditions (Lastarria-Cornhiel, 2002). Promoting land administration systems which recognise legal pluralism rather than a simple legal dualism in land management is increasingly the subject of debate (Alinon, 2003; Tsikata 1991), given that recent reforms promote land codification that homogenises procedures and raises new equity considerations. Often resistance to social equity in land rights is masked under customary land tenure administration and adjudication procedures and in conflicting statutory legal mandates. (Lastarria-Cornhiel, 2002).

In many countries land administration remains highly centralised, there is poor representation and the institutions which adjudicate land issues at the local level are widely dispersed (Shivji et al, 1998). At best, weak land administration systems tend to be created at the local level, a situation which tends to perpetuate centralised land administration powers over customary land tenure regimes. Colonial administrations in Africa universally created administrative and political districts around ‘tribal’ chiefdoms, which in many cases established regional centres of ethnically based chiefly authority over groups which had in fact been autonomous, and thus generated conflicting land administration structures. In Zambia for example, the MacDonnel Commission of the 1930’s was set “… to demonstrate the separate and independent origins and development of the Lunda and Luvale tribes and their autonomy from the Lozi … It sustained both Luvale and Lunda claims to autonomy and the government responded by creating Balovale District and separate Luvale and Lunda Native Authorities. As the Luvale and Lunda saw it, they had saved themselves from Lozi over lordship after a generation of struggle” (Papstein, 1989).

Success in developing local land management structures is scarce. However, in Tanzania, the Land Act and the Village Act, both of 1998, provide the legal framework under which a village council can “register village lands, including village forests or other common areas, in the name of the village or register them in the name of a user group or association” (Deiniger, undated). This approach has reinforced community based forestry management and has provided linkages between land and forestry policies that are often missing in various other countries. In countries such as South Africa, Mozambique, Uganda and Tanzania, the new land tenure laws and policies make room for individuals, groups of people, associations and communities to register as legal entities that can own land in their own right. (Palmer, 2000). These land tenure institutional reforms, are generally costly, and current financial resource allocations to them are limited. In addition, legal and institutional reforms of land allocation, land use and dispute resolution tend to protect the interests of those with disproportionately larger land rights.

The combined impact of unequal land distribution and tenure insecurity on poverty has tended to receive minimal consideration in official land reform programmes. This suggests that without social pressures from ‘below’, the land reform agenda of the marginalised may continue to be neglected for some time to come.

Social Movements, Civil Society and Land Reform

Because of the centrality of access to land in the livelihoods of the majority of Africans, social demand for land reform has grown. It takes different forms depending on the nature of the social forces which articulate the demands (Moyo, 2004). Intellectual discourse on the demand and struggles for land in Africa has tended to be limited to extremely narrow perspectives, with a tendency to under-estimate the scale and scope of such demand (Ibid). Because civil society groupings, associated with the current proliferation of NGOs in Africa, tend to be predominantly middle class in content with strong international aid linkages, they tend to neglect radical land reform (Ibid). They reproduce formal grassroots peasant organisations as appendages of middle class driven development and democratisation agendas, within a neo-liberal framework characterised by demands for funds for small-project ‘development’ aimed at a few selected beneficiaries (Moyo 2002). This has left a political and social vacuum in the leadership of the land reform agenda (Moyo 2001).

Membership of formal rural or farmers, unions tends to be widely differentiated, with leadership dominated by an elite group of ‘capable’ farmers whose demands are for larger portions of freehold land (Moyo 1995). Land occupation movements such as those in rural and urban Zimbabwe, before and after the country’s independence, represent unofficial or underground social pressure used to force land redistribution onto the policy agenda (Moyo 2001). The 2000-2001 occupations in Zimbabwe, for instance, mark the climax of a longer, less public, and dispersed struggle over land in that country, which intensified under adverse economic conditions that were exacerbated by the onset of liberal economic and political reform (Ibid). Social movements are differentiated also by the different strategies they adopt, and their actions might contradict some progressive struggles on issues such as democratisation or land reform.

Social movements involved in land struggles are numerous albeit isolated and scattered. Current research perspectives tend to seek nationally coordinated and widespread social movements operating simultaneously, rather than incipient processes of organised land struggle, high profile rather than numerous low profile land movements, and mainly spontaneous rather than engineered land movements (Moyo, 2001). Moreover, because land struggles are actively resisted by various social agents, including individuals or classes with landed interests, ethnic formations, racial syndicates, traditional and elite leaders, political parties and some agencies of civil society in various political alliances and social movements, their impacts are ignored. Land reform and resistance movements can be progressive or reactionary, broadly national or local, ethnic or nationalist, class based or trans-class alliances, race based or trans-racial, particularistic in terms of specific land rights sought, and religious or not. They can be purely domestic or linked to foreign interests, including cutting across regions such as pastoral trans-national groupings or ethnic formations. In some cases international capital supports such movements, at times in alliance with local ‘comprador’ elites using trans-national armies.

Land and natural resources struggles tend to revolve around five major issues:

The different types of organization which mediate demands for land include: civil society organizations, farmers’ unions, political parties, workers’ unions, war veterans associations (e.g. in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Namibia), business associations representing elites in need of land, community-based organizations of peasants and urban working peoples, and, lineage and religious structures. Some of these structures are central to the shaping of demands for land reform because their social and class content tends to be dominated by elitist interests. Rural grievances, too, can be mobilised by central state structures or regional groups of politicians for direct short term electoral gain. This we saw in some districts in the Zimbabwe 2000 elections, where latent land occupations movements were mobilised. Violence can be instrumental in such processes, leading to displacement, as we saw also in Kenya. While the tendency is for leadership of key ‘land movements’ to be dominated by elites, they seek private opportunity (greed), alongside assuaging local land and other social grievances. Contrary to the thesis which simplistically demarcates some of these African conflicts and movements as motivated mainly by ‘greed’ (Collier, 2000), the instrumentalisation of disorder (Chabal and Daloz, 1999) or narrow authoritarian nationalism (Raftopolous, 2003), more complex sources of social mobilisation and confrontation over resources in Africa have to be sought (Mkandawire, 2002).

Land reform in Eastern and Southern Africa seems to have evolved through the interactive use of market and compulsory land acquisition approaches for the redistribution of land to both the landless and to an emerging indigenous agrarian bourgeoisie (Moyo, 2002). At the local level, peasants use various strategies to gain land, such as the ‘poaching’ of natural resources, fence cutting, illegal settlement/land occupation and resistance to development projects, while formal civil society organisations focus on land reform policy advocacy. The demands for land by the poor (rural and urban) and elites tend however to be founded on contradictory objectives such as enhancing the livelihoods of the former and accumulation strategies of the latter. Yet, the predominantly urban-led civil society has not formally embraced extensive redistributive land reform, given the class interests of especially the NGO leaderships. Informal rural demands for land, including land occupation and natural resource poaching remain a critical source of advocacy for radical land reform.

In South Africa, the national land committee has argued that land reform advocacy in civil society is weak, that demands from ‘below’ are muted, and the incentives for the state to release more resources, are diminished given calls for fiscal discipline. With a few exceptions, such as the Land Campaign in Mozambique, which succeeded in making rural communities aware of their new rights under the law and how to go about legally establishing them (Negrao 1999), much of the new national land policies which result from NGO lobbying, tend mostly to reflect mainstream state interests. The common approach used to guide such interests, includes expert panels, task forces, investigating teams, or comprehensive commissions of inquiry, which involve quick consultation processes and reports which often provide material for the state’s independent land policy decisions (Moyo, 2004). This has been the case with the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Land Policy Reforms in Malawi, the Land Commission of Tanzania, the Land Tenure Commission of Zimbabwe, and others. Not surprisingly, most NGO land advocates, have not supported radical land advocacy struggles.

Yet non-state or NGO efforts to mediate land conflicts can also be critical. In Kenya for example, the mediation of local conflicts in an area most affected by ethnic clashes, cattle rustling and disputed land ownership, where the peace processes had not enjoyed the support of the Government nor of local politicians, was led by an NGO multi-actor forum. It restored some peace in the Rift Valley region (Peacenet-Kenya, 2001).

These essentially neo-liberal land reform movements tend to marginalize the vulnerable and less organized social groups. For example groups such as the war veterans in Zimbabwe, while having led the land occupations movement received less than the 20% quota of resettlement land, which they had fought for. Whereas significant progress has begun to be seen in recognizing women’s land rights in policy, though in practice women’s land rights have remained marginalized at law in most of the countries. Farm workers’ land rights, especially to residential and farming land have tended to be marginalized in all the former settler territories. In Zimbabwe the fast track land reform programme had accommodated less than 5% of the former farm workers who had been displaced by 2003, while in Namibia and South Africa landlords continue to evict them at will, reflecting their weak autonomous organisation, and under-representation by civil society organisations concerned with human and social rights. In Botswana some civil society organisations advocacy tends however to be mobilised within a social and human rights framework of ‘defending’ the land rights of ‘indigenous’ ethnic and marginalized minority groups, particularly the Basarwa.

In the post-independence period, ‘civil society’ advocacy for radical land reform has been slow to emerge. In Southern Africa countries continue to be predominantly led by former liberation movements’, war veterans’ associations, the scattered efforts of traditional leaders and spirit mediums, and the few emerging but narrowly based ‘leftist’ civil society organisations, as we have seen in South Africa. In the latter, a few left leaning NGO groups have supported the formation of the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), although the contradictions of white middle class intellectual leadership of the black people’s landless structures, and the trans-class and nationalist nature of the interests in land, have become evident in the slow maturation of a nation-wide radical land reform advocacy agenda. Black indigenisation or affirmative action lobbies, some with ethno-regional and gender foci, have on the other hand re-focused the land reform agenda, more towards the de-racialization of the ownership base of commercial farmland. Thus, a dual but essentially nationalist approach to land redistribution advocacy for both large black farmers and poor peasants now dominates the formal or official land reform agenda in Southern Africa.

In South Africa, organised radical demand for access to land has mainly been found in the urban and peri-urban areas, the site of its land occupation movement. However, the demand for land in the rural areas is also growing and leading to polarisation at the political party level and between white farmers and blacks demanding access to the land of their ancestors, at the back of significant violence against landowners. The Landless Peoples Movement demand for land redistribution with an explicit threat to boycott the ANC in elections, has had the effect of bringing greater urgency to that government’s land reform initiatives. The scarcity of land in Malawi has resulted in the encroachment onto private land, gazetted forests, national parks and other protected areas that border high land pressure zones and, in some cases, such actions have turned violent (Kanyongolo, 2004). In Kenya, ‘illegal’ urban and rural land occupations, whose intensity in Nairobi and Mombasa are notable (Kanyinga and Lumumba, 2003), have been a long standing source of pressure for land reform, in the face of elite land ‘grabbing’. Settlement of game and forest reserves is also extensive in a country like Uganda (Ibid). These recent rural land occupations reflect a diverse range of social forces that demand land reform, including the rural landless, former refugees, war veterans, the rural poor, the youth, former commercial farm workers, women’s groups and the urban poor and black elite (Moyo, 2004).

Ethno-regional land movements are also increasingly seeking to attract state attention to land reform issues in their districts of origin. Ethno-regional land movements of the San in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana demand restoration of their land. Land struggles in Botswana involve ethnic minorities and NGOs challenging the dominant paradigm of the nation-state, which is constructed through the values of the majority culture of the dominant Tswana groups (Molomo, 2003), demanding the reversal of Basarwa land alienation and social disruption. A trans-national land and social rights movement of the San ethnic formations in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia has also emerged with the support of NGOs from these and other western countries. Similarly pastoralist movements have emerged in East Africa.

While social movements which demand land reforms cannot be idealised, various progressive and retrogressive struggles for land reform suggest that their importance cannot be underestimated.

Concluding Comment

The eastern and southern region faces critical land questions of contemporary land equity and historical social justice. Many people will for some time depend on land and natural resources for their basic social reproduction and employment, while primitive accumulation processes increasingly revolve around land concentration (Moyo, 2004). An important weakness of land tenure discourses in the region is to rectify land property relations, through an institutionalist perspective on issues of land tenure security, and to understate the scope and extent of unequal land distribution patterns and insecure land tenure relations (Moyo, 2004). Superficial analysis of domestic agrarian class formation processes and external forces of capital which underlie land concentration mask the contradictory ways in which the state and various class alliances have increasingly undercut the land rights of peasant and urban societies. To understand the land question, including its class dynamics and social movements, there is a need for more empirical understanding of the political and economic context in which the peasantry, agrarian capitalists, urbanisation and markets have emerged in the various countries of the region (Moyo, 2004).

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* This paper is an abridged version of a CODESRIA Greenbook Series Publication “The Land Questions, the State and Agrarian Transition: Contradictions of Neoliberal Reforms”, Sam Moyo, 2004. Dakar.

* AIAS, 96B Domboshawa Rd, Borrowdale, Harare, Zimbabwe, E-mails: sam@aiastrust.org or sam_moyo@yahoo.com

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