Land and Sustainable Development in Africa: The Green Revolution 9781350220997, 9781842779125, 9781842779132

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Acknowledgements Work on this volume began in 2002 as part of the engagement of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS) and its partners in preparing for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg that year. Numerous people and organisations were involved in the conceptualisation of the study, developing the research proposals, establishing the research network, writing the chapters, providing platforms for discussion of the results, providing peer review, editing the volume and financing the activities. We wish to thank them all, for without them this book would not have seen the light of day. The National Land Committee (NLC) of South Africa, an NGO coalition of various organisations with a long history of engagement in land struggles, was, through Zakes Hlatshwayo and Florence Cairncross, the key partner of AIAS in this project. They vigorously promoted the idea of bringing together African scholars to inform the WSSD debates, through rigorous study of the role of land in sustainable development, focusing on the interests of the poor and landless. This idea was encouraged by James Murombedzi, who was then working for the Ford Foundation in Johannesburg, which provided the initial funding for the research and attendance at WSSD. The NLC, working together with the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) of South Africa, also mobilised various landless peoples and NGO actors to participate in discussions with the scholars gathered by AIAS and Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of South Africa, through Ben Cousins. A parallel conference on African perspectives on land and sustainable development was held at the Nasrec Expo Centre, back to back with LPM’s own parallel land summit (Landless People’s Assembly) on the outskirts of Soweto, which culminated in a march of 30,000–40,000 demonstrators in Johannesburg in August 2002. The mood suggested that organised land struggles were on the rise, although events since then suggest otherwise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The scholars were challenged in this encounter to recognise the diversity of people’s land struggles and to question the ‘solutions’ being offered at the official WSSD platform. We are grateful for the insights gained, as this volume and various other AIAS studies on land and social movements were inspired by this interaction. At the AIAS office various people provided administrative and other support to the project. In the early stages Prosper Matondi wrote the book proposal, and contracted the authors, alongside Kojo Amanor and myself. Ndabezinhle Nyoni and Yolanda Moyo did most of the administrative work over the past three years. The AIAS staff provided the backup required to undertake such a project, while as always the AIAS Board enthusiastically sought the project’s completion. From 2003, financial support from the Ford Foundation’s Nairobi office and from the Norwegian Embassy in Harare enabled the AIAS to cover the administrative, editorial and other costs of producing the volume. We at AIAS appreciate tremendously this support, as it enabled us to start building African networks of research on land and agrarian matters. Last but not least, we thank the authors for persevering with this drawn-out project, including the various rounds of revision and updating. The AIAS wishes to thank in particular the lead co-editor, Kojo Amanor, for enduring the pain of this seemingly endless work, while facing two major bereavements in his family during the period. Sam Moyo, on behalf of the AIAS, 18 July 2007 Harare

Contributors

Kojo Sebastian Amanor is an Associate Professor at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. His main research work is on land, forestry, environmental management and rural livelihoods. His publications include: The New Frontier: Farmers Responses to Land Degradation (Zed Books, 1994); Global Restructuring and Land Rights in Ghana: Forest Food Chains, Timber and Rural Livelihoods (Nordic Africa Institute, Research Report 108); Land, Labour and the Family in Southern Ghana: A Critique of Land Policy under Neo-liberalisation (Nordic Africa Institute, Research Report 116); and (co-edited with W. de Boef, K. Wellard and A. Bebbington) Cultivating Knowledge: Genetic Diversity, Farmer Experimentation and Crop Research (IT, 1993). Karuti Kanyinga is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Roskilde University, Denmark. He has carried out many research projects on the politics of access to and control of land in Kenya. His dissertation was on ‘The New Land Questions: Struggles, Accumulation and Changing Politics in Kenya’, unpublished, Roskilde University, Denmark, 1998. His other works on land include: Re-Distribution from Above: The Politics of Land Rights and Squatting in Coastal Kenya (Nordic Africa Institute, Research Report 115); and ‘Speaking to the Past and the Present: the Land Question in the Draft Constitution of Kenya’, in Kithure Kindiki and Osogo Ambani (eds) The Anatomy of Bomas: Selected Analysis of the 2004 Draft Constitution of Kenya (Claripress, 2005). Fidelis Edge Kanyongolo holds a PhD in human rights jurisprudence and has lectured in constitutional and human rights law at the University of Malawi for 20 years. During this period he has also conducted academic and policy research in many areas, as well as consulted for various national and international institutions. He has led, and participated as a team member in, consultative processes which

CONTRIBUTORS critically contributed to institutional, policy and legal reforms, particularly in the areas of constitutionalism and good governance. He has also participated in the formulation and implementation of sector-wide policies and strategic plans. His main interest is the relevance of critical and Marxist legal theories to contemporary constitutional and human rights jurisprudence in Malawi. Misabeni Khosa is an environmental analyst based in South Africa. He was a Senior Researcher at the Land and Policy Centre, and Board Chair of the Rural Development Services Network. Odenda Lumumba is a human rights advocate with a Higher Diploma in Advanced International Programme on Human Rights from Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund University, Sweden. He also holds a Bachelors of Arts with Education Degree from Makerere University. He served as commissioner on the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Illegal and/or Irregular Allocation of Public Lands in Kenya, from July 2003 to June 2004, and as a member of the Technical Committee on Land, Property, Natural Resources and Environment for the National Constitutional Conference, between 2003 and March 2005. Lumumba has been a leading public advocate cum activist on land and natural resources for over 15 years and is a founding member and coordinator of Kenya Land Alliance, a lobby and advocacy Network on land and natural resource management. He has contributed to a number of seminar papers and publications, including Ours by Right, Theirs by Might, Who Owns this Land?, and Corruption in Land Management in Kenya (all published by Kenya Human Rights Commission). Prosper B. Matondi (PhD) is a policy analyst for the Centre for Rural Development, a University of Zimbabwe initiative in Harare. He has been involved in research and policy dialogue on rural community development and worked with several non-governmental organisations in research, technical advisory and policy dialogue on land reforms in Zimbabwe, water resource management, transboundary natural resource management, and organisational development. He was part of the technical team of the 2003 Presidential Land Review Committee. He has published widely on land and agrarian reform and natural resource management.

CONTRIBUTORS Mpho G. Molomo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at the University of Botswana. He is also a Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies, which strives to enhance democratic control and oversight of the security sector. Molomo’s primary research interests are the land question and democratization. He nevertheless has varied research interests and has published extensively on democracy and electoral systems, party systems, security sector governance and reform, and the ethnic question in Botswana. Sam Moyo is the Executive Director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies based in Harare, Zimbabwe. He has more than 25 years of research experience on rural development issues, with a focus on land and natural resource management, civil society organisations, capacity building and institutional development. He has been involved in several publications, including The Land Question in Zimbabwe (Sape Books, 1995); Land Reform under Structural Adjustment in Zimbabwe (Nordic Africa Institute, 2000); and African Land Questions, the State and Agrarian Transition: Contradictions of Neoliberal Land Reforms (CODESRIA Greenbook). Wellington Didibhuku Thwala is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, Department of Construction Management and Quantity Surveying. He has worked extensively with various development organisations in rural and urban research projects. He is currently an active researcher in various topics, including the application of labour-intensive methods in the construction industry, housing development, local economic development, poverty alleviation through public works programmes, project management, monitoring and evaluation, and sustainable development. He has published in national academic journals and participated in international conferences. He is currently completing his PhD with the University of the Witwatersrand.

Introduction: Land and Sustainable Development Issues in Africa Kojo Sebastian Amanor

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg in 2002, placed land reform and social justice at the heart of sustainable development. Debates raged within the forum about different approaches to the land question in southern Africa and the role of social movements and the market in land redistribution. Perhaps the most significant development occurred outside the official perimeters of the WSSD, in the alternative event organised by the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) at Shareworlds. From there, the LPM engaged with delegates to the WSSD, organising lively discussions on the land question. The chapters in this volume have grown out of papers presented at a workshop hosted by the LPM. In the build up to the WSSD the LPM organised a series of demonstrations and events in order to raise awareness of the plight of the landless poor in South Africa and their lack of representation in policy. The police responded with repression. In a demonstration against the forceful eviction of landless people in Johannesburg, 72 protestors were arrested on 21 and 22 August; against a candle-lit march to Johannesburg Central Prison on 24 August, protesting the increasing repression and arrests in the build-up to the WSSD, police used batons, tear gas and rubber bullets. The LPM bussed thousands of landless and land-hungry people into Johannesburg during the WSSD. The events culminated on 31 August with a march from downtown Alexander to the WSSD main venue in uptown Sandton. The South African state responded by attempting to intimidate the LPM and its supporters. A large military and police presence acted as a barricade alongside barbed wire at the Sandton Convention Centre, and delegates at the civil society forum at Nasrec were warned not to participate. Despite this increasing intimidation, between 30,000 and 40,000 people demonstrated against the hollowness of the WSSD, carrying placards demanding ‘land, jobs and food’.

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In contrast, within the heavily barricaded Sandton Convention Centre, delegates from the world’s environmental elite were handing out social responsibility awards to the corporate world, including awards to firms that have been involved in the appropriation of the resources of the poor. These events around the WSSD embody the contradictions within sustainable development. These include the contradiction that states and other bodies often claim to develop participatory policies for the poor, while in reality their policies marginalise the poor, who view them as unsympathetic and hostile. The state often responds with violent repression to attempts by the poor to stand up for their right to a livelihood and to land. While the rhetoric of sustainable development claims a common future and participation for all, the reality of the implementation of sustainable development policies frequently results in conflicts over natural resources and rights, and escalating violence.

Defining Sustainable Development Sustainable development is usually defined in three different ways. First, it is defined as the introduction of technical management practices over particular resources to attain a sustainable yield over a long period – the continued harvesting and replenishment of a resource. Second, sustainable development is defined as the management and regulation of the environment – or the sum total of natural resources – by society and its organs of governance to ensure their continued existence for future generations. This involves creating management mechanisms to ensure that natural resources are not over-exploited to meet immediate, selfish and greedy needs. This leads to the definition of sustainable development in terms of inter-generational equality – development that meets the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations, as espoused by the Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). The third definition embodies notions of equity, that sustainable development must provide equal opportunities and access for all, and cannot be based on high living standards for a minority and poverty for the majority, or the division of the world into rich countries and poor countries. This approach argues that inter-generational equity is meaningless without generational equity, and therefore policies that are more inclusive and redistribution of resources are prerequisites for sustainable development.

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In the contemporary period, these three definitions are often combined into two distinct paradigms of sustainable development. The dominant paradigm in the world of development is rooted in neoliberal thinking. Unsustainable development is seen as the product of poverty and inappropriate technology, and advances in technology and science contain the promises for a sustainable future. From this premise, sustainable development is associated with the introduction of new technologies to the world’s poor in developing countries to ensure higher productivity and a less destructive interface with nature. Since these technologies are the product of patterns of accumulation associated with the expansion of world trade, proponents of this approach argue that sustainable development must be built upon the expansion of ‘free’ markets, and upon the models of economic management based on deregulation and economic liberalism introduced from the 1980s. The education of people in using and managing resources wisely is important, and local communities can play an effective role in managing resources within their locality and preventing ‘free riders’ from despoiling natural resources and gaining profits from their utilisation. Thus, community participation in environmental management is important to assure the implementation of environmental policies within the rural hinterland. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play an important role in educating and mobilising communities for the management of natural resources. This results in the perspective that sustainable development is a product of effective linkages between government, civil society and industry. Thus, sustainable development is transformed into a technocratic governance issue associated with developing institutional innovations for more effective policy implementation. This is the perspective presented in the Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, 1992). The second paradigm for sustainable development focuses on social justice and power relations and argues that sustainable development needs to be rooted within a political economy framework (Redclift, 1989; Harvey, 1996; Zerner, 2000; Fernando, 2003; Boyce et al., 2007). The present inequitable distribution of land and natural resources lies at the root of environmental and agrarian problems in Africa, rather than the technical interface between producers and nature. Unsustainable development is the product of the nature of the development of capitalism, which results in structural inequalities and exploitative relations of production. Poverty is the product of unsustainable

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development and not the cause. Sustainable development requires the redistribution of resources at the international, national and local levels, and social movements play an important role in challenging the dominant elitist frameworks and creating pressures for social change. Within the neoliberal approach, power relations and economic inequality are treated as political distortions of the market by political elites and the state (Binswanger and Deininger, 1993). This conveniently neglects the role of transnational corporations in expropriating natural resources from the poor and the many instances of collaboration between governments and corporate sectors in the exploitation of the poor. The expansion of free markets is seen as creating opportunities for the poor rather than creating poverty. The political economy approach stands for redistribution of resources to the poor as the basis for future economic development and social justice. The neoliberal approach argues that technical interventions based on free markets will create the enabling environment for future economic growth and poverty alleviation, and that political intervention to create social justice will only create ‘policy distortions’. Redistribution of land to the poor will merely result in the poor misusing and degrading the land and the state redistributing land to its political networks. These two paradigms lead to distinct treatments of the land question. In the neoliberal or technocratic agenda, land tenure reform is seen as an institutional arrangement that can promote security of ownership. Secure ownership provides an enabling environment for economic and productive growth and provides producers with the confidence to invest in the long-term betterment of their land. It creates conditions that encourage investment in land and enables credit and security markets to develop and land to be used as collateral. In contrast, the political economy approach argues that inequitable access to land prevents the rural poor from acquiring plots of land that are economically viable. Land shortage creates pressures on natural resources and constrains their sustainable management. The large estates of the wealthy are often managed inefficiently and maintain large areas of land under unproductive land use. Thus, the redistribution of land to the poor creates the basis for development of more efficient land use. It encourages higher rural productivity and enables the rural poor, who have gained land through redistribution, to improve their land management strategies. However, similar arguments have also been worked into a neoliberal framework. For instance, Binswanger and Deininger (1993) argue that small farmers

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are often more efficient than large estate agriculture, and that large estate agriculture is often a product of political distortions introduced by the state, which allocates land and resources, including subsidised inputs and credit facilities, which enable large estate agriculture to continue to exist in spite of its inefficiency. Within the neoliberal framework, policy distortions are seen as contravening the natural evolution of land markets. Neoliberal analysts argue that the state should withdraw from intervening in land markets and allow free markets to carry out land distribution through encouraging willing sellers and willing buyers. In contrast, the political economy approach argues that the market merely reinforces existing power relations and favours the powerful. Political interventions are needed for land reform, including actions and pressures by social movements and peasant organisations for land redistribution and land occupation (Peet and Watts, 2004; Moyo and Yeros, 2005b). The political economy approach is sceptical that land reform can be brought about through the rule of law and the market, since these institutions historically intervened within the land question to create a framework for the expropriation of African peasant farmers and for the stabilisation of expropriated land. One of the major problems in land reform in Africa is that the framework for land administration that was laid down within the colonial period continues to exist within post-colonial Africa, resulting in a land question that remains unresolved, unjust and problematic. Although perspectives on sustainable development rooted in social and environmental justice and land redistribution were articulated at the Johannesburg WSSD, since this event there has been a notable lack of progress in the development of these perspectives. On the one hand, social movements working for redistributive justice often find that they come up against a highly hostile policy environment which marginalises approaches that work outside notions of the organisation of natural resources by the market, and the transformation of social institutions to encourage market investment. There is also confusion in the conception of social justice, which increasingly becomes appropriated by neoliberal interests, but reduced to forms of popular participation which empower communities to manage their own resources against state intervention. This approach advocates the decentralisation of resources from the state and sees the main contradictions in society as existing between a predatory state and socially undifferentiated communities. In this framework, social justice becomes associated with communitarian approaches to decentralised administration, rather

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than with the redistribution of resources. The major concern is with security of ownership and security of customary ownership rather than redistribution to socially differentiated groups. However, in many instances in Africa a large-scale appropriation of communal and customary rights has already taken place historically, which frequently leaves the customary sector in a highly marginal position, in which the plight of the land hungry can only be meaningfully addressed by introducing redistributive reforms. In other instances, strengthening customary authority results in the creation of rural elites with powers to alienate land to private and international capital. This equally results in the decline of the natural resources and land of the rural poor. Thus, land and natural resource management needs to be placed in a context in which it addresses particular processes of accumulation within nation-states and within the circuits of international capital, and critically examines the institutional configurations for land management. This book attempts to carry this agenda forward, by critically examining notions of and assumptions about the rule of law, community participation, social movements and civil society within the nationstates. This examination is carried out in the context of concepts about sustainable development and linkages to global environmental policy, and in relation to processes of accumulation, class formation, marginalisation and impoverishment.

The Origins of Sustainable Development The origins of the concept of sustainable development can be traced back to the 1980s and to two reports: the 1980 World Conservation Strategy and the 1983 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission), Our Common Future. The World Conservation Strategy was produced by two NGOs, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in conjunction with three United Nations programmes, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). The World Conservation Strategy linked environmental conservation with economic growth. It argued that it was necessary to build the sustainable utilisation of resources and maintenance of genetic diversity into development planning. It advocated three broad conservation objectives

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to maintain ecological processes: (a) the utilisation of good arable lands for crop production rather than cattle herding, (b) the ecological management of crops (to limit pollution from pesticides and maintain genetic diversity) and (c) the protection of watershed forests. It argued that ecological conservation was bound up with human production, and that poor agricultural communities could only engage in sustainable production with the provision of better technology. Prior to the publication of the World Conservation Strategy, environmentalism had seen economic growth as a threat to the environment and had made calls for limits to be imposed on economic growth. Hajer (1995) argues that the publication of the World Conservation Strategy signified the beginnings of ecological modernisation, that is, environmental policy making based on notions of efficient resource utilisation and conscious environmental planning involving the participation of citizens and NGOS, and the development of new policy coalitions between NGOs, supranational organisations and nation-states. The initiative of the World Conservation Strategy was built upon by the United Nations Commission for Environment and Development, under the leadership of the prime minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Brundtland Commission (WCED) produced the report Our Common Future. The Brundtland Commission was set up by the United Nations in the 1980s to define how global environmental problems were to be interpreted in policy frameworks, in an era in which environmental problems began to be interpreted as global in scale, requiring appropriate global responses. The Brundtland Commission sought to overcome the confines of the Cold War and the division of the world into power blocs by developing the notion of a global environmental threat that required a universal global response to create a ‘common future’. The Brundtland Commission was concerned with promoting global equity, redistributing resources towards poorer nations and encouraging the economic growth of developing nations. It argued that equity, growth and environmental management were not inimical to each other, but interdependent. It was possible to enhance the natural resource base of society while developing economic potential. The Commission recognised that the pursuit of sustainable growth and equity would require technological and social changes and a transformation of the way in which technology was used and developed. This transformation was premised on scientists working within global institutions to assess environmental damage and develop appropriate solutions, world leaders coming together in world summits to agree to

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suitable global policies for the administration of the environment, and the education and enlightenment of the world’s citizenry by NGOs and social movements to become stewards of environmental management. This emphasised a process of negotiation and consensus based on partnerships to overcome conflicting perspectives. The concept of sustainable development promoted by the Brundtland Commission was influenced by other contemporary debates of the time, including the notion of a New International Economic Order. The framework of the Brundtland Commission defined sustainability in terms of the needs to overcome poverty, to promote economic growth, to ensure the survival of natural resources and to overcome economic crisis brought on by depletion of resources. The Commission also called for institutional change that addressed the issues of unequal distribution of power within the world. The debates about sustainable development within the Brundtland Commission reflected not only the dominant social democratic values of the time and the existence of polarised political power blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union, but also the Non-Aligned Movement and debates between the North and South. The process of creating a global framework for sustainable development was carried forward into the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit. However, by then the Soviet bloc had collapsed, and the United States had emerged as the dominant superpower. The rise of US hegemony was associated with the dominance of neoliberal economic policies in global economic development fora, including the World Bank, IMF and United Nations organisations. Neoliberalism exerted a powerful influence over the Earth Summit, which was reflected in the recommendations of its report. The Earth Report was underlined by a framework that asserted sustainable development could be carried forward only by free market policies, underpinning a partnership between governments, global policy centres, transnational industry, NGOs and communities. This has led to an increasing tension within sustainable development fora between earlier concerns with institutional reform as a means of building consensus among different international partners with different perspectives and institutional reform as conformity to neoliberal free market tenets. In contrast with Our Common Future, the report of the 1992 Earth Summit asserted that the technologies for promoting sustainable development and the institutional framework were already in existence. Thus, the main emphasis shifted from the negotiation of a framework for promoting social equity and environmental

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management, and the creation of a new basis for the generation of appropriate technology, to the implementation of a series of conventions using existing institutional configurations and technologies within a highly unequal capitalist world. While the Earth Summit advocated important roles for communities and NGOs in managing natural resources, these are laid down within the strictures of neoliberal policy. The main emphasis in ‘community-based natural resource management’ was on educating communities into the sensibilities of global environmentalism rather than creating platforms through which they could voice their environmental and livelihood concerns. ‘Communities’ were encouraged to police, regulate and limit the use of natural resources in compliance with a series of global treaties negotiated between the power elites of the world, rather than enhance the livelihood requirements of the world’s poor and effect an equitable redistribution of resources. The Earth Report emphasised the ‘greening’ of capital and the role of the corporate sector in implementing sustainable development. It also emphasised the role of poverty and inappropriate technology in degrading the natural resource base. Through a subtle shift of emphasis, the Earth Report transformed the agenda of the Brundtland Commission into a more technocentric agenda responding to the needs of capital and global elites. The community networks mobilised for sustainable development are frequently elite-based networks or networks that are prepared to adopt externally defined agendas. Community-based natural resource management often empowers community elites and sections of the community willing to work within the framework of national elite policies to gain control and power over natural resources at the expense of community members. These elites are empowered to police, regulate and limit the use of natural resources within localities. This does not address the inequities in access and control over natural resources beyond a superficial level, but adds new layers of regulation and control over the existing limited access of the poor to natural resources. It enables NGOs working within the framework of dominant policy with funding from donors to influence control over natural resource management within localities. A number of international environmental NGOs have been able to gain increasing influence on natural resource policies in developing countries. This has often had a detrimental effect on the access to land and natural resources of the rural poor, whose access to resources has often been eroded to make way for ‘sustainable development’ initiatives.

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These projects also undermine the independence of rural communities, which are often forced to develop alternative livelihoods, which are frequently not economically viable within existing conditions, and embody some dependence on external assistance, international aid and handouts. While local-level communities are increasingly subject to regulation, the corporate sector is increasingly freed from regulation and encouraged to develop self-regulation through corporate social responsibility. This creates new opportunities for the corporate sector to displace, integrate and exploit communities and define what constitutes sustainable development according to their interests. Vandana Shiva (1993) argues that this constitutes a new form of imperialism, in which the problem of sustainable development has been transformed into a problem of technology transfer and capital transfer, which enables the dominant elites in the North to impose solutions to environmental problems they created, and which benefit the corporate world in financial flows. The global environmental agenda has resulted in a complex alliance of social actors extending from supranational policy centres and advocacy groups to the global corporate sector, national state organisations and communities (Hajer, 1995). However, far from implementing an environmental agenda that has been reached by consensus, global environmental policies are frequently coercively implemented in the name of conservation, and frequently exclude the poor or impose constraints upon their livelihood activities and access to land and resources. This results in increasing conflicts over natural resources and land, violence and the rise of social movements operating outside the frameworks of mainstream sustainable development policy coalitions (Peluso and Watts, 2001; Moyo and Yeros, 2005b). A growing body of literature questions the validity of claims about environmental crisis in Africa. These claims are seen as rhetorical devices which justify and reify external interventions in the control of natural resources. Fairhead and Leach (1998) show that much of the data collected on West African forests by international organisations are based on crude projections of annual forest loss and population growth, which presume that the forest areas were previously unsettled. Claims of deforestation are based on hypothetical and statistical modelling, without any understanding of the historical processes of forest change and social change. Keeley and Scoones (2003) argue that policy knowledge is often embedded in institutional and

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organisational arrangements that are linked with dominant political and economic interests and prestige. This enables particular perspectives to persist in the face of growing counter-evidence. Leach and Mearns (1996) argue that crisis narratives justify interventions by state agencies, such as that of forestry departments to gain control and stewardship over resources and impose controls over local communities for posterity. Thus, environmental narratives often result in the loss of rights of the rural poor to manage independently resources and livelihoods. These new approaches to the environment are usually placed within a framework that is critical of science and its role in policy making, but fails to examine either the political economic implications of the control and appropriation of resources or the political economy of natural resources (Bernstein and Woodhouse, 2001). The new approaches do not directly challenge the neoliberal framework in which many of these natural resource management policy frameworks are cast.

Neoliberal Perspectives on Land In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the land question in Africa in neoliberal circles and an attempt to introduce new paradigms of land reform, which fit into neoliberal institutional reform. These new paradigms are concerned with decentralising land administration away from the state, finding greater roles for communities and civil society in land management, promoting reforms that stabilise and enhance property rights, and promoting land markets. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the dominant framework for land reform was one of promotion of land titling and land registration under a dominant modernisation theory paradigm. It was theorised that titling would enable farmers to gain loans against their land, which could be used for land improvement and agricultural development. However, land titling has had limited success in Africa and has supported the expansion of elite farmers and their appropriation of land lying in the customary sector, without secure rights in formal legal institutions. However, the cost of land titling prevents and inhibits the emergence of stable rights, since its prohibitive costs do not match the levels of small farmer investment. It is argued by neoliberal analysts that this accumulation of land by commercial farmers is an abuse of state administration of

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land titling by elites with close ties to political regimes (Bruce, 1993). Stable property rights are only accorded to a small minority of elite estate farmers by the state, which does not encourage the development of land markets, or financial and insurance services for the majority of farmers based on collateral. Financial services only become available to a small handful of elite farmers. Thus, recent reforms seek to develop innovatory techniques for registering customary property rights, and new forms of decentralised property registration, which will create confidence in ownership and encourage long-term investment in the land. It is argued that the creation of mechanisms for the recognition of customary systems, and theharmonisation of customary and formal tenure will allow the customary sector to be regulated, and facilitate the expansion of land markets. This will facilitate the process of conversion of customary land into freehold or leasehold, since formal recognition of customary rights will lead to more clearly defined customary property rights and accountability, which will enable investors to transact land in the customary sector with more confidence. The creation of new institutions at the local level that mediate formal titling and customary systems will ensure legal accountability and create pressures for customary systems to conform with international and national economic regulation. However, the recognition afforded to customary systems ultimately undermines them and transforms them into the opposite, by facilitating market transactions. Neoliberal theorists argue that as land becomes more scarce, customary land tenures will evolve towards individual ownership and more closely defined conceptions of individual property. They support the tendencies within customary systems that ultimately evolve into private property ownership (Deininger, 2003). The recognition of customary land rights allows potential areas to be identified in which clearly defined user rights do not exist, which can then be transacted on land markets and converted into individually owned land. In Mozambique this has led to the rapid expansion of commercial land at the expense of customary land (Myers, 1994; Lahiff, 2003; Suca, 2001). The recognition of customary land rights does not lead to a redistribution of land or to the expansion of land made available for the smallholder or peasant sector with insufficient land under customary tenure. It rarely results in the redistribution of land from commercial farming sectors to customary tenure, but tends to facilitate the conversion of customary land into commercial and individualised land holdings (see Chapter 3 in this volume). The securing of ownership of customary land promotes the rapid alienation of customary land

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to commercial farmers. In the long term, attempts to clearly define and recognise customary rights can create a process of ultimate conversion of land from the customary to commercial sector. In many African countries the actual areas under customary tenure have rapidly declined as individual property rights have been recognised. Large numbers of people continue to exist on very small, fragmented holdings. Conversion to individual property rights is not usually the result of peasants registering their land, but of increasing appropriation of customary land by commercial sectors. This results in the conversion of large areas of customary land into freehold and leasehold sectors, estate farms, mineral concessions and conservation areas. Increasingly, a shrinking area of customary land comes to serve a large population, which is forced to eke out a living from diminishing customary holdings. In these areas, justice demands land redistribution – not the formal recognition of ownership on extremely small holdings. In South Africa, 70,000 white settler farmers own 72 per cent of arable land, while 21 million black farmers are crowded on 14 per cent of the land (Thwala and Khosa, Chapter 1, this volume). In many African countries, there is a disproportionate allocation of land between the customary sector and the state and commercial sectors (as represented by freehold and leasehold tenures). The communitarian approach to land reform tends to overlook the extent to which customary tenure systems are socially differentiated and controlled by powerful local political interests (Amanor, 1999; Peters, 2004). Through alliances with traditional authorities, the state can often regulate peasant farmers and create conditions for the expropriation of their land. This was the arrangement obtained under colonial rule, where the colonial authorities vested land in chiefs who collaborated in colonial administration. Chiefs were empowered to own and sell land and negotiate concessions, and to use political claims on land to establish coercive controls over their subjects. Under colonial rule, customary tenure was reinvented to serve the interests of colonialism. The customary was redefined within a wholly modern context to reflect the accommodation of interests between colonial authority and African elites (Colson, 1971). Land was vested in political authorities, and the rights of peasant cultivators derived from their position as subjects of the political authority (Chanock, 1991). These customary rights vested allodial title in chiefs and accorded peasant farmers user rights in land. These user rights could be withdrawn by chiefs exercising their customary privilege. This concept survived into the post-colonial era, where the concept of

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allodial rights was used to justify the appropriation of land belonging to peasant farmers in the national interest. In this book, Kanyinga, Lumumba and Amanor show that the mapping of customary rights is not particularly new: it was used under the land reform programmes introduced in the 1940s in Kenya to create more stable property rights and encourage farm investment. However, this led to the appropriation of large areas of lands by chiefs, loyalists and wealthy farmers at the expense of the Mau Mau freedom fighters and the rural poor. The land of the Mau Mau freedom fighters was often reallocated and redistributed while they were in detention. The new claims to individual ownership exerted by aspiring commercial farmers frequently curtailed the ability of the rural poor and the land hungry to expand into new land. Minority groups may also find their rights in land eroded by the codification of and mapping of customary rights. The process of mapping customary rights may result in the exclusion of holders of secondary rights such as women (Whitehead and Tsikata, 2003), and youth and migrants (Chauveau, 2006). Powerful groups are usually able to redefine customary systems according to their interests. The state frequently inserts itself within customary systems and can transform these systems by recognising and denying particular groups rights. Amanor (Chapter 5, this volume) provides several examples of how the strengthening of customary rights in West Africa leads to the strengthening of the land claims of the powerful and of corporate sectors at the expense of the poor and marginalised. In Côte d’Ivoire, from the 1960s to 1980s, migrants from neighbouring Sahelian countries were able to acquire recognition of rights to land through the process of cultivation. By the end of the 1990s, these rights were withdrawn as the state enunciated a principle of Ivorité, in which land could only be owned by Ivorians. The mapping of customary land tenure in Côte d’Ivoire was based on the rights of the first-comers, those who claimed original ownership of land, which undermined the rights of migrants and other user groups with secondary rights (Chauveau, 2006). In Botswana, national minorities have found that Tswana cultural constructs have been imposed upon their land tenure systems (Molomo, Chapter 6, this volume). However, Tswana customary tenure has been refashioned to meet new objectives associated with fencing land for livestock development. The retention of nominal chiefly control over land serves to define land boundaries by tribal areas and allows Tswana customary concepts to be overlaid on land boundaries and

INTRODUCTION

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integrated into a national project, which appropriates customary land for wildlife and tourism and for livestock ranching (Molomo, Chapter 6, this volume). Land can be used as a way of building up patrimonial support networks and dividing rural interests along ethnic lines, particularly when rights to land are based on notions of belonging, autochthony and tribal boundaries. Notions of indigenous land rights can also be manipulated by political elites to create political patronage systems and promote ethnic conflicts that purge the politically weak from the land and make way for processes of land accumulation. Kanyinga, Lumumba and Amanor (Chapter 4, this volume) show how the concept of customary land tied to ethnic boundaries has been used in Kenya to support a policy of land grabbing and land accumulation by aspiring commercial landowners with strong political connections. Support is built up for the appropriation of land by organising large networks of political supporters, often recruited on the basis of regional and ethnic affiliations. Small parcels of lands are allocated to these supporters, while the political elite appropriate large plots. However, this frequently results in ethnic conflicts over land, and weaker groups in rival factions are often dispossessed of their land in violent confrontation The construction of the customary is inherently political. Thus, reforms of customary land tenure need to be placed within the context of politics and political economy, rather than an institutional context of building civil society representation, community participation, decentralised administration or institutional reform to promote security in land ownership. Ultimately, the criteria for establishing equity in land cannot be based on institutional reform, decentralised management or the formal recognition of customary relations by the state. The criteria must relate to the actual distribution of land and the need to redistribute land to the landless and the rural poor.

Land Redistribution and Markets In much of southern and East Africa land distribution is highly inequitable and defined by a history of settler colonialism, in which the bulk of the best agricultural land has been appropriated by a small minority of settler farmers holding large estates. Under neoliberal economic management, land reform in the context of decolonisation in southern Africa has focused on market-based mechanisms for the redistribution of land that preclude

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the forceful expropriation of land by the state. This approach fails to redress the legacy of racially inequitable land ownership. It also results in a very costly and slow process of land redistribution. The marketbased approach to land redistribution is preoccupied with ensuring adequate financial compensation for large landowners. This tends to protect and empower the settler farmers, who have greater leverage in land transactions. This often leads to the sale of marginal and poorest quality land. This approach has largely been imposed by the World Bank and other donor organisations. While market-based reform is preoccupied with the rights of white settler farmers, it fails to address the rights of the victims of processes of land expropriation under settler colonialism and racist settler regimes (Thwala and Khosa, Chapter 1, this volume). This approach fails to address the glaring inequalities in land redistribution and the rights of the majority of the people who continue to subsist on marginal lands. The market-based approach serves to forestall land redistribution and popular demands for land redistribution by insisting on dogmatic principles linked to the market and confusing these with the rule of law. It paints popular struggles for land as anarchic, undemocratic and outside the realm of civil society and the rule of law. The rights of large-scale commercial settler farmers are also protected in the name of efficiency. It is argued that redistribution to smallholders without sufficient capital, experience and expertise will lead to the collapse of the agricultural sector. A common myth is being perpetuated that the poor degrade the land and that large-scale commercial farmers use land efficiently. This leads to a focus on programmes to protect the land from poor farmers and to educate smallholders on methods of sustainable agriculture. Thus, the basis for land reform is increasingly transformed from one of redressing historical grievances and redistributing resources more equitably to one of promoting productivity, employment, environmental sustainability and growth (see Chapters 1 and 2, this volume, by Thwala and Khosa, and Moyo and Matondi, respectively). In addition to continuing to entrench white settler agriculture, this approach also tends to promote the interests of an indigenous class of aspiring capitalist farmers rather than the rights of the majority of smallholders. It accommodates the interests of indigenous agrarian capitalists alongside those of white settler farmers, or, as in the case of Kenya, it replaces the settler farmer with the aspiring indigenous capitalist farmer. It baulks at carrying through a programme of reform to further the interests of smallholder farmers.

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Nature Tourism, Wildlife and Forest Management Large areas of land have been appropriated from colonial times for forest reserves and wildlife parks. This continues to this day, under the guise of promoting conservation and sustainable development with debtfor-nature swaps. Many large international environmental NGOs have promoted the expropriation of land for conservation, and the preservation of endemic genetic resources or wildlife. This is often taken up by the state as a means of promoting tourism and gaining new sources of foreign funding (Pleumarom, 1994). Under colonialism, environmental concerns were used as a justification for expropriation of land by the colonial state. Peasant cultivators were depicted as insensitive to environmental conservation and as using farming practices that promoted rapid destruction of environmental resources. This justified the appropriation of land by the colonial state as Crown Land for posterity, and the introduction of regulations on the practices of African cultivators. Behind the supposed interests in conservation in southern and East Africa lay an agenda to restrict African farming interests and subject them to political control. This included the designation of wildlife reserves, the confinement of African farming to tribal reserve areas, restrictions placed on crops cultivated, coercive soil and water conservation measures, and restrictions on cultivation on slopes (Anderson, 1984; Beinart, 1984; Mackenzie, 1998; Showers, 2005). These measures continue to this day, and there is more restrictive environmental regulation of communal farming areas in South Africa and Zimbabwe than of commercial farmers (Moyo, 2000; Moyo and Matondi, Chapter 2, this volume). Molomo (Chapter 6, this volume) describes how the Basarwa hunter-gatherers have been moved from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana to encourage nature tourism and tourists’ concepts of a pristine nature free from human influence. The Basarwa have been ejected despite their long history of cohabitating with wildlife on their ancestral lands. Similar processes occur among pastoral peoples in East Africa where the belief among wealthy European tourists that wild Africa should be peopleless is leading to the exclusion of pastoralists from lands they have managed for centuries (Brockington, 1999; Galaty, 1999; Homewood, 2004). This is justified by unsubstantiated claims that pastoral people are major degraders of the environment. The expansion of game parks for wildlife resources has undermined pastoral grazing lands and grazing strategies.

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In addition to the exclusion of people to promote nature tourism, forms of community-based natural resource management are also being promoted as ecotourism. These are frequently joint ventures involving private capital and communities. However, most of the profits accrue to the private sector, while the communities usually realise meagre benefits. These forms of ecotourism also lead to a new expropriation of land for low-intensity recreational tourist activities, which creates further pressures on intensely cultivated communal lands (Moyo and Matondi, Chapter 2, this volume). These forms of ecotourism can also encourage community conflicts, the empowerment of particular interest groups within the community who are willing to work with the global tourist industry at the expense of other groups, more exclusive control over resources, and new attempts to define the community and customary tenure systems in accordance with corporate interests (Peters, 2004). Amanor (Chapter 5, this volume) shows how community forestry programmes in West Africa give rural communities roles in protecting and managing forests. These new participatory roles are frequently a form of contracting out menial forest work from labourers to community members, as forest services lay off staff and rationalise operations. However, rural communities are usually excluded from transacting forestry resources through an elaborate system of licences, permits and concessions, which are concentrated in the hands of urban traders and concession holders. The expansion of the concession system responding to export-oriented growth leads to the criminalisation of rural livelihoods based on these forest resources. Community participation does not always promote the interests of the rural poor; frequently it leads to new fields of accumulation through which the resources of rural people are further exploited, controlled and expropriated.

Civil Society and the Land Question Civil society organisations play a central role in the contemporary construction of sustainable development and land administration. In neoliberal theory, civil society participation is a central concept: in promoting decentralised management; in placing demands on government supposedly to counter policy distortions rooted in political or patrimonial interests; and in ensuring transparency in the operation of land markets and management of natural resources. The role of civil society is theorised as ensuring that the rule of law operates and that

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property rights are not violated. However, this presumes that the rural poor have a strong voice in civil society fora and that their demands are articulated in policy circles. Without this happening, civil society is likely to represent elite interests. All too frequently, the rural poor are excluded from national debates on land and natural resources, and the state, donors and other agencies select elite ‘stakeholders’ as representatives of rural society. In recent times, chiefs have increasingly been promoted as major civil society actors, despite the considerable support they receive from the state. Claims that African civil society is weak are used by donors and the state to justify their active role in recruiting and grooming civil society organisations to represent the poor and working people. These organisations are carefully selected to ensure that their programmes reflect the concerns and interests of the major providers of international aid and of the state. Within the contemporary setting in Africa, the dominant organisations within civil society platforms are NGOs. Moyo (2002) argues that most NGOs have strong middle-class constituencies with close international aid linkages. This militates against NGOs making demands for radical land reform. Most NGOs have grown out of social welfare, emergency relief traditions and provision of social infrastructure services. Although they have been moving into advocacy, they tend to focus on political and civil human rights, and not on social justice and economic rights based on redistribution. NGOs are strongly influenced by global environmentalist ideologies. They often lobby for stronger legislation and policies to be put in place to protect the environment from the poor. They aim to educate the poor on sustainable land management and they extend new technologies to the peasantry for better environmental management. They frequently subscribe to the dominant ideologies that justify existing inequalities in land distribution and technocentric conceptions of sustainable development, rather than demanding land redistribution. In Burkina Faso, Hagberg (2004) argues that successful NGOs operate within two distinct spheres. They build networks at the international level which ensure them funding. At the community level, they build linkages with existing traditional authorities who are able to mobilise rural people coercively for specific projects. A more positive assessment of the interventions of NGOs in land reform is made by Kanji et al. (2002) in a study of Kenya and Mozambique. While they found that the NGOs had significant impacts on the land policy process, they also noted problems that resulted from discrepancies between the policymaking process and the implementation, in which power relations

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were critical. They noted that in attempting to influence policy change, NGOs may compromise their work at the community level. Lobbying activities cannot wait for the slower-paced work of building grassroots organisations. Thus, a strong professional advocacy NGO sector can exist with a weak and disorganised grassroots base. This is likely to result in weak representation of peasant demands and aspirations within the NGOs sector and within policy circles. In a survey of communities in which NGOs worked, a significant proportion of respondents in both countries felt that NGOs failed to work with more marginalised sections of the community. In Kenya, 40 per cent of the respondents felt that the NGOs discriminated against sections of the community and worked with community leaders to exploit the community. In Mozambique, the responses of community members indicated that NGOs only engaged with leaders, and that youth and women were not represented at the meetings (Kanji et al., 2002). In Mozambique, the work of NGOs was recognised as important in achieving broad public debate on land reform and they were instrumental in the dissemination of the draft laws. However, there were pressures, actively supported by some donors and the state, to replace the 1997 land law with the privatisation of land rights, which undermines the rights of communities. Since the NGOs depend upon donors for their funding, it is likely that they will be forced to shift their positions in accordance with the promotion of privatisation of land rights. Donor programmes provide support roles for NGOs in strengthening the process of privatisation. NGOs that do not follow donor prescriptions are likely to be stripped of funding and participation in the process of land reform. Thus, civil society positions will merely echo those arrived at by donors and the state. In Zimbabwe, NGOs failed both to take up the demands of the peasantry for land redistribution and to support land occupation movements, since donors actively promoted market-based land redistribution – in spite of its failure to achieve any significant land redistribution after twenty years – and denounced land occupations as contravening the rule of law. With the failure of civil society leadership to take up the struggles and demands of a large section of rural society for land redistribution, it was left to the state to take up these demands as relations between it and donors deteriorated (Moyo, 2001; Moyo and Matondi, Chapter 2, this volume). In South Africa, the response of civil society organisations to land reform has been equally problematic, as the government has moved to

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support a donor-assisted programme of market-based land reform. This has resulted in serious dilemmas for civil society organisations that have supported the government reform programme, but need to remain in tune with a constituency of rural poor who are increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the slow pace of reform. Many NGOs now prefer to retreat to less controversial themes such as HIV, the environment or poverty alleviation. The land struggle no longer operates within the civil sphere of national democracy. New land struggles have emerged that are hostile to the interests of government and its partners and are concerned with the injustices of the post-apartheid system. These are driven by community-based organisations that are directly affected by land issues and the struggle for land has become increasingly fragmented. Contradictions often occur between pressures to operate within the framework of market-based land reform adopted by government and grass-roots pressures for land reform outside this framework. However, social movements operate in a highly problematic environment and are either co-opted into dominant neoliberal positions or increasingly marginalised. Thus, initiatives and coalitions for land redistribution, such as those organised by the National Land Council, the Landless People’s Movement and the Rural Development Initiative, experience difficulties in continuing to survive with access to a voice in policy circles (Thwala and Khosa, Chapter 1, this volume). In Kenya, Klopp (2000) argues that there is widespread resistance against land grabbing of public land by political elites and their clients and the ‘deepening corruption around land allocations’ (p. 8). Resistance takes the form of combining legal and extra-legal actions. It includes demonstrations, court cases, complaints to political leaders, sabotage, and violent confrontations with state security services. These political actions are frequently fragmented and highly localised, taking place against attempts to evict ‘squatters’ or to appropriate particular pieces of land. However, these actions have not attracted the attention of Western political analysts who prefer to work with concepts of a formalised civil society rather than of informal resistance of marginalised groups. Amanor (Chapter 5, this volume) documents cases of localised resistance to land expropriation in the agricultural, forestry and mineral sectors in West Africa. The attempts of rural people to defend their rights are often met with repression by state security forces, often mobilised at the behest of the corporate sector. This can escalate into highly violent conflicts with considerable loss of life. In Malawi, localised land occupations have developed against attempts

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by the state to expropriate land (Kanyongolo, 2005). Many of the chapters in this volume document localised struggles to defend land and environmental rights. These fail to develop into broader social movements, and to be taken up by the dominant civil society groups recognised by the state and donors. These struggles often occur in highly repressive environments, and the groups are often maligned in the policy world for operating outside the rule of law and beyond the confines of civil society. These struggles reveal the limits of civil society and the failure of environmental coalitions, NGOs and policy makers to create enabling environments for the rural poor. Ultimately, mainstream policies for sustainable development, which support corporate accumulation and the expansion of global capital and markets, are resulting in the increasing marginalisation and impoverishment of growing sections of rural producers.

Scope and Organisation of This Book The chapters in this book place the land question and sustainable development within a political economic and structural framework that questions many of the underlying assumptions in mainstream neoliberal approaches. The chapters show how the legal framework defining land tenure and environmental management is a product of colonialism, and that with the transition to independence many of the injustices and inequalities that were characteristic of the colonial period were carried into the post-colonial setting. Thus, the neoliberal concern with the rule of law is problematic, since the rule of law is rooted in injustices perpetrated under colonial rule, which have not been resolved since the attainment of independence. This results both from the compromises that were made in the transition period by the African nationalists, and from the narrow and selfish interests of the elites that came to power. The land question was resolved in favour of elites rather than the people. The first two chapters are concerned with land reform in settler colonies in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The next two chapters deal with Malawi and Kenya, former settler colonies in which the land question has now been effectively de-racialised. However, the structures of inequality laid down in the colonial period continue to survive and dominate the land question and support private accumulation of land. The last two chapters deal with West Africa and Botswana,

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societies that were not characterised by settler colonial agriculture. However, forms of social differentiation still characterise the land question in these societies, and colonial policies were built on a series of alliances with ‘customary’ elites that ensured the existence of exploitative and coercive social relations, including the creation of labour reserves for public works programmes and for meeting the labour requirements of the main export-oriented enclaves. While the customary has become increasingly important in contemporary frameworks for sustainable development, not all people’s customary ways of life are considered equal. The final chapter on Botswana focuses on the Basarwa, a highly marginalised group of hunter-gatherers who are being removed from their lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to make way for the development of nature tourism. In South Africa, Thwala and Khosa argue that land reform has been compromised by the government’s acceptance of neoliberal policies. South Africa continues to be characterised by one of the most inequitable distributions of land in the world. Neoliberal policies protect the rights of white farmers to the land they have appropriated, while subjecting the majority of black farmers to insecure forms of customary tenure that deprive the rural poor and women of secure access to land. The black population is forced to remain in overcrowded communal areas that undermine the viability of the African agriculture sector, which is characterised by landlessness, dependence upon the migrant labour system for incomes, poor infrastructure and support services, and marginal and deteriorating land. The neoliberal approach to land reform depoliticises the land question and reduces land reform to a series of technical prescriptions, which are concerned with redistributing land to efficient farmers. This serves to slow down the pace of land redistribution and promotes the creation of an aspiring class of black commercial farmers rather than solving the inequalities of land distribution in South Africa. This reinforces the poverty within the communal areas and contributes to the degradation and over-exploitation of natural resources. These consequences of inequality are used to justify the status quo, and it is argued that land redistribution will lead to the demise of the commercial sector and promote economic decline. Thwala and Khosa argue that the small farmer sector has the potential to be sustainable since small farmers tend to utilise a broad array of resources and preserve significant biodiversity within the farm. Small farmers have a vested interest in sustainability and maintaining agrobiodiversity. In contrast, white commercial agriculture is ultimately

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unsustainable since it is dependent upon practices that result in soil loss and degradation, including monocropping, inefficient irrigation and intensive mechanisation. White commercial agriculture is overcapitalised and inefficient and has been dependent upon state aid and favourable loans from the state. The authors argue that to promote sustainable development, land reform must deliver equity and social justice and security of land rights in communal areas so that opportunities to acquire land and to use natural resources are fairly distributed. Similarly, in Zimbabwe, Moyo and Matondi argue that the inequalities of land distribution before the land occupations of 2000 promoted unsustainable development. The white settler farm sector under-utilised land, while the expropriation of land for white settler agriculture produced land pressures within the communal areas that resulted in the degradation of farmland and the natural resource base. In the communal areas, farmers had insufficient access to land and other resources, and little state support for improving their agriculture. This became more pronounced in the 1990s, as wildlife management became an important part of promoting tourism, with many incentives provided for this sector. Wildlife management was largely taken up by white commercial farmers who chose to retain surplus land and woodlands for wildlife management. While this was justified as promoting environmental conservation, this enabled white commercial farmers to hold onto land that was under-utilised, and to engage in land speculation since delayed redistribution resulted in increasing prices. The market-based land reform process floundered, failing to deliver sufficient land, and delivering land of low agricultural potential. The failures of structural adjustment resulted in growing land pressures as more people were forced to gain livelihoods from the land. This created the pressure for the land occupation movement, which grew out of attempts to retain squatter land in the face of evictions, and to occupy under-utilised white settler land to provide land-based livelihoods as other options including wage labour declined. The development of new export sectors during the 1990s, including wildlife, nature-based tourism, horticulture and ostrich rearing, resulted in the rise of an aspiring black commercial farmer sector, aspiring to enter and take control of these sectors. These groups called for a strategy of indigenisation, making demands on the state to support black empowerment through redistributing white lands.

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The failures of the economic reform process, and of land reform, resulted in increasing poor relations between the Zimbabwe government and donors, as the government realised that further pursuance of donor-assisted policies would undermine its support base, and as donors failed to provide adequate financial support for market-based land redistribution. This resulted in the government supporting pressures for land reform, and giving state support to a process of land occupation, which became the basis for a fast-track process of land redistribution. This embodied two pressures, one for black empowerment and indigenisation of resources through the transfer of land to aspiring black commercial farmers, and the other for the breaking up of large holdings and their redistribution to black smallholder farmers. Moyo and Matondi argue that the redistribution of holdings to smallholders can create more efficient utilisation of land and a more sustainable agricultural base, which addresses the pressures on communal areas and the under-utilisation of land in the former white commercial farming areas. However, this requires a policy framework that goes beyond merely redistributing land, to supporting new agrarian developments. Moyo and Matondi explore the institutional arrangements and technical support programmes that would form the basis of achieving a new agrarian base, with the potential of promoting sustainable development. Kanyongolo critically examines the relationship between land and the rule of law in Malawi, focusing on the formulation of land law in Malawi, in the colonial, immediate post-colonial and neoliberal phases of development. He examines the relationship between the social relations, institutional frameworks, social concerns and development models which influence and shape land legislation. He argues that sustainable development must embody principles of equity of access to land, security of tenure and social participation in the implementation and formulation of sustainable development objectives and laws to realise these objectives. Kanyongolo argues that laws created in the colonial period worked to undermine the access to land and the tenure security of African peoples by creating an environment that encouraged European settlement as a stimulant for development and progress. This resulted in the expropriation of the land of Africans, many of whom were transformed into labour migrants, and created unequal access to land and regional disparities in access to land related to the areas in which European settler agriculture was located. It also created a framework for the management of customary land that gave African producers insecure

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rights in land. Customary rights could easily be extinguished by the colonial administration in the pursuit of its development objectives. In the immediate post-colonial era, land administration was deracialised, but continued to work against the interests of the poor and marginalised. A policy framework was created which linked agricultural development with individualised tenure, land registration and the provision of collateral through which farmers with individual title could gain loans. Various land acts were created to support access to individual title and to facilitate the conversion of customary tenure into private ownership. This resulted in the rapid expansion of tobacco estates and a steady reduction in land under customary tenure, resulting in increasing inequalities in access to land and a decline in tenure security. This framework also obscured class and gender inequalities within customary tenure, which were further entrenched. For instance, the rights of ‘family heads’ (who were invariably male) to register customary land were recognised, perpetuating gender inequalities. With the adoption of neoliberalism by the Malawian state, new land reforms have been introduced. However, the underlying logic of these reforms is based on promoting individual property rights and land markets. The policy makes few provisions for land redistribution to address inequalities in access to land, beyond a market-based programme of ‘willing buyers and sellers’, in which government will purchase land for redistribution among the landless. The focus on land markets, individual property and economic growth militates against addressing issues of social justice. The legal process in Malawi does not allow disadvantaged groups and civil society organisations to challenge the laws that have resulted in their loss of rights. It does not recognise group and class interests in land, only individual property rights. This in effect prevents civil society from representing the interests of the poor and land hungry and refashions civil society into a concept to replace class interests and the interests of the marginalised. As a result the legal framework upholds the rights of individual property and encourages accumulation of land, without reconciling it with the realities of the plural land tenure regimes in Malawi, many of which are based on concepts of wider rights of social groups. In Kenya, Kanyinga, Lumumba and Amanor argue that colonial land laws and policies survived intact the transition to independence in spite of the dismantling of settler colonialism. No attempts were made to democratise the administration of land, and economically weak groups continued to lose land to the rich and politically influential. In response

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to popular resistance in the 1940s, the colonial government introduced reforms that sought to create market-based land redistribution and a class of prosperous African commercial farmers. This has served to create a series of political coalitions organised around the accumulation of land and the exploitation of ethnic coalitions to facilitate this process. Land and ethnic affiliations have been used to build a system of political patronage and influence. This became more pronounced in the 1980s with economic recession and the failures of structural adjustment. Stringent donor conditionalities diminished the resource base that the government could use for political mobilisation, and the government turned increasingly to land as a resource for political mobilisation. As land became increasingly scarce and valuable, the government began to privatise public lands, including forest reserves, and allocate these to private sector developers. Forest reserves have been allocated to tourist companies and to tea estates. Ironically, tea estates were often created around the perimeters of forest reserves to create a buffer zone between rural producers and forest resources. The appropriation of public land has resulted in considerable popular outcry and violent struggles by the poor to defend their livelihood interests. There is a huge concentration of land in the hands of a small political elite, and considerable expropriation of the rural poor. The political elite has resisted and prevented the democratisation of mechanisms for the redistribution of land, and this perpetuates complex and violent ethnic and class conflicts around land and livelihoods, with considerable loss of life. However, it has also resulted in growing opposition to appropriation of public land among a large section of the population and growth of strong civil society pressures for accountability in land administration. In the West Africa sub-region, Amanor argues that the dominant trends in land administrative reform are promoting a strengthening of customary ownership, which results in weaker rights to land for peasant farmers. Chiefs and the state are creating favourable environments for foreign investors. This frequently results in the expropriation of peasant producers and redefinition of customary rights, ostensibly in the ‘national interest’ for ‘development’. In the past, agricultural production was mainly carried out by independent peasant producers, with international capital and the state controlling the marketing of peasant produce. Increasingly, peasant production is being displaced and transformed by agribusiness and this involves increasing accumulation of land by international capital at the expense of the rural poor.

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The opening up of the economy to international investment in the 1980s has resulted in the rapid expansion of mining and timber concessions. There has been considerable displacement of people and their livelihoods, particularly on commercial oil palm plantations, forestry enterprises and the gold and petroleum sectors. This has resulted in growing conflicts over land, natural resources, livelihoods and environmental quality, which are often characterised by escalating violence, as communities attempt to maintain rights to resources and the state represses these struggles, often at the behest of foreign companies. The corporate sector becomes increasingly powerful and self-regulating. It attempts to build an image of promoting community development through corporate social responsibility. This often combines community-based development programmes targeted at the wealthier strata within communities with violent evictions of the rural poor. Sustainable development is refashioned into an ideology for justifying this appropriation of resources, with claims of providing communities with more viable, alternative livelihoods, while promoting a more efficient reorganisation of the economy. New coalitions are being built within the rural areas to support these community initiatives, often organised around chiefs. While these activities claim to promote sustainable development they frequently despoil the natural resource base and further impoverish and displace the rural poor. In Botswana, Molomo argues that the state has undermined and transformed customary land tenure into an instrument for promoting capital accumulation and the individualisation of land holdings. The majority of land is ‘tribal land’, which is vested in the authority of chiefs (dikgosi ) who allocated land on the basis of political allegiance and membership of particular wards through kinship. The dikgosi are essentially symbolic and ceremonial. Land administration is largely carried out by Tribal Land Boards, operating within a decentralised system of local government. The retention of nominal chiefly control over land serves to define land boundaries by tribal areas. It also imposes the dominant Tswana cultural constructs on other peoples, who have been transformed into minorities. The Tribal Territories Act places certain ethnic groups under the territorial domain of other groups who are accorded paramount chieftaincy and it excludes certain minority groups from representation in the House of Chiefs. This allows Tswana customary concepts to be overlaid on land boundaries and integrated into a national project, which appropriates customary land for wildlife and tourism and for livestock ranching. National

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minorities are denied recognition of their lands, which in some cases have been expropriated. This includes the case of the Basarwa, a hunting and gathering people, who have been moved from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The overlaying of chieftaincies over tribally defined boundaries under the jurisdiction of Tribal Land Boards has become a major source of contestation by ethnic minorities. Increasingly, ethnic minorities are challenging dominant paradigms of nation building, which seek to diffuse the values of the dominant Tswana culture infused with values of capital accumulation. Minorities argue that Botswana is a plural society made up of many ethnic nationalities, and that nation building should be based on recognition of this diversity. Several groups have organised ethnic associations to stand up for their rights and demand jurisdiction over their land. Molomo focuses on the conflicts, discourses and paradigms of development that occur in civil society around the displacement of the Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Survival International (SI), an international NGO advocating for the rights of ‘indigenous’ and ‘tribal’ people, took up the cause of the Basarwa. However, they did not facilitate dialogue within Botswana on the plight of the Basarwa. They attempted to portray the government of Botswana internationally as a pariah government, which should be punished and disciplined, evoking symbols of involvement in conflict diamonds. The government defended its actions arguing that a hunting and gathering livelihood was not sustainable and that the state was responsible for ensuring that Botswanans do not remain in backwardness. While sympathetic to the plight of the Basarwa, most civil society organisations felt alienated by the position of SI, which is seen as threatening rights to national determinism. With weak linkages to civil society organisations in Botswana, the Basarwa have largely organised their opposition to expropriation within ethnic associations. Molomo argues that the positions of both the government and SI are deluded. The central issue is not about whether hunter-gatherer livelihoods are backward or not, but about the role that the Basarwa will play in the modern economy, their rights to their ancestral lands and to determine their own future. This could include a role in developing ecotourism as a human-centred activity, as some Basarwa initiatives are already developing. While SI defends the rights of Basarwa to remain in their homeland and to participate in ecotourism, they do not explore the exploitative relations that occur within contemporary ecotourism. The Basarwa are being expropriated because of the demands of private

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and international tourist companies for land. Where the tourist industry has developed community-based participation, this has rarely been on an equitable basis and communities are exploited and forced to comply with the directives of ecotourism companies, who capture most of the profits. Thus, concepts of sustainable development and community-based participation need to be placed within the context of the expansion of global markets and global processes of accumulation, including those within the rapidly expanding tourist industry.

Emerging Themes A number of underlying themes emerge in the chapters in this volume, which challenge the dominant assumptions and approaches in contemporary themes in sustainable development and administrative land reform. First, far from promoting equity and efficiency, removing bureaucratic distortion and creating a ‘win–win’ scenario, the development of unfettered markets and government policies to promote investment are resulting in a process of accumulation of land and natural resources that threatens the livelihoods of the rural poor and appropriates their resources. Increasingly, common property resources and public resources such as forest reserves are being allocated to the private sector, at the expense of communities who have user rights to these resources, or who were expropriated to make way for the creation of public resources in the national interest. These appropriations of land are often disguised by allocating them as corporate sector projects in which the corporate sector is responsible for developing community-based projects, or in which the corporate sector develops social responsibility agreements to mitigate communities’ loss of access to resources. Private and government sectors often collude in the appropriation of public resources, whether in the allocation of public spaces to the private sector or in the creation of concessions over farm resources such as farmland timber, as in the case of Ghana. Given the growing scarcity of resources as population grows, frontier areas decline, and as capital investment increases, this appropriation of resources is likely to continue expanding in the near future. Second, market-oriented policies have resulted in rising unemployment and the decline of social welfare provisions. Increasingly people have to rely on their land-based resources for their livelihoods and for

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meeting social welfare provisions. This has resulted in growing demands for land, growing competition over land and increasing willingness to defend land resources against expropriation. This has resulted in increased conflicts over land. Third, the concept of civil society inadequately serves the interests of the landless and rural poor. Civil society organisations and platforms are frequently constructed to serve the interests of elites. Civil society firmly represents middle-class political interests, which often have few linkages with the rural poor and strong affinities with the accumulating classes. NGOs are often dependent upon funding from donors and increasingly from the corporate sector, which often compromises independent positions. NGOs are far more likely to call for the protection of forest reserves than communities whose livelihoods are being threatened by projects that claim to promote sustainable development. International NGOs often make highly selective interventions within the land question and sustainable development. They often claim to represent the interests of tribal or indigenous peoples against modernisation, but fail to link the threats these people face to the accumulation of land and capital, and to the loss of land by other groups. They often support corporate-based social responsibility agreements and communitybased natural resource management programmes. The stances they take frequently imply that the problems that communities face originate from the unscrupulous actions of a few companies rather than the process of accumulation itself. However, they often have direct interests in corporate social responsibility agreements and community-based projects, and receive funding from the corporate sector to manage these programmes, which effectively tie communities into corporate sector accumulation. Increasingly, customary chiefs are being represented in civil society fora as representatives of communities and localities against the topdown initiatives of the state. However, communities are often socially differentiated and chiefs have worked with government and the private sector to commoditise resources, and transact them, often to the detriment of the rural poor. The increasing recognition of chiefs as civil society partners and representatives of the customary sector empowers them to redefine customary relations and to appropriate resources; it also erodes the security of the rural poor in land resources. Chiefs, the state and the private sector have often worked together to expropriate resources, in contrast with contemporary theory which presents them as checks on each other. There is a need for studies to examine how

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chiefs are being positioned in civil society and how their positioning impacts on the accumulation of resources. Fourth, the failure of civil society to defend the interests of the rural poor and the lack of recognition of organisations representing the rural poor lead to the rise of spontaneous organisations to defend the livelihood rights of the poor. Since these organisations lack representation in civil society, their efforts to defend their interests frequently are met with repression by the state, which reflects their lack of rights within contemporary democratisation processes. There has been an alarming loss of life of rural people defending their livelihood rights and their rights to land in many countries in Africa. State security services often work at the behest of international investors and the private sector in repressing the struggles of the rural poor. The rural poor are often criminalised for working outside the rule of law, while state security services are all too ready to take punitive actions against any expression of dissent. However, the rule of law is problematic within the land sector, since colonial legislation on land and customary rights (and lack of rights) has frequently been retained, which often does not recognise the rights of marginalised sections, including youth, women and poor migrant labourers. The character of recognised civil society and the rule of law often work to deny the rural poor representation and rights in land. The concepts of the rule of law and civil society need to be subjected to rigorous analysis in the context of contemporary struggles for land. Finally, the concept of sustainable development is often used to deny the poor rights in land, to justify the expropriation of their land and to forestall redistribution, by privileging efficiency and technical interventions above social justice. Increasingly, arrangements are being made in which resources expropriated for the public interest are allocated in one form or other to the private sector for ‘sustainable management’. Sustainable development needs to be more clearly defined in the context of environmental and social justice.

1 Land and Sustainable Development in South Africa Wellington Didibhuku Thwala and Misabeni Khosa

Desperations and forced removal of African people under colonialism and apartheid resulted not only in the physical separation of people along racial lines, but also in extreme land shortages, insecure land rights and poverty for the majority of the black population. In South Africa, 87 per cent (85.5 million ha) of the land lies in the hands of 60,000 white farmers who make up only 5 per cent of the white population. Land became a medium through which the relations of exploitation and domination on the one side, and power and powerlessness on the other, were expressed. Thus, any discourse on sustainable development must consider the land question, since land is at the centre of a number of complex and inter-related factors deriving from social, political, economic and environmental factors of development. To this end, there is now growing recognition of the centrality of land in the sustainable development process in South Africa and the southern Africa region as witnessed by a number of regional initiatives and meetings. Moyo (2007b: 60) argues that the main question facing southern Africa is that little progress has been achieved in the implementation of land reform. The major challenge is to redress colonially derived and post-independence unequal land ownership, discriminatory land use regulations and insecure land tenure systems which marginalise the majority of rural and urban poor populations. The march towards sustainable development in South Africa includes many facets of people’s livelihoods and requires multi-dimensional solutions that adopt a holistic framework, which is sensitive to the multiple linkages and interactions between environmental and social issues.

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Since 1994, land reform has been implemented under three main components: land redistribution, restitution of land rights and tenure reform. These programmes have yet to make a significant impact on the highly unequal distribution of land or to contribute towards the livelihood opportunities of the majority rural population (Thwala, 2003). Both redistribution and restitution programs have suffered from the World Bank’s model of market-assisted land reform and cumbersome and ineffective bureaucratic processes. Tenure reform has failed to address the chaotic system of land administration in the communal areas of the former homelands, to prevent eviction of long-term tenants on white-owned farms, or to halt the encroachment of private business interests onto communal property resources (Tilley, 2002). This chapter provides an overview of the land question in South Africa and explores the relationship between land reform and sustainable development.

Sustainable Development, Environment and Land Reform The standard definition of environmental sustainability comes from the Brundtland Report: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). There are two main features in this definition: the focus on needs, particularly the needs of the poor, and the focus on the limits beyond which the environment cannot be used to meet needs (Smith, 1992). Sustainable development implies self-reliant and cost-effective development, facilitating access to health, shelter, clean water and food. Finally, it implies the need for people-centred initiatives (Tolba, 1987). Tolba (1987) further argued that sustainable development must help the poorest; otherwise, they are left with no option but to destroy the environment. Small farm economies are often important to sustainable development. Whereas large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management – no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures – small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and the soil. To begin with, small farmers utilise a broad array of resources and have a vested interest in their sustainability. At the same time, their farming systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving

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significant functional biodiversity within the farm. By preserving biodiversity, open space and trees, and by reducing land degradation, small farms provide valuable ecosystem services to the larger society. In the United States, small farmers devote 17 per cent of their area to woodlands, compared to only 5 per cent on large farms. Small farms maintain nearly twice as much of their land in ‘soil improving uses’, including cover crops and green manures (D’Souza and Ikerd, 1996). In the Third World, peasant farmers show tremendous ability to prevent and even reverse land degradation, including soil erosion (Templeton and Scherr, 1999). They can and/or do provide important services to society at large, including sustainable management of critical watersheds that preserve hydrological resources, and the in situ conservation and dynamic development and management of the basic crop and livestock genetic resources upon which the future food security of humanity depends. Compared to the ecological wasteland of modern export plantation, the small farm landscape contains a myriad of biodiversity. The forested areas from which wild foods and leaf litter are extracted, the woodlot, the farm itself with intercropping, agroforestry, large and small livestock, the fish pond, the backyard garden, all allow for the preservation of hundreds if not thousands of wild and cultivated species. Simultaneously, the commitment of family members to maintaining soil fertility on the family farm means an active interest in long-term sustainability not found on large farms owned by absentee investors. If we are truly concerned about rural ecosystems, then the preservation and promotion of small, family farm agriculture is a crucial step that must be taken to promote sustainable development in South Africa.

The Origins of the Land Question in South Africa Since the first Dutch settlers arrived in the Cape in 1652 through to English imperial rule in the nineteenth century, expropriation and dispossession of land belonging to the indigenous population marked colonialism in South Africa. This harsh pattern of dispossession accompanied the movement of white settlers into the African interior, where their encounters with local polities were often marked by violent appropriation of vast tracts of land (Koch et al., 2001). Several historical processes and events – centuries of conquest, dispossessions and forced

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removals of black people by white governments – have produced the complex and challenging ‘land question’ which the democratic government is now addressing, albeit slowly. The passing of the various land-based acts, the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 and the Group Areas Act of 1950, had far-reaching consequences for the indigenous population. The Land Act of 1913 limited African residential opportunities to the reserves, which accounted for only 13 per cent of the surface land area (Sihlongonyane, 1997: 118). The act further constrained access for Africans, as owners of capital, in the mining, manufacturing and agriculture sectors, and regulated their participation in the economy as labourers. Cities and towns fell outside the defined boundaries for African occupation and ownership. The act attempted to create a migratory labour force of workers and denied support to an economically independent peasantry. The systematic land dispossession in rural areas resulted in the eradication of the African peasantry, but deliberately made no provisions for its complete proletarianisation. This ensured white capital of an endless supply of cheap labour. In 1948, the National Party government implemented its own brand of land reform, based on ‘Grand Apartheid’. The programmes included territorial separation of races, enforcement of ‘bastardised’ customary law practices in the former homelands, the denial to blacks of land and other rights in white South Africa, the denial of freedom of movement and the procurement of influx control. The result was the stifling of economic development in the reserves and a controlled labour market. These various acts gave legal authority to the existing social relations of exploitation, in terms of extracting surplus value, and in terms of uneven redistribution and domination. In turn, the African population adopted land as the rallying point for political mobilisation against the white minority oppressors. The history of the struggle against oppression and exploitation in South Africa was, therefore, largely the history of the struggle over land. This history has resulted in one of the most glaring inequitable distributions of land in the world. Three quarters of South Africa’s population was reduced to living on 13 per cent of the land, while whites (less than one-fifth of the population) have access to 85 per cent of total land (Sihlongonyane, 1997). This highly skewed pattern continues to characterise South Africa today despite the African National Congress (ANC) government’s ambitious land reform programme (Thwala, 2003). Black South Africans thus experienced multiple, interlocking processes of

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dispossession and discrimination. They were deprived of access to agricultural land across most of the country. While access remained possible in the ‘homelands’, overcrowding and the structuring of livelihoods around migrant labour to towns and mines meant that there was little prospect of securing a farm holding that could support a viable livelihood. This also undermines the viability of the African agricultural sector, which is characterised by landlessness and dependence upon the migrant labour system, and suffers from poor infrastructure, weak forward and backward agricultural linkages, deteriorating ecological conditions, the marginal nature of the land, poorly developed farming skills, and in some cases a limited interest in farming. There is a genuine danger that the new ‘communities’ established through land reform will become no more than new ‘Bantustans’, where people are dumped in settlements with no visible means of supporting themselves (Land and Agricultural Policy Centre, 1997).

Land Reform under the African National Congress The election of South Africa’s first majority government raised expectations that an ANC-led government would effect a fundamental transformation of property rights that would address the history of dispossession, and lay the foundation for the social and economic improvement of the rural and urban poor. These hopes were strengthened by the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which was committed to redistribute 30 per cent of agricultural land within five years and make land reform ‘the central and driving force of a programme of rural development’ (ANC, 1994). The coming to power of the first majority government in 1994 appeared to present a historic opportunity to place equitable and pro-poor policies at the centre of the land reform agenda. The track record of South Africa’s land reform programme since 1994 has been rather disappointing (National Land Committee [NLC], 2000/2001). The majority of the 13 million poverty-stricken people continue to be crowded into the former homelands, where rights to land are often unclear or contested, and the system of land administration is in tatters. On private farms, millions of workers, former workers and their families continue to experience tenure insecurity and lack of basic facilities, despite the passing of new laws designed to protect them. In the urban areas, sprawling settlements continue to expand, amidst

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poverty, crime and a lack of basic services. A crisis, fuelled by falling formal sector employment, the scourge of HIV/AIDS, on-going evictions from farms, and the collapse of agricultural support services in the former homelands, is accelerating rural migration to the cities. Retrenched urban workers track back to the rural areas. The rise in the prices of basic food commodities is causing further impoverishment in the rural areas. The result of all this is a highly diverse pattern of demand for land for a variety of purposes, and the rise of numerous hot spots of acute land hunger in both urban and rural areas. The World Bank’s mode of market-based land reform now dominates key parts of the land policy agenda. It is doubtful whether many of the land reform programme’s original equity objectives will be met. There is a visible shift in land policy and the emergence of a new strategy of targeting resources at commercial black farmers, which is seen by many to be at the expense of the rural poor (NLC, 2000/2001).

Land redistribution Land redistribution is the flagship of the land reform programme in South Africa. It is a mechanism for transferring large areas of land from the privileged white minority to the historically oppressed. The White Paper on South African Land Policy of the Department of Land Affairs (1997: 36) states the purpose of the redistribution programme as ‘the redistribution of land to landless poor, tenants farm workers and emerging farmers for residential and productive use, to improve their livelihoods and quality of life’. Lahiff (2001) argued that this objective has been largely lost sight of in recent years, as policy has increasingly focused on technical criteria. To date, redistribution has mainly involved the provision of a Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG) of R16,000, equal to the basic housing grant provided to qualifying households. Between 1995 and March 1999, approximately 60,000 households were allocated grants for land acquisition. In total, about 650,000 ha of land was approved for redistribution by March 1999, amounting to less than 1 per cent of the country’s commercial land. Most of the projects have involved groups of applicants pooling their grants to buy whiteowned farms for commercial agricultural purposes. Less commonly, groups of farm workers have used the grant to purchase equity shares in existing farming enterprises. A separate fund, the grant for the acquisition of land for Municipal Commonage, has also been made

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available to municipalities wishing to provide communal land for use (usually for grazing) by the urban or rural poor. By the end of 1999, a total of 77 Municipal Commonage Projects were implemented and 75 more were in the pipeline. The SLAG programme has not only redistributed less land than achieved through private sector purchases, but it has also transferred land of much lower quality (weighted price R902/ha versus R2935/ha) to beneficiaries whose land tenure is still relatively insecure. Throughout the South African literature, there is widespread agreement on the need for some form of tenure reform in the black rural areas (Lahiff, 2001). While many existing tenure systems display a high degree of functionality and legitimacy, serious concerns are raised about the formal legal basis to current practices. These concerns include the ability of marginalised groups, especially women and the very poor, to exercise their land rights, the potential obstacle presented by the current system to agricultural and other forms of development, and the breakdown of law and order around land matters in many areas. Adams et al. (1999a) note that private investment on state land, as part of the government’s Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs), has been delayed for up to two years – in some cases because of uncertainty over land rights. Adams et al. (1999a: 3) comment: ‘Throughout the former homelands, agricultural, forestry and eco-tourism projects are on hold because it is not clear who can authorize such development to proceed, or who should benefit’. This outcome is not consistent with government’s expectation that land redistribution would promote a highly efficient small-scale farm sector. Government then decided to introduce the Integrated Programme of Land Redistribution and Agricultural Development (IPLRAD) in 1999 with the aim of transferring 30 per cent of medium and high quality agricultural land to blacks over 15 years, at a possible cost of R16–22 billion (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs, 2000). IPLRAD will involve • •

• •

redistribution of land for farming for all black citizens regardless of income, and not for settlement; a minimum own contribution of R5,000, which could be in kind, or in the form of labour for a minimum grant of R20,000 or a maximum grant of R100,000 which requires R400,000 own contribution; the provision of support including compulsory training and project environmental assessment by the National Development Agency; disposal of 669,000 ha of state agricultural land.

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Market-assisted land reform The ‘willing buyer–willing seller’ framework of World Bank land reform and its requirement of ‘fair and just’ compensation for existing landowners is placing financial constraints on the extent of land transfer (NLC, 2001/2002). Market-assisted or negotiated land reform seeks to overcome elite resistance to land reforms by offering credit to landless or land-poor farmers to buy lands at market rates from wealthy landowners, with participation by states in mediation and credit programmes. This is fraught with risks: landowners may choose to sell only the most marginal, most remote and most ecologically fragile plots that they own (steep slopes, rainforests, desert margins, etc.), many of which may not currently be in production. These programmes can set families up for failure, as they are usually saddled with heavy debts at high interest rates from the land purchase itself, and frequently find themselves with marginal land with poor soils and little access to markets. This can actually deepen poverty and land degradation, much like the failed reforms of earlier decades. Another problem is the very real likelihood that some of the lands sold will be those that are in dispute, most likely from indigenous peoples’ land claims which have yet to be legally accepted (Bond, 2000; Schwartzman, 2000). The World Bank usually accompanies these reforms with packages for the beneficiaries that include production credit, technical assistance for new, marketable crops and sometimes assistance in marketing. While such support services are indeed essential to successful reforms, the technological packages are often based on pesticides, chemical fertilisers, and non-traditional export crops. In a study of similar programmes in Central America, promoted by USAID in the 1980s and early 1990s, Conroy et al. (1997) found these programmes left poor farmers in risky enterprises with high failure rates and intensified land degradation and ecological problems. The IPLRAD policy represents a narrow and piecemeal approach to land and agrarian reform in South Africa. While it sets laudable objectives, the policy does not present a credible strategy for addressing the distribution of land or the root causes of poverty and inequality in the rural areas. Weaknesses in the programme include the failure to address the question of land supply; insistence on a demand-led approach which places excessive responsibility on intended beneficiaries; the failure to propose mechanisms that will ensure the participation of women, the youth and other marginalised groups; the failure

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to integrate the programme with other aspects of land reform; and the absence of any broader vision of rural and agrarian reform. IPLRAD grants fund to individuals or very small groups, with a requirement of an own contribution to be matched against a linked government contribution on a sliding scale. The amount that can be accessed by a single individual runs between R20,000 at the low end, up to R100,000. By adding up the grants that can be accessed by several family members or a small partnership, relatively large amounts of finance can be assembled even by the rural poor. These grants are intended to cover land acquisition, improvements, infrastructure, fixed capital investment and short-term funding for production inputs. They do not cover top structures for housing. The new proposals also insist that all beneficiaries must make a contribution ‘in kind or cash’ of R5,000, or its equivalent. For the poorest, entering the programme under the food safety net component, an own contribution is stipulated. The own contribution from a poor candidate can be future labour, or in-kind commitments involving household assets or equivalent. This contribution from the candidate unlocks R20,000 in grant finance. This will discourage many of the rural poor from applying for this programme and is open to abuse by unsympathetic officials. The fund also discourages group or cooperative applications for grants, which are limited to individuals. For poor rural people, the level of their involvement is also likely to relate to how effectively their risk perceptions – and the institutional barriers on which risk perceptions hang – can be addressed by both the Department of Land Affairs/Department of Agriculture partnership and by civil society as partners and intermediaries for the poor.

Restitution The purpose of restitution is to restore land ownership to the original owners in such a way as to support reconciliation, reconstruction and development. Ensuring historical justice and healing the wounds of apartheid through a rights-based programme, and addressing poverty through the developmental aspects of restitution are important goals (Lahiff, 2001). The institutional machinery to implement the programme includes provincially based restitution commissions and a land claims court that acts as final arbiter in restitution cases. However, a number of case studies reveal major problems in the programme, related

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to inadequate infrastructural development, poor service provision and unrealistic business planning. These problems continue to persist even in areas in which claims were settled many years ago, such as in Riemrasmaak, Elandskool, Cremenin and Doornkop. The impact of this programme is constrained by poor integration with other programmes run by national, provincial and local government. Where tangible developmental benefits have occurred, they are often attributed to considerable external support, coordinated planning and the active participation of claimants themselves, as in the case of the Makuleke claim in the Kruger National Park, and the claim of the Port Elizabeth Land and Community Restoration Association (Lahiff, 2001). The cost of restitution is another major challenge. Restoration of the original land occupied by claimants is not feasible in most urban areas with the large influx of population, and the majority of such cases are settled through financial compensation. Recent estimates of the typical cost of a rural claim range between R1.5 million and R3 million per claim. The major challenge for restitution remains the settlement of rural claims in a way that contributes to the larger goals of land reform, redresses the racial inequities in land holding, while reducing poverty and enhancing livelihood opportunities.

Tenure reform Tenure reform is probably the most neglected area of land reform to date, although it has the potential to impact on more people than all the other land reform programmes, especially on the landless and poor. Tenure reform is generally taken to mean the protection or strengthening of the rights of residents of privately owned farms and state land, together with the reform of the system of communal tenure prevailing in the former homelands (Lahiff, 2001). Tenure reform has been addressed through the implementation of the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act 3 of 1996, the Communal Property Association Act 28 of 1996, the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31 of 1996, the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 and the Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act 94 of 1998. However, these acts have failed to address the inequities of access, the confusion and chaos that surround land rights and administration in communal areas of the former ‘homelands’, and long-term security of tenure for people who reside on privately owned farms. According to Hall (2007: 95) government and civil society organisations have acknowledged that implementation of the

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Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (ESTA) and the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act 2 of 1996 (LTA) has been weak and ineffective as many evictions continue to happen outside of the legal framework. Land tenure is insecure in the former homelands, where almost a third of the national population live. Since the end of apartheid, land administration in these areas has become increasingly chaotic and contested. Many residents do not have secure land tenure and this leave them vulnerable to illegal evictions. Hall (2007: 95) contends that ‘available data from KwaZulu-Natal indicate that illegal evictions may outnumber legal evictions by as many as 20 to 1 in some regions – but in certain provinces, such as the Western Cape, evictions are increasingly happening through the legal route’. Women experience difficulty in maintaining secure rights in land. In 1999, gender integration into land reform received a boost through the establishment of a financial scheme funded by Khula Trust. The money was used for the training and capacity-building programmes on land and related matters for women in rural areas. The Land Bank is said to have distributed additional loans of about R61 million (out of book worth about R400 million) for collateral and other farming needs, the majority of which is said to have gone to women (Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, 1997). However, the political vitality of the traditional authority lobby in party politics often undermines the interests of women and prevents more radical tenure reform. Women’s multi-dimensional plight of bearing the burden of poverty, their vulnerabilities, their roles in caring for those affected by HIV/ AIDS, their central involvement in food security planning and management, managing shocks and stresses from growing retrenchments and their role in family health and natural resources management in general deserve more prominence in policy making. The insecurities in land tenure result from conflicts over control involving traditional leaders, political parties and other local factions. These insecurities do not encourage poverty reduction or sustainable development. Not only in traditional authority districts, in particular, but also on missions and many farms, rural micro-level governance institutions – Amakhosi (chiefs), Tindvuna (headmen) and informal local committees – still exercise power and authority in spite of the election of democratic local government structures in rural areas. Ntsebeza (2005) argues that South African theorists differ on the role of traditional authorities, with Ismail arguing that they should be incorporated into the

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post-apartheid democratic dispensation, while Bank and Southall (1996) argues that they play a mere ceremonial role. Ntsebeza further argue that the ANC-led government opted, despite internal differences and the dubious history of traditional authorities particularly during the apartheid period, for the co-existence thesis. During the colonial and apartheid periods they were playing the same role. These institutions are, however, often on shaky ground, and some community members believe they are in danger of collapsing altogether as other institutions and the rural cash economy encroach on their traditional authority to allocate land and community membership. If women are allowed to hold land outside of the authority of such traditional leaders, their social control functions will be further undermined (Cross and Friedman, 1997). Some community members – most conservative rural men in particular – believe this could lead to the collapse of the structures and to violence. The impasse, in all its ramifications, blocks implementation of women’s land rights in most rural areas of South Africa. The South African literature on women and land rights has documented various ways in which women are obstructed from exercising full control over land, and explains how this increases women’s marginality and dependency. The literature has examined various aspects of this problem, including women’s lack of access to public process in their communities, their increased poverty burden, their coping mechanisms and efforts to sustain their household livelihoods, collective initiatives to access land, gender violence and other mechanisms through which men resist women’s attempts at independence, and the nature and capacity of the institutional structures found in traditional communities. The majority of the country’s landless majority are poor rural women, so an effective land reform programme must recognise the centrality of women’s needs and interests. Tenure security has major implication for economic development and natural resource management in the former homelands of South Africa. The communal areas have a legacy of severe land pressure and land-related conflict, unsurpassed elsewhere in southern Africa (Adams et al., 1999b). About 2.4 million rural households, or 12.7 million people, are concentrated in about 13 per cent of the country. Provinces with large rural populations in former homelands (Eastern Cape, Kwa Zulu Natal and Limpopo) have the highest levels of poverty in the country. The characteristics of property rights influence economic decision making and people’s willingness to invest in labour and capital. This is

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as true in rural settings in communal areas as in any other area. Tenure reform in the former homelands and South African Development Trust (SADT) areas will facilitate better land management by rural households, government bodies and the private sector. It will benefit rural livelihoods and facilitate infrastructure, service provision and economic development. However, tenure reform on its own will not be enough. Land redistribution and tenure reform will have positive impacts on production and investment only when accompanied by access to inputs, credit, extension services and markets, and only when government takes other actions to stimulate investment (Adams et al., 1999b). Tenure reform is, therefore, a necessary first step that can pave the way for investment, promote more effective use of natural resources, and protect individual and community rights. Tenure reform will not be implemented in isolation from land restitution and redistribution. Achieving tenure security will inevitably require relocation of many people who currently share rights with others because of forced removals and overcrowding. Tenure reform in communal areas presupposes substantial redistribution of land outside the former homelands as a way of relieving the pressures on land in communal areas. The Communal Land Rights Act 11 of 2004 (CLRA) was passed over a long period of discussions by Parliament in February 2004. The act is important as it empowers the minister of Land Affairs and Agriculture to transfer ownership of communal land from the state to communities residing there, to under ‘new order rights’. The content of this ‘new order rights’ is still to be clearly defined. This creates a lot of problems for rural communities. This problem is taken further by Claassens (2003) and Ntsebeza (2007) who argue that the CLRA reinforces the powers of unelected tribal authorities and compromises democracy in the rural areas. The CLRA fails to address congestion in the reserves or confront gender discrimination in access to communal land, fails to secure land rights or protect community members from illegal sales of land, and expects unremunerated community members to take on the task of land administration, which, for the rest of the country, is a service provided by the public sector. The transferring of ownership of communal land from the state to tribal authorities (traditional African committees) is a cause for concern as it does not address the need for individual security of tenure and accountable forms of land administration. Initiatives that strengthen the land of holding unelected chiefs are unlikely to meet the objectives of tenure reform. They will not

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strengthen the rights of individual occupiers, create a democratic and efficient system of land administration or promote effective forms of development. Other proposals being considered to introduce a free market in land, based on fully individualised forms of tenure, will not yield positive results, as this would lead to further dispossessions and a deepening of rural poverty and inequality. All these new initiatives are likely to fall short of promoting sustainable development.

The limits of land reform policy The role of land redistribution in poverty reduction has been diluted by the adoption of a neoliberal macroeconomic policy, in the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme of the ANC in 1996 and World Bank proposals to promote commercial agriculture. This policy has emphasised the promotion of market-led growth rather than redistribution in the agricultural sector. There is a major concern in dominant policy circles to push commercial agriculture and the needs of the emergent ‘black commercial’ farmers over the calls for land rights for the rural poor. There appears to be a distinct rightward shift within the ANC leadership that has accelerated throughout the process of the transition and culminated in a deeply conservative macroeconomic policy stance. The result is a closing down of the spaces that were opened up by the varied social movements that propelled the ANC to power, as the pro-market position is replicated in all policy arenas, including land reform. The World Bank has had a powerful influence over South African land policy. There is also considerable resistance to redistributionist and pro-poor land reform policy. This emanates from various sections of the state and various holders of economic and political power, such as white farmers, ‘traditional leaders’ and the huge industrial conglomerates that are linked to, and interested in, maintaining existing patterns of agribusiness under liberal markets. These interest groups not only shape the outcomes of land reform policy on the ground, but also wield considerable influence on the state, setting the parameters within which land policy is formulated and implemented. The influence of these lobbies on government appears to have become stronger, and more open and vocal, in recent years. This casts doubts on whether the political will exists to transform existing agrarian relations meaningfully.

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Civil Society Initiatives for Land Reform Resistance to forced removals and land expropriation was a feature of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid regimes. A large number of organisations emerged in the 1970s and 1980s that were dedicated to the struggle against forced removals and to protect the rights of the rural and marginalised poor. Popular support for land reform and social movements has the potential to pressure the state for change from below. However, it is notable that there has been a decline in civil society activism in rural and urban areas since 1994. During the 1980s, a number of civil society organs began to organise around the land question. The Association For Rural Advancement (AFRA) was formed in 1979 to fight evictions in the KwaZulu homeland and in Natal. In 1980 the Surplus People’s Project (SPP) was formed to struggle against evictions in the Western Cape (SPP, 1983). Other organisations emerging in this period include the Transvaal Rural Action Committee (TRAC) which grew out of the Black Sash Committee to fight forced removals, and the Grahamstown Rural Committee (GRC), which is now known as the Border Rural Committee (BRC). All these organisations were affiliated to the National Committee Against Removals (NCAR), which supported the struggles communities that were being evicted from their land. In 1990, the NCAR was renamed the NLC. In 1993, when several displaced communities rejected the apartheid government’s land reform body – the Advisory Commission on Land Allocation (ACLA) – the NLC launched the Back to the Land Campaign. The NLC led representatives from eighty rural communities across the country in protest against the property rights clause of the fledging constitution. This led to increased affiliation to the organisation. Subsequently, in 1994, before the country’s first non-racial elections, the NLC organised a land summit that was attended by some 400 civil society and land organisations. The summit produced a land charter that circulated to all political parties, which advocated expropriation as a mode of forcing the pace of redistributive land reform. The NLC has promoted the creation of a new and unified network of national rural social movements in the belief that pressure from below is the most effective mechanism to galvanise more effective state action on land. Other important network partners now include the Group for Environmental Monitoring, the Land and Agricultural Policy Centre, the Centre for Rural Legal Studies, the Centre for Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, and the Programme

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LAND AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape (Koch et al., 2001). Rural resistance tends to flare up spontaneously and often violently, but it is not well organised and coordinated. Pearce (1997) has argued that this is due to the immense difficulties involved in organising in the marginalised and remote areas of the homelands, and on white-owned farms. The NLC, which forms an umbrella for popular land organisations in South Africa, argues that this situation still prevails in the rural areas today, since there is a generally weak civil society and lack of resources and support for organisations to push land reform from below. Koch et al. (2001) argue that rural society had been ‘demobilised’, from the mid- to late 1990s as NGO leaders moved into government positions and the trade union movement placed less emphasis on organising rural farm workers. The civil society organisations face serious identity and strategy dilemmas. On the one hand, they support the positive aspects of the government’s land reform programme but, on the other hand, they remain sensitive and responsive to a constituency of rural poor, who are becoming increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the slow pace of reform and its implementation. The NGO sector has not effectively dealt with these contending pressures or come up with effective strategies to deal with the dual role it is expected to play as both critic and partner of government. The NGOs are explicitly aware of this contradiction, and are actively seeking to resolve these conflicting demands (Pearce, 1997). In 1999, the NLC joined forces with other rural-orientated NGOs and community-based organisations (CBOs) to launch the Rural Development Initiative (RDI) at the Land and Agrarian Reform Conference (LARC). LARC was a one-off initiative held in Pretoria, co-organised by the NLC and the PLAAS research and policy institute. The LARC convened a range of national and provincial actors, NGOs and a small number of representatives from CBOs, and it assessed the progress with land and agrarian reform in the five years of democracy (Hargreaves, 1999). The RDI was supported by a number of NGOs including the NLC, the Rural Development Services Network (RDSN), the Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE), the Initiative Participatory Development (IPD) and the South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO). It was organised through clusters at the provincial and regional levels, and steering committees were established to coordinate activities at all levels. The RDI National

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Steering Committee also developed a gender strategy in November 1998, and a small working group known as the Gender Task Team (GTT) was formed. The RDI has produced a Rural People’s Charter and Rural Development Policy Framework and Implementation Plan. The charter was drafted at a convention in Bloemfontein at which representatives of more than 600 rural communities across the country were present. In the process, the RDI sought to lay the groundwork for rural social movements. It also convened policy task teams comprising NGOs with experience in rural development to evolve policy for an integrated rural development strategy framework (Greenberg, 1999). The NLC also mobilised its affiliates to advocate the rights of the landless through its Land Rights and Advocacy Department (LRAD), responsible for lobbying, advocacy and policy. Out of these initiatives, has emerged the Land Access Movements of South Africa (LAMOSA), which is concerned with strengthening community structures. In 2000, the NLC convened a summit of land organisations. This was intended to get actors outside government to reflect upon the new Integrated Programme on Land Redistribution and Agricultural Development (IPLRAD) and come up with a joint response. The organisations involved were the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the South African Council of Churches (SACC), the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, the Legal Resources Centre, and the PLAAS. In addition, a number of community organisations contributed, including the Labour Tenants Committee in Johannesburg, consisting of labour tenants from the Wakkerstroom district in Mphumalanga (NLC, 2000/2001). Through NLC support, the organisations managed to organise a picket at the Department of Land Affairs offices in Pretoria. The NLC has built links with other organisations within southern Africa, resulting in the formation of the Southern African Network on Land (SANL), established in 1998 to ensure coordination and cooperation in the land and rural development sector in the region. The SANL consists of the Forum on Sustainable Agriculture (FONSAG) for Botswana, the Namibian NGO Forum (NANGOF), the Zimbabwe Environmental Regional Organization (ZERO), Organização Rural de Ajuda Mútua (ORAM) for Mozambique, the Lesotho Council of NGOS (LCN) on Land, Agriculture and Environment, the Coordination Assembly of NGOs (CANGO) for Swaziland, and the NLC for South Africa. The SANL is seen as a vehicle for sharing

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experiences and expertise, and for creating a common platform for advocacy. In 2001 the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) was formed out of the NLC framework. The LPM convened the ‘Day of the Landless’, with the support of the NLC. The LPM was formally launched in August 2002, during the WSSD in Johannesburg. The LPM has become the most visible rural social movement, struggling to organise and unite all the landless people of South Africa, on the motto ‘Land Now! Organize and Unite!’ The formation of the LPM is closely associated with the development of regional and international networks around the land question. The LPM was formed immediately before the hosting of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (UNWCAR) in August 2001 in Durban where a Landless People’s Charter was adopted. More than 3,000 landless delegates from communities across South Africa attended the conference. The charter declared that ‘We are the people who have borne the brunt of colonialism and neo-colonialism, of the invasions of our land by the wealthy countries of the world, of the theft of our natural resources, and of the forced extraction of our labour by the colonists’. The World Conference Against Racism’s ‘Landlessness = Racism’ campaign carried forward the 1994 demands of the Community Land Charter (National Land Committee, 2001/2002). The NLC finally disbanded in 2006, after the closure of its national office in late 2005 after some years of disagreement within the land network as which political direction to take. After the NLC was disbanded there was no national NGO that was coordinating work done by land rights organisations in South Africa. Furthermore, the problems that had been encountered by the LPM ever since the disbanding of the NLC had created more problems for the landless people in South Africa in organising and fighting for their rights to access to land. With the end of apartheid and the adoption of a neoliberal approach to land reform, civil society pressures for land reform have lost much of the zeal that drove them in the 1980s. Many NGOs now prefer to retreat to less controversial themes such as HIV/AIDS, poverty alleviation and the environment. The adoption of a World Bank neoliberal market framework for land reform and support for commercial agriculture has watered down the welfare objectives of land reform as supported by programme NGOs like the NLC. The land struggle no longer operates within the civic and electoral sphere concerned with national democracy. It is now driven by CBOs directly affected by

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land issues, who are concerned no longer with opposition to the apartheid system but with the injustices of the post-apartheid system. The new tide of land struggles that has emerged is inimical to the interests of government and its partners, such as COSATU and the ‘civics’, who now attempt to contain demands for land reform. Consequently, the struggle for land tends to be fragmented. While there is collaboration between different groups, they do not have a common objective or strategy. Many of the groups operate as pressure groups without an analytic framework on government policies on land, and with shifting and ambiguous relationships with government and other forces. In some cases, the organisations themselves are not clear whether they are NGOs, CBOs, pressure groups or a weapon for social mobilisation. Some of them see their role as providing technical support while others see their role as being political mobilisers. Contradictions often occur between pressures to operate within the framework of marketbased land reform adopted by government and grassroots pressures for land reform outside of this framework. The impact that ‘rural-centred’ mobilisation of the type organised by the RDI and land occupations can have on policy remains to be seen. However, it is located within wider regional land and political conflicts, which are underscored by unfolding events in Zimbabwe, and has political ramifications that are larger than the land question alone. Over the past six years the ANC-led government had been criticised for the slow pace of transformation of land ownership patterns in South Africa. The criticism comes from civil society organisations, landless people’s organisations, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and land rights NGOs who are calling for more direct state intervention to address the continuing land inequality in South Africa thirteen years into democracy. The National Land Summit in July 2005 saw the major land rights players rejecting the ‘willing buyer– willing seller’ principle which emanated from the 1996 GEAR policy. Since the summit, nevertheless, there have been no changes in the government’s commitment to this principle. The land reform process is still very slow. Hall (2007) argues that one of the challenges facing the Department of Land Affairs is budgetary realities that will now determine the pace and scale of land reform. If market prices are to be paid, the programme will need to take into account the rapidly rising market price of land. The question to ask is will the state have enough money to pursue the ‘willing buyer–willing seller’ model under such rapidly increasing land prices?

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LAND AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA Conclusion

Any debate on sustainable development can cover a broad spectrum of issues, but in the South African context, land must be the entry point for such discussion. Land was used as a major tool for establishing the colonial and apartheid state economies. Access to land was used as a political and social engineering tool, shaping both the cultural fabric of South African society and the landscape that exists today. The colonial and apartheid regimes enforced massive inequality in access to land and tenure security to support the privileges of the white minority. Addressing the inequalities in land access and tenure security lies at the core of the development challenge that South Africa faces. As Turner (2001) notes, the task is not simply a question of justice and human rights: the current structures of land administration, tenure and administration are grossly inefficient from an economic point of view. Economic development is currently hampered by these persisting inequalities of access to land and by the confusion and chaos that surround land rights and administration in the communal areas of the former homelands. Although significant progress appears to have been made in some areas of the land reform (Lahiff, 2001), there is some concern that government is retreating from aiding the rural poor. This assertion is based on the context of the state’s increasingly conservative macroeconomic policy stance and the apparent downplaying of its social development goals. Most of the inequities and injustices remain in place. The inefficiency and unfairness of land tenure and administration in the former homelands have yet to be tackled. Hall (2007) argues that an impressive range of laws and policies is in place, implementing institutions have been established and staffed, and land has been transferred, but the change that has been wrought has been limited in its extent and also in its impact on social and economic relations. The factors that give rise to rural poverty are also at the root of the degradation of natural resources, and degradation of natural resources undermines attempts by the poor to develop sustainable livelihoods. The following factors all contribute decisively to the degradation and over-exploitation of natural resources: lack of access to land or sufficient land, insufficient access to capital, weakness in the institutional mechanisms of individual and community land management, and under-investment in rural technology systems (including knowledge sharing among farmers). All these problems are acute for the poor. Land reform must deliver three badly needed enhancements to land

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rights and land administration in the former homelands. It must achieve justice and equity so that opportunities to acquire land rights and to use natural resources are administered in fair and transparent ways. It must provide for security of land rights, to give people adequate incentive to conserve land that they are sure is theirs. It must deliver administrative efficiency, so that resource use and conservation can be effectively controlled and promoted within a technical framework in which users have confidence (Turner, 2001). Land redistribution can promote sustainable resource use in South Africa, notably by reducing environmental pressure in the former homelands through making more land available to previously disadvantaged people. White commercial agriculture is ultimately unsustainable. It has been maintained by state aid and soft loans to white farmers during the apartheid era. It has created a situation in which white commercial agriculture is over-capitalised, inefficient and unsustainable. Many of the practices of large-scale agriculture such as monocropping, inefficient irrigation and inappropriate mechanisation resulted in soil loss. Colonial and apartheid policies have enforced a foundation for environmental racism, which is characterised by continued deprivation of ‘productive’ resources and economic opportunities for the landless and poor. Current policies have done little to transform the situation. Land reform in South Africa is wholly unsustainable: it is providing a recipe for instability. It needs to be redefined as a core element in government policy for the promotion of sustainable development. Without a land reform programme that achieves justice and equity, the government cannot reduce poverty and inequality, and cannot alleviate increasing environmental pressure or effectively promote improved productive practices and better management of natural resources. The birth of South Africa’s democracy in April 1994 signalled the end of apartheid oppression, but it has led to a neoliberal economic order, which continues to perpetuate the unequal economic relations of the past. The South African state has committed itself both to land reform and to a neoliberal macroeconomic strategy that has constrained land reform. Nevertheless, the right to land reform is enshrined in the Constitution, which upholds the rights of rural people to receive a fair share of national resources. The main objective of land reform must be to bring a just and equitable transformation of land rights in South Africa. This objective has a number of dimensions. First, land

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reform must address the gross inequality in landholding. Second, it must provide sustainable livelihoods in ways that contribute to the development of dynamic rural economies. Third, particular attention must be given to the needs of marginalised groups, especially women, in order to overcome past and present discrimination. Fourth, rural people must participate fully in the design and implementation of land reform and sustainable development policies.

2 Interrogating Sustainable Development and Resource Control in Zimbabwe Sam Moyo and Prosper B. Matondi

In Zimbabwe, the agenda for sustainable development has focused on land redistribution. The unresolved question of national sovereignty over land and natural resources, highly unequal social and economic development, and contested control of land shape the debate. This chapter examines the prospects for sustainable development in Zimbabwe, highlighting different perspectives on the goals, interests and policy frameworks that have emerged in relation to the land reforms since 2000. The first part of the chapter discusses the land question, its evolution, problem and past attempts at its resolution by critically examining the distribution of land, and land use and tenure issues. The second part looks at the nature of the struggles for land reform and outcomes. The final part discusses the outcomes of land redistribution and its impact on sustainable development.

Zimbabwean Debates over Land and Sustainable Development The past 100 years in southern Africa have been replete with struggles over access to land and natural resources. Land struggles ranged in content from specific actions and resistance to colonial land policies; broad nationalist anti-colonial activism and proactive land occupations; and natural resource poaching, fence-cutting and other extralegal actions. Strategies adopted by smallholder Zimbabwean peasants to circumvent the land and natural resource regulations, which threatened their livelihoods, were shaped by their concepts of sustainable

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development including their environmental concerns, their evolving livelihoods and their socio-political organisation under colonial and post-colonial rule. Yet the majority of the rural poor, who live in environmentally degraded and crowded areas, have had little influence on sustainable development policies, until recently. High population growth rates (over 3 per cent per year) during the 1980s and 1990s deepened the constraints on livelihoods in the rural areas, while highlighting the inequalities posed by the large expanses of land suitable for agriculture, but which are under-utilised. Landowners argued that such land be left pristine for conservation purposes, while others argued for the cultivation of this land by the rural poor, who had been denied access to resources by colonial and post-colonial land policy frameworks. The official emphasis on developing and maintaining the existing land tenure system and the protection of large expanses of public land by the state has tended to be critical in justifying the exclusion of the rural poor from access to privately owned land. The land reform programme in Zimbabwe, implemented from 2000 to date, has largely been justified by the state and beneficiaries on grounds of responding to the demands of the rural poor for social and economic justice. On political grounds, the need to significantly alter the structures that have perpetrated rural marginalisation and poverty took centre stage after two decades. The land reform programme of 2000 marked a significant shift from previous post-independence land reform programmes, as it involved extensive expansion of opportunities for access to land by a large part of the population in Zimbabwe, and restructured agrarian relations. The comprehensive character of the land reform policy has, therefore, been justified as part of a wider strategy to promote equity and sustainable development in Zimbabwe. A reconfiguration of the sustainable development agenda is emerging in Zimbabwe, focusing on addressing poverty and underdevelopment, as well as the accumulation needs of emerging and new agrarian capital.1 Central to sustainable development, from 2000, has been the implementation of a Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP).2 The FTLRP has grown out of historical experiences with the land question from 1980. From 1980 up to the early 1990s, the debate in Zimbabwe about land was focused on technical issues, including land management and the modernisation of traditional practices in common property resource management areas. The embedded nature of bureaucratic attitudes, practices and science within policy institutions reduced the state response to environmental and land management problems in the

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communal areas to technical issues of land degradation, deforestation and pollution. This kept the more political issues of land reform off the agenda. The growing political demands for access to land were not addressed.

Land Distribution and Equity Problems in Zimbabwe The total land area of Zimbabwe constitutes 39.6 million hectares (ha), of which 33 million ha are potentially arable. Before the FTLRP, approximately 4,500 white commercial farmers, mostly of European descent, controlled 28 per cent of the country’s land under freehold tenure, totalling 11.2 million ha. Table 2.1 shows land distribution by farming sector from 1980 to 2004. The land in the large-scale commercial farming (LSCF) sector was owned by individual farmers, corporations under directorship, trustees, churches, parastatals, NGOs and foreign investors (Moyo, 1998). The state, through its own parastatals and local authorities and the small-scale commercial farming (SSCF) sector, also held significant amounts of land. Freehold land

Table .

Agricultural land distribution in Zimbabwe (million ha)

Sector

1980

2000

2007

Large-scale commercial farms (LSCF) Small-scale commercial farms (SSCF) Communal areas Old resettlement Fast-track resettlement State land* Total

15.5

11.8

3.8

1.4

1.4

1.4

16.4 – –

16.4 3.7 –

16.4 3.7 8.0

6.3 39.6

6.3 39.6

6.3 39.6

Source: Adapted and updated from Moyo (2005a). *State land includes the Commercial Farm Settlement Schemes, Agricultural and Rural Development Authority, Cold Storage Company, Forest Commission, all urban areas, mining settlements and growth points.

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tenure in the Zimbabwean context has been assumed to lead to better management of land and natural resources, investment in agricultural development and generally better welfare for owners. However, as the number of farmers show, environmental stewardship has been based on maintaining a very low threshold of people and animals in LSCF. In contrast, the communal areas supported a farming population of over 1 million families, consisting of nearly 6 million people on 41 per cent of the country’s land area of 16.4 million ha (Central Statistical Office, 1992). This translated into a population density of 31 persons per square kilometre. This resulted in disproportionately high pressures being placed on the natural resource base of the communal areas by both humans and their livestock, resulting in both increasing impoverishment and conflicts over resources. Conflicts could not be resolved within the severe limitations placed on the communal areas’ ecosystems by policies. Increasing population growth has resulted in the expansion of arable areas and in increasing cropping frequencies, which could result in increased land degradation. In Chiduku, Shamva and Chiweshe communal lands, for example (Moyo, 1995; Matondi, 1996, 2001) population growth led to greater soil erosion, declining soil fertility, slope failures and increased downhill sediment loads. Zimbabwe is classified into five broad agro-ecological regions: Natural Region (NR) I to NR V (see Table 2.2 and Figure 1.1). Agricultural potential declines as the NR numbers increase – the bestendowed region is NR I and the least endowed is NR V. Most communal areas are located in NRs III–V and exhibit the semi-arid characteristics of these regions. Before the FTLRP, at least 57 per cent of Zimbabwe’s population were found in NRs IV and V (Matondi, 2001). While commercial farms are found in all the NRs, most of them were located in the highveld area endowed with the most conducive climate and soils. Some of the large farms situated in NRs IV and V were used for game (safari hunting and tourism) and cattle ranching, which exclude locals in such ventures. The commercial areas included SSCF and LSCF with average land sizes of 2,000 ha and with the largest land holding rising to 300,000 ha (Moyo, 1998). These farms held under freehold title give the owner the right to dispose of the land without further reference to the state. Almost 74 per cent of the communal areas lie in regions IV and V, which are the least favourable for crop and livestock production.

ZIMBABWE Table .

Zimbabwe’s agro-ecological regions and their characteristics

NR

Mean annual rainfall

I

Above 1,000

II

Total area (ha)

Percentage of total area

700,000

2

800–1,000

5,666,000

15

III

600–800

7,290,000

18

IV

500–600

14,780,000

38

V

Below 500

10,440,000

27

39,070,000

100

Total

59 Recommended farming system Dairy, tea, coffee, fruit trees, vegetables Intensively cropped rainfed maize, tobacco, winter wheat, vegetables Semi-intensive cultivation (droughttolerant cotton, soyabeans) Semi-intensive cultivation and cattle ranching Cattle ranching, wildlife conservation, intensive sugarcane irrigation

Source: Central Statistical Office (1992); Agritex cited by Moyo (1995).

Poverty in Zimbabwe tends to reflect the agro-ecological regions and has a communal, rural face. The majority of rural poor people are mostly found in agro-ecological regions III, IV and V, which have few alternative sources of income outside of agriculture and natural resources. Communal areas comprise the former Tribal Trust Lands, where families access land through inheritance, which gives rights of usufruct to family members (Pankhurst, 1988). They are occupied by peasant farmers who cultivate small fields (approximately 2.5 ha) allocated by community leaders. Such land has been subdivided over the years to accommodate more family members, thus reducing the plots to unviable units to sustain families for their food and income needs. Ultimate ownership of land is vested in the community on behalf of the state. Communal lands are the most densely populated areas outside urban centres and are settled by a majority of farmers who do not have sufficient material resources for efficient management of land resources. Land is mainly used for rain-fed agriculture and grazing.

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Figure .

Zimbabwe farming regions.

Not only are communal farmers confined to the poorest land, but the size of land available to individual households is meagre.

Macroeconomic Policies In the 25 years of independence, various economic policy frameworks have been implemented in Zimbabwe. At independence in 1980, the state was preoccupied with transition and transformation, thus retaining a strong central state, a weak civil society and dominant private sector. The socio-economic fortunes of many people improved, yet the economic difficulties widened reversing the gains by the end of the first decade of independence. From 1990, Zimbabwe implemented the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in an attempt to address the negative fiscal growth rate and macroeconomic

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difficulties associated with high debts, high interest rates, increased inflation and poverty. These economic reforms excluded meaningful land redistribution and led to de-industrialisation, alongside broader elite accumulation (see Moyo, 2000). The ESAP framework was abandoned in 1996 following de-industrialisation and increased poverty (Yeros, 2002). Since 2000, economic policies have shifted towards a more heterodox framework, involving government controls of the prices of foreign currency, goods and services, and increased state participation in production and distribution. The ESAP had a negative impact on many sectors in Zimbabwe, particularly on the agricultural sector. A significant number of people were laid off in industry and on farms. In the agricultural sector, layoffs were caused by diversifications to non-labour-intensive agricultural activities, which required more skilled labour than mass employment (Kanyenze, 2001; Tandon, 2001). Increased rural poverty, with 60 per cent of the population living below the poverty line, led to social pressures and demands for access to land. Various social groups, including the veterans of the liberation struggle, demanded pensions/gratuities and access to land (Moyo, 2001). The failure and decline of the ESAP as the dominant economic ideology and the gradual collapse of the economy increased the demand for access to land. Economic growth from the mid-1980s through to the 1990s was limited to large landowners and some industries, while wage declines eroded the livelihoods of workers (Yeros, 2002). The state sought to protect and further develop the large-scale commercial farm sector through encouraging expanding export-oriented land uses, through foreign currency retention schemes, with the assumption that this would lead to economic development for all, based on trickledown effects. Diversification into horticulture, wildlife and tourism generated greater competition for control and access to land, and conflicting perspectives on their values to Zimbabwe society (Moyo, 2000). However, if we take wildlife production, for instance, there were conceptual, ideological and economic contestations on the extent to which privatising nature for individual benefit was economically, nationally and ecologically sustainable. Changing global environmental perspectives and the influences of aid also played a key role in promoting some policy shift and bias towards wildlife land use. Growing demand for land by the indigenous black farmers, peasants and retrenched workers during the ESAP era redefined the land reform policy framework (Moyo, 2000).3 Zimbabwean land policies have

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been contested, mainly around the relative values attached to different land uses and land productivity. New export land uses were more highly valued as reflected in the ESAP policy framework. This strengthened grievances over existing unequal land rights, and the entrenched concentration of capital accumulation among large white landholders, while increasing the broader racial and class conflicts in the agrarian sector. The huge debt burden, which continued to increase in the face of stringent conditionalities for the disbursement of international loan and aid resources, negatively affected the agricultural sector. The economic difficulties under ESAP led to different social groups, including war veterans, demanding increased access to state finances to offset the erosion of their standards of living. National strikes and ‘stay-aways’ had expanded during 1997 and 1999 (Yeros, 2002), leading to a growing political confrontation between the new opposition party (the MDC) and the ruling party (Zanu PF). Within these conditions of economic decline, worker agitation and increasing ‘illegal’ land occupations, in 1997 the veterans of the liberation war challenged the state to pursue radical land redistribution based on land expropriation. They initiated numerous land occupations during 1998 and 2000. Faced with possible electoral defeat in 2000, the Zanu PF government backed the 2000 land occupations, and instituted heterodox economic policies, which were radicalised further, as international sanctions were imposed from 2000 through today. ESAP had resulted in a declining capacity of the state to regulate access to land and natural resources, given its commitment to the implementation of neoliberal policies. Until 1997, government land policy had done little to address the broader needs of the landless and land-poor in communal areas, while the population of these areas was expanding as they increasingly absorbed the tens of thousands of urban workers laid off during the adjustment process (Moyo, 1995). The development of the communal areas has been severely hampered by institutional constraints imposed by the government and by lack of capital investment. Thus, people within the communal areas were obliged to rely increasingly on natural resources for their survival, in the absence of increased agricultural productivity and non-agricultural employment alternatives. From 2000, the role of the state in shaping sustainable development was strengthened. Zimbabwe designed and implemented home-grown macroeconomic policies seeking to strengthen central control of the economy, with some level of accommodation of market processes,

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especially those that were supportive of the land reforms and broader economic indigenisation policy (Moyo, 2003). These policy developments have had profound effects on land access, land utilisation, trade and economic development, as well as on environmental management. The current role of the state in economic management has consisted of an increased regulatory role in fiscal, monetary, trade and domestic market (price and quantitative restriction) policies. The result of this has included increased budget deficits, growing inflation, a hanging internal and external debt, non-payment of external debt, and free-floating parallel exchange rates (Moyo, 2003). These interventions, apart from extensive land redistribution, have introduced price controls on agriculture and manufactured goods, new direct and indirect subsidies for agricultural inputs, fuel and energy, and increased parastatal activities. The new brand of economic policies are predicated upon new forms of market and state complementarity, which are less reliant on external finance, and efforts to gradually diversify production within a shrinking economy (Moyo, 2003). However, Zimbabwe has faced recurrent droughts, which together with the land expropriation has compromised its ability to feed the nation from domestic output, thus missing some of the economic and social development targets necessary to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development. Faced with declining economic fortunes and restlessness among critical segments of the population, particularly workers who demanded better wage increases and more equal access to national income, the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) argued that land was fundamental to sustainable development. In a speech to the WSSD Conference in 2002, President Mugabe defended this orientation of focusing on land reform, on the basis of its importance for rural development, poverty reduction and agro-industrial development. Over 70 per cent of the Zimbabwean population live in rural areas and are dependent upon land and natural resources for their livelihoods. Most observers agree that the prospects for poverty reduction are dependent on a significant part of the population gaining access to productive land to meet their food, energy and shelter requirements. Zimbabwe’s industrial resource base is largely (66 per cent) dependent upon the manufacture of agriculture-based products, while key economic sectors (including finance, commerce and tourism) are intricately linked to agriculture. Agriculture contributed 17 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2001 in comparison to the rest of southern Africa where agriculture contributed 8.2 per cent to the GDP in 2000.

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LAND AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA Agriculture, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development

Agriculture has been central to economic development since colonisation in 1896. Between 1900 and 1980, agricultural growth was based on the large-scale commercial farming sector. This was reflected in the agricultural policy priorities of the various colonial governments, the land bank, and various agricultural marketing legislative instruments (e.g. the Land Apportionment Act in 1931, the Land Husbandry Act in 1952, the Land Tenure Act in 1969, Maize Control Act, 1934, etc.). This led to investment in large-scale farm production infrastructure, technological innovation in hybrid seed development, irrigation development, commodity diversification and import substitution strategies in support of farming. The smallholder sector, dominated by blacks, received minimum support. Since 1980, agricultural growth has been based on both continued support to large-scale commercial farmers (LSCFs) and new investment in the smallholder sector by the new government (see also Rukuni et al., 2006). The government announced a policy of ‘growth with equity’, which continued to accommodate the large-scale commercial sector, shunning retribution against the former colonisers. While the smallholder agriculture sector grew significantly from 1980 to 1990, the large-scale commercial farming sector also expanded and became more export-focused. Production of tobacco, horticulture and wildlife increased remarkably in the large-scale sector, while the smallholder sector largely focused on maize, cotton, small grains and sunflowers. Despite these successes, major challenges to agricultural development remained, including unsustainable fiscal deficits, low technological change in the smallholder sector, food insecurity and, more important, the unresolved land question. The communal areas are characterised by slow technological changes, inefficient marketing systems and rapid demographic growth. Production in this sector is also highly differentiated. Out of about 1,200,000 smallholder families in dry and mixed farming areas, the bulk of commercially marketed maize and cotton was produced by 150,000 families. Fifteen thousand peasant farmers produced over 60 per cent of the formally marketed maize and cotton. Ninety per cent of the 4,500 LSCFs produced the bulk of the export crops, and only about 10,000 peasants produced export commodities such as tea, tobacco, coffee, wheat and sugar. Smallholder production in Zimbabwe was concentrated on

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marginal soils. The agricultural yields per hectare of smallholder farms were on average lower than in the LSCF areas.4 However, the expansion of productivity in maize and cotton output among Zimbabwe peasants from 1980 to 1987 justified land redistribution to small farmers (Moyo, 1995). The high performance of the smallholder sector convinced the government that land redistribution would have positive effects on the smallholder sector.5 This perception featured in the 1997 land reform pronouncements, which ignited the internationalisation of Zimbabwe’s land question. Several arguments were provided to attempt to counter the smallholder agricultural success story. It was intimated that smallholder success was based on unsustainable fiscal expenditure, was inefficient and would collapse without state support.6 However, agricultural production in the communal areas is erratic due to frequent droughts. In contrast, the LSCFs have adapted to erratic rainfall by using irrigation. In the early 1990s, about 180,000 ha (30 per cent) of the cropped LSCF areas was irrigated fully, while 46 per cent of the LSC farms had access to full and supplementary watering. NR II alone had 56 per cent of Zimbabwe’s total irrigated land, while another 30 per cent of this was in NR V mainly situated on a few multinational LSCF holdings (Moyo, 1995). The capacity of communal farmers to use land efficiently remained contested by representatives of the LSCFs and other analysts who continued to argue that the continued poverty and land degradation in Communal and Resettlement Areas were a reflection of the internal deficiencies of smallholder systems. In reality, however, the large land holdings in the LSCF areas undermined the food security of the majority of farmers in the communal areas, and most of the land in the LSCF areas was inefficiently used, under-utilised or held for speculative purposes in the face of massive land dispossession and inadequate access to land. Furthermore, a growing reallocation of land and natural resources to private and foreign users further contributed to the marginalisation of the poor.

Land as an Overarching Resource for Sustainable Development In Zimbabwe, colonialism had two major impacts on natural resources. First, in the white settler farming areas, there was an increase in soil degradation because of poor land husbandry by settler farmers.

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This created localised erosion and other forms of degradation on white settler lands. Second, land alienation since 1900, and the growing human and livestock pressure in communal areas resulted in declining soil fertility. Attempts were made in the 1940s and 1950s to address the land degradation problems through the enactment of legislation such as the Natural Resources Act (1942) and the Native Land Husbandry Act (1952). The laws did not receive legitimacy from the black majority in the communal areas, who saw it as a further attempt to gain control over their land and alienate it, in the guise of conservation. These laws were resisted by the Zimbabwean nationalists until independence in 1980. In reality, the communal areas faced an environmental ‘crisis’ throughout the colonial period, simply because there was inadequate land to accommodate the growing human population. The agricultural revolution in the large-scale commercial farming sector consisted of improved conservation methods, use of hybrid seeds and the introduction of Intensive Conservation Areas in large-scale commercial farms to address problems of land degradation. This process, however, did not support the communal areas, which slowly became a bastion for resistance to settler rule. The use of inorganic fertilisers and uptake of agricultural innovations and technologies in the communal areas was resisted. The lack of financial resources and inadequate extension and knowledge services tended to limit the effectiveness of environmental programmes in communal areas. In addition, the distribution of physical and social infrastructure and resources did not meet the needs of rural black people to deal with environmental crisis. The expansion of arable land within the communal areas has indeed contributed to the increased degradation of land, forests and wildlife and the destabilisation of critical habitats. The major causes of land degradation in communal areas have been considered generally to include • • • • • •

pressure on land due to the expansion of cultivation on marginal land; expanding biomass energy requirements, which lead to deforestation of vegetation; soil erosion resulting from weak land conservation practices; increased livestock per unit of land, which contributes to overgrazing; streambank cultivation; and expanding gold panning and abstraction of resources for brick making (from forest and termite mounds), which threaten the riverine zone with erosion and siltation (Matondi, 2001).

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The greatest threat to sustainable development is, however, found in the alienation of communities from access to land and natural resources. Where rural people have been compelled to live with resources opportunistically (such as wildlife), which they do not benefit from, there has been a tendency to utilise them without investment in their regeneration. The increased concentration of people on marginal lands resulted in the encroachment by peasants into wildlife habitats, in areas such as the mid-Zambezi Valley and Gokwe (Murombedzi, 1994). The conversion of land suitable for cropping to ranching and wildlife production by white landowners brought new conflicts into play, with both politicians and peasants insisting that such land uses were socially undesirable, and that they constituted an obstacle to land redistribution. Government accused white farmers of sabotaging food security, while these farmers emphasised the importance of wildlife ranching in promoting environmental sustainability and increased export earnings. In a study of Mazowe district in Zimbabwe, Matondi (1996) found that soil and vegetation degradation were severe in the communal areas furthest away from large-scale commercial farms, where human and livestock population were most concentrated. The main reason for soil degradation was encroachment of cultivation onto the foothills and slopes. Almost 60 per cent of the population in the district did not have designated grazing areas. Land shortages, compounded by an increase in human and livestock population due to migrations, promoted both soil and vegetation degradation. Biodiversity and vegetation composition and distribution were adversely affected by the environmental pressures leading to the dominance of a few woody species and in most areas shrubs and grasslands. Only 10 per cent of the colluvial and alluvial plains had natural vegetation. Ninety-five per cent of the population in Mazoe relied on shrubs and woodlands for fuel, and this contributed to deforestation. Densely populated communal areas depleted of woodlands are showing signs of soil erosion. One survey (ZIDS, 1990) has shown that the most extensive soil erosion was also found in the Save catchment area, where 16 per cent of the communal land areas had evidence of soil erosion. When options to venture into agriculture are limited, smallholders engage in a myriad of activities that may affect the environment in a ‘negative’ way. For instance, the main problem in resettlement areas was the pillaging of forest resources by neighbours from deforested communal areas. Since resettlement areas were established in formerly

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white under-utilised commercial farmlands, they were better endowed with woodlands than the overcrowded communal areas. However, these woodlands are historically and culturally seen as common property resources, and people from densely populated communal areas moved in to exploit these resources.

Forests and Sustainable Development After independence, the forest management regime inherited from the colonial era was continued. LSCFs were entrusted to manage their forested areas on a self-policing basis, on the assumption that their farms would maximise forest cover for both profit and resource protection. In contrast, forests within the communal areas were subjected to increased state regulation and control. This limited forest use to subsistence purposes and forbade communities from marketing timber (Reed, 2001). This resulted in a pattern of increasing forest degradation in and around communal areas with villagers often cutting wood and harvesting crops within state forests (Nhira, 1998; Mandondo, 2000). The current official definition of deforestation as the cutting down of trees for non-forestry activities is insensitive to the context driving these activities. What is lacking is a definition of forest and woodland management that legitimises the sustainable utilisation of resources, without criminalising the clearance of forests and woodlands for purposes of agricultural expansion, settlement and roads. Most of the policy initiatives on deforestation are largely drawn from efforts to limit the spread of natural resources degradation beyond communal areas. Land degradation constitutes a limited dimension of the broader development and resource use problems that characterise the communal areas. These include poor agricultural productivity, low soil fertility enhancement measures and the overall failure of the market-oriented agrarian production systems to support sustainable rural livelihoods. Communal areas in Zimbabwe were never designed to be internally economically viable, given their creation as labour reserves (Arrighi, 1973). Foresters and environmentalists continue to conceptualise deforestation in ways that do not reflect the fundamental historical and socio-economic contexts in which patterns of access to land and resources have emerged. Resettled and unsettled areas with dense vegetation have always been sources for the harvesting of firewood for household use and for

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commercialisation. On large private farms, the selective harvesting of wood is an ongoing feature of the farming systems. Narratives that stereotype black farmers as bad managers of woodlands and whites as good managers fail to understand the structural base of large-scale farmlands conservation, particularly the fact that it was based on denying the majority access to land and other natural resources. Strategies for achieving conservation and development and carrying out reforms of the forest sector remain contested. One perspective was that there needed to be a trade-off between maintaining certain ecological biospheres to achieve critical environmental goals and their sustainable exploitation to meet critical social needs, including the basic livelihood of the poor. This means that land reallocation, if it is in the public good, should maintain the ecological integrity. The second perception is that our knowledge of forest structures is inadequate to make wholesale policy prescriptions on how they should be utilised. Zimbabwe continues to debate the sizes of land allocations that can make commercial farming viable for individual owners while maintaining sustainable woodlands. The timber production and harvesting rates require much longer time cycles than conventional crops, and this requires that some land for timber rotation has to be set aside if the venture is to be commercially viable. Forestry enterprises require a complex set of production mixes to be viable for individual entrepreneurs. In reality, the major and immediate effect of the 2000 land reforms has been increased harvesting of wood for building temporary shelters and meeting the fuelwood needs of the new settlers once the new resettlements are established. That woody biomass resources will continue to diminish is to be expected, given that the burgeoning population continues to depend upon wood resources for livelihoods in the communal areas, and because the agrarian reforms required to reorient productivity have been slow to take off. These debates reflect a complex set of competing demands for access to land and natural resource exploitation. Recent research on post-land-reform forest resource management reinforces the ideological repression of popular demand for land and natural resources, by sensational reporting on forest and land degradation (Marongwe et al., 2005). Rather than seek sound empirical understanding of emerging adaptations to the land reform, research tends to conserve the myth of the superiority of commercial resource management and the superiority of private property rights in land (Richardson, 2005).

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For decades commercial wildlife management remained an enclave of white landowners. The idea of romanticising wildlife landscapes has been spreading within a context of a growing tourism industry during the 1990s. Black villagers commonly perceive such resource management practices as part of a white culture, which is projected through young white men and tourists in green camouflage or khaki safari regalia, ‘promoting’ conservation of wildlife biodiversity and the biophysical areas where wildlife is found. The national park concept was implemented through brutal land expropriation, leading to the establishment of national parks and safari areas such as Hwange, Gonarezhou, Chirisa, Matuzvadona, etc. In most cases the establishment of parks involved the translocation of animals and the forcible removal of indigenous people from their land into marginal agricultural lands and woodlands. The national parks stood the test of time in the liberation struggle from 1963 to 1979, and they have not been restructured to meet the demand for basic access to natural resources for livelihood activities in communal areas adjoining the parks. From 1980, wildlife policies introduced Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) programmes rather than reallocate the parklands to communal peoples as a form of redistributive justice. Instead, corridors of land within communal areas that border the parks were parcelled out to create buffer zones of wildlife management, which the peasants could utilise to exploit wildlife commercially. The policy introduced new concepts of co-sharing and co-management of natural resources in a programme dubbed CAMPFIRE (Communal Area Management Programme for Indigenous Resources). However, intense demand for access to land and natural resources within these parks from peasant farmers, and the inequitable sharing of hunting profits led to the CAMPFIRE’s demise. CAMPFIRE had serious loopholes in relation to the insecure land rights accorded to communities and the poor levels of decentralisation of the authority over resource use and benefit sharing, etc. (Moyo, 2000). This is because once the CAMPFIRE corridors of land were fenced, separating them from other village lands, they were given out as concessions to private hunting operators who realised most of the profits. Less than 30 per cent of hunting profits went to the peasants. Even here incomes tended to be inequitably shared and mostly used to construct public goods (schools, clinics, etc.), thus absolving the state from its public social responsibilities (Moyo, 2000). CAMPFIRE excluded

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large parts of local communities from physically benefiting from forest and wildlife resources such as grazing rights, fuelwood, wildlife/bush meat and wild fruits, on the pretext that they would gain financially from conservation. From 2000, new environmental technocrats with little understanding of this history have sought to deflect the demand for redistribution of park land through creating new programmes based on trans-boundary natural resources management regimes, justified around concepts of the sustainable utilisation of wildlife resources at a larger regional scale. Wildlife utilisation among small farmers has thus remained marginal, since there is a dominant belief among the wildlife policy technocracy that black peasants cannot manage wildlife commercially and sustainably, even though it is well established that peasants mainly seek such resources for their small-scale consumption needs. From the 1990s, private natural resource conservancies in the largescale commercial farming sector expanded. These entailed the creation of new private companies, which hold and manage groups of farms in single large land blocks. These were used mainly to attract financial investment in the form of equity, to capitalise the expenses of creating the tourist infrastructures, purchasing rare animal species, and acquiring fencing, machinery and equipment. Conservancies became a focus of attracting national, regional and international capital in the tourist sector. The conservancies have sought to deflect the image of land concentration as a private individual land ownership phenomenon, and refocused the public imagination of private conservancies as a natural public good. The structure of land ownership based on the amalgamation of farms into large conservancies was, however, visibly challenged by black elites, who saw a trend towards white large-scale farmers predominantly benefiting from ‘natural resources’ and the opportunities derived from ESAP policy incentives, to the exclusion of indigenous persons (Moyo, 2000). Tourism enterprises had taken root in the black communities, with a few owning tourism safaris, water amusement and sport hunting concessions. Since the 2000 land reforms, there has been a lack of information on the scale and form in which the conservancies have been restructured. Conflicts have emerged among black elites over their redistribution. Most concessions in these conservancies are now allocated to black elites, while a few commentators see the conservancies as providing opportunities for those in adjacent communal areas and resettlement schemes to own shares and equities in the conservancies and thus benefit from them (Utete, 2003).

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Policy debates with respect to land resettlement in those areas with rich wildlife resources have for long been focused on competing perspectives on the moral and socio-economic value of allocating prime land to tourism vis-à-vis food security, as well as on the merits of the privatisation of nature. The past and current trend in wildlife resource management has generally excluded the majority peasants and workers vis-à-vis a few dominant individual large farmers and concessionaires while official foreign currency earning have continued to decline. The general trend is that the large-scale farms in drier natural regions have by far the largest number of animals. It is argued that those lands are too marginal for crop or cattle farming, and that they should be left to land uses such as wildlife-based tourism. Wildlife resources in the prime agricultural lands tend to be relatively smaller in scale, although some of the more densely subdivided large-scale farms contiguous to major urban areas have imported wildlife to create small tourist game ranches. Thus, the new opportunities created for weekend-type urban tourists and educational tours for urban people contradicted the thesis that marginal lands are better utilised for wildlife enterprises. In the mid-1990s, there was increased belief that the wildlife and/or tourism sectors were more viable than various industrial and agricultural subsectors, because of their potential to generate foreign currency.7 It was argued that the sector deserved greater allocations of government resources, including infrastructure, finance (e.g. credit subsidies) and access to cheaply priced wild animals and lands, under the jurisdiction of the state. This demonstrates that the expansion of wildlife conservancies was socially constructed and not naturally ‘determined’. LSCFs chose to retain woodlands for wildlife enterprises over agricultural uses, given the large financial returns in relation to their capital investment requirements. This served to perpetuate the pattern of unequal land distribution and was seen by some as delaying land redistribution, while building up the market value of the land. Thus, it was mainly popular land occupations and resource poaching, and the demand for land transfer to poor peasants residing in communal and urban areas that kept the land reform agenda at the centre of land politics in Zimbabwe (Moyo, 2000). As indicated earlier, the wider economic crisis induced by ESAP, and the political polarisation which emerged during the late 1990s, reinforced and ignited popular land occupations, which the ruling Zanu PF chose to support, under considerable popular and political pressure.

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Popular Struggles for Land The politics of Zimbabwe’s land struggles has been increasingly about settling particular ideological and material differences through a variety of strategies for land reform. The power struggles that emerged from the land question pose critical questions about the policy practice of government and the legitimacy of the basis on which private land holdings have historically been allocated. By the mid-1990s, the politics of indigenisation had crept into the agrarian reform programme, shifting the interest of a large number of Zimbabweans towards resource control as part of their own development (Moyo, 2000). The opportunities found in land-based export markets, such as tobacco, horticulture, ostriches, timber, wildlife, and nature-based ecotourism brought equity issues to the centre of politics. This pitted the interests of export-based land uses against the demand for access to land for broader livelihoods by the majority poor. The key question is, therefore, about social equity and class. The demand for land has been led by many groups, including various class interests, several social groups, various institutions and international agencies (Moyo, 1995). The Rural District Councils, wards and village committees engaged the state by demanding access to land to settle their people. Traditional leaders including chiefs, headmen, and spirit mediums demanded access to land on the basis of direct birthright to some sites of struggle. Various local-level associations, women’s clubs, and community-based organisations put pressure on their local leadership for access to land. In effect a broad coalition of interests emerged demanding land reform, including poor peasants, youths, women, farm workers, war veterans, landless people in communal and urban areas, rural elites, and urban middle and upper classes. These actors in the land struggles reflected a changing organisational and strategic response shaped by the emerging political realignments and by conceptions of sustainable development based on the perceived benefit arising from land reform (Moyo, 2000).

Land occupations The land occupations of 2000–02 were a manifestation of the land struggles that had been waged for over 100 years by scattered and heterogeneous groups of peasants in their various localities, as well as of the

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immediate political struggles which heightened around 1997 (Moyo, 2001). Between 2000 and 2002, the state for the first time declared its resolution to deal with the land question ‘once and for all’. Moyo (2000) argues that the concept of land self-provisioning was, during the mid-1990s, becoming a dominant phenomenon in Zimbabwe, given that large proportions of people in rural Zimbabwe were willing to allocate themselves land rather than wait for the government’s land reform programme. The legal institutions protecting all land tenure regimes had become fragile. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the LSCFs escalated their armed control8 of their holdings and instigated violent evictions of ‘illegal’ land occupiers. During the 1990s there was growing collaboration between the LSCFs, the police and local authorities, which was encouraged by the ‘squatter policy’ of the state. This squatter policy did not recognise land allocations made outside the state, local authorities and the market, and considered these illegal. It supported legal challenges to such occupations and enforced the eviction of ‘illegal’ occupiers. In some cases it found land to resettle the squatters. In a few cases it acquired land which had been occupied by ‘squatters’, where the owners were willing to sell. During the early 1990s there were fewer land occupations of largescale commercial farmlands than had been the case during the early 1980s, prior to the ESAP policy shifts. Thus, economic liberalisation shifted the protection and security of property rights towards private landholders. Land occupations have been a consistent feature of rural politics (Moyo, 2001). For instance, before 1998, the bulk of the ‘squatters’ in Mashonaland seemed to have moved during the 1977–83 and 1989–95 periods (Moyo, 2001). In Matebeleland and Masvingo provinces case data showed that the period of 1977–82 was most significant for squatting. The scale and form of land occupations have changed over time, but the ultimate agenda has remained the same, to reclaim lost lands and gain land-based livelihoods. In the early 1980s and 1990s, peasants contested the views of the state that land occupation was the antithesis of modern land use planning and efficient agricultural production. The squatters demonstrated their technical understanding of land selfprovisioning by occupying under-utilised, abandoned or derelict land, much to the chagrin of state administrators. Politicians and state technocrats portrayed the squatters as anti-development, in dire need of education and scientific agricultural knowledge.

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Studies by Alexander (2006) in Matabeleland and by Fortmann (1995) in Mhondoro communal lands show that fence cutting and natural resources poaching have been features in the struggle for land rights. Shiku (2001) demonstrates that in Rusape, land occupations were an expression of discontent at the slow pace of land reform. Matondi (2001) and Moyo (1995) show an intrinsic relationship between natural resources poaching and land occupations. Murombedzi (1994) shows that land occupations grew extensively during the late 1980s in the Zambezi valley frontier zones. State lands have remained a soft target for occupations for years, especially in Matebeleland and Manicaland, where forest and parks are predominant. Land occupation was not arbitrary. It was selective and focused on areas in which land was under-utilised. The intensity of incidences of land occupations in the 1980s coincided with the period when most land reallocations were carried out through the market principle of ‘willing seller–willing buyer’ instruments. Local ‘squatter’ communities made themselves beneficiaries by occupying mainly abandoned and under-utilised land, mostly situated in the liberation war frontier zone of the Eastern Highlands. Communities identified potential land for ‘squatting’, occupied the land, and then the central government came in to purchase such land at market prices, thereby formalising land occupations in what they called then a ‘normal intensive land reform’. The political pressures on the ground, no matter how they were organised by different social forces, thus reflected the organic relationship that has existed between the ruling party, war veterans, local politicians and various rural communities. Occupations became a major impetus in the state’s negotiations for resources to finance land acquisition. Numerous incidents of violent evictions of the so-called squatters took place in many localities in Zimbabwe (Chitiyo, 2000; Moyo, 2001; Shiku, 2001). However, such evictions were countered by various forms of direct and indirect resistance by villagers, through reoccupying the same areas they were evicted from, mobilising the ruling party officials and members of Parliament to defend them, mobilising community leaders, using the media, mobilising representation by lawyers for their cases and so on. They therefore drew on a heterogeneous and hybrid collection of resources based on active and passive resistance to challenge the state machinery. The acts of defiance by peasants, including local land occupations, natural resources poaching and fence cutting (Matondi, 2001), are similar to ‘the weapons

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of the weak’ discussed by Scott (1985), which many communities elsewhere under similar conditions have deployed to defend their rights. At the end of 1997, isolated land occupations started to occur, with the explicit aim of redistributing land from white farmers to landless villagers and war veterans. The occupations came in waves, starting with just a few in 1997 (Moyo, 1998, 2001), increasing in 1998, and reaching just below a thousand farm occupations by 2000.9 During the 1998 land occupations, in which war veterans were deeply involved, the state began to negotiate with the occupiers that they vacate the land on the promise of being found land after an international donors’ conference. In some instances, the farm occupations were peaceful, and farm work was allowed to continue. In other instances, white farmers and farm workers were driven off the land. However, from early 2000, following the rejection of the proposed new constitution in a referendum, war veterans led extensive land occupations (see also Chaumba et al., 2003; Marongwe, 2003; Alexander, 2006). They mobilised peasants to occupy land, and large segments of the ruling party officialdom joined them. Some state officials tacitly and directly supported the occupations while others remained aloof. The government soon announced that it would not forcibly evict occupiers. The Zimbabwe police took no action to prevent the farm occupations, claiming that they lacked the capability to repel the squatters or that the occupations had to be resolved at the political level. Court orders requiring the squatters to leave were ignored by the state, which introduced legislation to protect occupiers in 2001. The government was, however, under strong international pressure to exercise restraint over land expropriation, as donors and international financial institutions warned that the proposed takeover programme would inflict severe economic damage by deterring investors and reducing exports. The International Monetary Fund delayed a balance-of-payments support disbursement in 1999 primarily because of concerns over the government’s land reform policy and its effect on investment, anticipating sanctions imposed since then. The land occupations changed the rural agrarian landscape and socio-political relations, since for the first time large-scale white farmers had to co-exist with numerous black farmers. These events coincided with the parliamentary election contests of June 2000, and persisted after these elections, until after the presidential elections of 2002. Thus, the land expropriations accompanied violent elections during this period.

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Fast Track Land Reform and Sustainable Development The FTLRP was essentially the product of the failure by various parties, including government, large landowners, civil society, land advocacy groups and the international development assistance community to come to agree terms of a collaborative and internationally financed land reform (Moyo, 2005a). It changed in focus and approach over seven years from 1997, in line with the decline of the economy, deteriorating relations between the GoZ and the international community, and the escalating domestic confrontation between the GoZ and domestic political opposition forces led by the Movement for Democratic Change. Increasing political differences among these parties led to the gradual radicalisation of the scale, pace and method of land acquisition by the state, which adopted the strategy of mass land acquisition which began in 1997 when 1,471 farms were targeted for expropriation (Moyo, 2005a). The radicalisation of land expropriation began in earnest with the falter in compromise and negotiation in 2000. The United Nations Development Programme report representing the views of most donors was, however, not accepted by the GoZ in 2002, given that it proposed a slower-track process and scale land transfer, was non-committal on international funding processes, and proposed ‘tough’ benchmarks for improved governance as a condition for such support. Thus, seven years of dialogue over support to land reform had failed and the GoZ proceeded on its own to expropriate 90 per cent of the LSCF farmland in a staggered fashion, bedevilled by ‘successful’ landowner litigation and accompanied by sporadic violence and forced evictions on the white lands (Moyo, 2005a). The ‘social facts’ on the ground regarding the current distribution of land indicate that land redistribution has redressed the imbalanced racial legacy, but has spawned new inequalities, which are less sharp, while legal challenges to the outcome by former landowners remain (Moyo, 2007b). Land reform transformed the rural and agrarian social structure, by substantially extending access to land to over 150,000 families (smallholders now hold 72 per cent of the land), and by significantly downsizing the average size of commercial landholdings (Moyo and Yeros, 2005a). An uneven landholding structure obtains, but with less sharp racial and landholding size inequalities. A significant number of poor peasants, women and various other middle-class peoples claim to have been excluded from the redistribution. Land reform altered agricultural land property relations by extending state land ownership and by expanding the leasehold and permissory

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forms of tenure, while reducing substantially freehold tenures. Confidence in the current form of the leasehold tenure is limited among the new and old ‘commercial’ farmers and existing financiers. But smallholders generally perceive their tenure as secure. Litigation by white landowners has remained a threat to tenure stabilisation. A major agricultural production shift occurred during the FTLRP period, and this affected the major crops and livestock differently, particularly those produced by large-scale white farmers. Since 2001, agricultural production has declined by about 50 per cent in volume, within a more complex structure than polarised views suggest (Moyo, 2007b). For instance, food production (maize, wheat and small grains) has declined by over 50 per cent in both communal and commercial farm areas while commercial dairy and beef production has declined by the same margin. Agricultural production declined because of the inter-related decline of the macroeconomic conditions and their constraints on agricultural inputs supplies, the reduced production from commercial farmland transfers, sustained droughts, economic isolation and the unwillingness of some commercial farmers to produce under downsized landholdings. A decline in private agricultural financing, due to negative credit risk ratings, the perceived insecurity of the leasehold land tenure, and macroeconomic instability, has been a critical factor. The reduction of agro-industrial capacity to supply inputs, largely related to forex shortages and price controls, affected production of all crops (Moyo, 2007b). The incentives required by farmers were limited by the regulation of agricultural input and output markets. Superior profits were being made from non-farm investments, particularly in parallel forex and commodity markets. State agricultural subsidies and other interventions were limited by resource constraints, forex shortages and discordant policy management. These were also undermined by corrupt practices. The production decline has led to various degrees of shortages of goods for domestic (consumption) markets and in export earnings, both of which contribute significantly to the high levels of inflation, which stood at 2,200 per cent in April 2007 (in addition to the monetary and fiscal policy effects), food insecurity and unemployment. Besides gaining access to land and highly valued natural resources on previously well-protected private property, many of the newly resettled farmers are still to realise fully the positive changes that land redistribution can bring. Some of the farmers who have benefited

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from land allocation have improved their standards of living, as compared to the general situation that prevails in the communal areas where they originate. A number of ‘negative’ environmental management processes, such as uncontrolled gold panning, wildlife poaching and deforestation, have emerged in the new resettlement areas. The FTLRP has brought with it a general increase in the activities of gold panners. Gold panning is seen to be more lucrative than farming mainly because of the instant income returns compared to agriculture. In the gold panning areas, serious conflicts and contradictions result between gold panning and farming activities. Wildlife poaching and deforestation also increased during the FTLRP. A survey by the Parks and Wildlife Authority (PWLA) on gazetted game ranches showed that there had been significant wildlife population reductions, largely due to poaching (Moyo, 2005b). Consequently, wildlife on these properties (especially those under the A1 model10) is suffering from accountable utilization. However, actual empirical data on the poaching levels is limited. Deforestation was rampant before settlers knew whether they were going to remain in the area permanently or not (Moyo et al., 2004). These negative practices reflect both the immediate consumption needs of settlers and the new commercial ventures that have emerged in these formerly restricted areas. The capacity for the state to regulate natural resources has been overstretched, in terms of financial and human resources, and it cannot fully enforce environmental management laws. New community regulations are still in the formative state. In the resettlement areas, community control and management institutions are slowly emerging. These will require time before they will become fully functional and able to control human behaviour in the new settlements.

Conclusion For the next few decades, sustainable development will be focused on improved rural and agricultural development. The land transfers have the potential to make the agricultural sector more socially efficient by having many more people engaged in economic production. The social basis for designing sustainability has changed. Land acquisition, resettlements and downsizing of land holdings should together increase

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the number of self-sustaining farmers. This also involves more indigenous black farmers on smaller-sized commercial farms, who compete for wider resources and land with peasant farmers. More effective farming methods, supported by more people-oriented economic policies, could lead to significant increases in production on available land of food and other domestic products, compared to the heavily exportoriented land uses achieved in the past. Food security and poverty eradication can be achieved through developing policies that support inclusive access to land and the agricultural and natural resources sectors, and which promotes the development of internal agricultural markets (see also Rukuni et al., 2006). ‘Pro-poor poverty reduction strategies’ have been notably negligent of the fact that diminishing access to land and inadequate strategies to mobilise financial and human resources to effectively develop land use are fundamental constraints to sustainable development. The relative decline of agricultural production for domestic food and industrial requirements, in relation to population growth and urban relocation, is central to Africa’s sustainable development dilemma. The concentration of income and consumption among the wealthier few and in better-endowed regions, in relation to access to land and export-oriented land uses, limits the growth of the domestic market and the accumulation of capital for investment in the optimal utilisation of land-based resources (Moyo, 2004). The land use problem is reinforced by unequal trade relations and limited agro-industrial growth, given that its development strategy is not based on a viable industrialisation project. This chapter has argued that land redistribution, through redressing historical problems and social justice, is a crucial ingredient for sustainable development. Since the framework for negotiation for political independence did not consider compensating victims of past losses of lives, land, livestock, wildlife resources and homes, land redistribution has been widely seen as a form of reparation, which promotes a more equitable distribution of resources and seeks to transform society. Addressing the land question in terms of contemporary equity and historical social justice provides essential parameters within which broader political reform and democratisation questions must be addressed (Moyo, 2001). Providing people with land and security over resources is an essential step in creating incentives for sustainable resource use. Sustainable development can only be achieved if people living in rural areas enjoy stable and productive lives. Land reform has the potential for ensuring sustainable development in Zimbabwe

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because it can create the necessary conditions for expanded agricultural growth and livelihoods. If it is coupled with the promotion of environmentally sensitive land use, the degraded communal lands can then recover from more than half a century of overuse. This is the challenge now facing Zimbabwe’s agrarian reform. Sustainable land utilisation requires key land, agricultural and economic policy measures which are necessary to increase agricultural productivity, investment and exports, and to bring stability and confidence in the new land property rights, and related laws.

Notes 1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

Detailed accounts of the post-independence land reforms and struggles are examined by Sam Moyo (1995, 2000, 2001 and 2005a). The FTLRP was implemented by the Zimbabwe government from 2000 and concluded in September 2002. It entailed a fast pace of land acquisition and fast pace of resettling households on the acquired land. The land was allocated with minimum infrastructure and support by government (see Moyo and Yeros, 2005a). The land demand for wildlife production activities occurred in a context of increasing land demand by the black majority. They felt that the state had abrogated its promises for land redistribution throughout the 1980s, and further alienated them through investments in the large-scale sector when the gains made in the smallholder sector waned (Rukuni, 1994). However, gross yields per hectare in LSCF areas were much lower when land under-utilisation was taken into account. Land reform became a major focus of sustainable development of the government, but was highly contested by the large-scale farmers and the private sector who predicted an imminent collapse of the economy. These arguments were indifferent to the fact that the LSCFs had received consistent state support for almost 100 years and that their development was not based purely on markets. The government perceived this to be a racist attitude where established large farmers, competing with new farmers, discredited state interventions for broad based agricultural development. The Zimbabwe Investment Centre (ZIC) had placed wildlife and tourism on its priority list for state investment support by 1992. It was argued that investments in the wildlife sector yielded greater contributions to incomes and employment and foreign currency than investments in manufacturing and mining. The white large-scale sector became obsessed with security, evidenced in the growth of the security industry. The erection of electric fences, the use of razor wires and the growth in farm security companies were seen part

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of as a trend towards societal partitioning. This was signified by poor majority blacks in degraded communal lands living side by side with rich whites on swatches of pristine and at times unused environments and only separated by a fence. 9. The land occupations were characterised by the singing of revolutionary songs and occasionally threatening gestures, but rarely entailed physical abuse of farmers or farm workers or damage to property. 10. A scheme designed for landless people.

3 Law, Land and Sustainable Development in Malawi Fidelis Edge Kanyongolo

Given the structure of the political economy of Malawi, land is the decisive variable in the fulfilment of current as well as future social, economic and environmental needs of the majority of people. The impact of the land question on sustainable development is a function of not only the historical experience of the political economic relations among the country’s various economic and social groups, but also the content and form of the legal norms which emerge from them. This chapter seeks to describe the nature of the interplay between key aspects of the land question and the various dimensions of sustainable development, with particular focus on the role and function of law in that interplay. The chapter first outlines the specific linkages between the key elements of the land question and the constituent ingredients of the concept of sustainable development. It outlines the history of land reform with particular emphasis on the law relating to access, tenure and democratic control and its implication for critical components of sustainable development. Finally, the chapter investigates the significance of the neoliberal character of the predominant land law in Malawi for the prospects of sustainable development. The chapter argues that the neoliberal character of the law in Malawi necessarily limits its potential to address challenges posed for sustainable development in the specific context of inequalities of access to land, insecurity of tenure, privatisation of resources and the disempowerment of civil society. Malawi is a highly centralised state that is heavily dependent on development assistance from Western European and North American countries for the formulation and implementation of policies. Malawi has a population of approximately 12 million people, the majority of whom are poor (Malawi Government, 2005). The majority of the

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population is poor in the sense that their socio-economic conditions prevent them from living a long, healthy and creative life, or enjoying a decent life worthy of self-respect and the respect of others (Chirwa, 2005). The average household income in the country is the equivalent of approximately US$400 per year, although this statistic obscures wide inequalities (Malawi Government, 2005). The richest 10 per cent of the population has a median per capita income that is eight times higher (MK50,373 per person per annum) than the median per capita income of the poorest 10 per cent (K6,370 per person per annum). Moreover, the richest 10 per cent of the population has a median income that is three times higher than the overall median income in the country (Malawi Government, 2005: 146). Women, children and rural peasants are particularly affected by poverty. The average yearly income for male-headed households is the equivalent of about US$415 and that of female-headed households is around US$250 (ibid.). For their part, incomes for households in urban areas are almost three times higher than in rural households, and while 25 per cent of urban dwellers live in poverty, there is 56 per cent poverty in the rural population (Malawi Government, 2005). Limited access to land is one of the major causes of poverty. Around 31 per cent of parcels of land held by the more than 80 per cent of people who hold land under customary tenure are under 0.10 ha (Malawi Government, 2002a). The mean holding size shifted from 1.53 ha in 1968/69 to less than 0.86 ha in 1996/97. Estimates of future trends suggest that, by the year 2010, 82 per cent of smallholder households will have land holdings of less than 0.5 ha (Malawi Government, 2002a). While agriculture is given high priority in economic policy, agricultural development strategies have not led to the significant reduction of poverty. The Integrated Household Survey of 2004–05 estimates that 52.4 per cent of the population in Malawi is poor, with 22 per cent of the population being ‘ultra poor’ (Malawi Government, 2005). In practical terms, this means that about one in every five people are so impoverished that they cannot meet the minimum standard for the daily recommended food requirement (Malawi Government, 2005).

Land and Sustainable Development in Malawi The link between sustainable development and land is related to the centrality of land in the Malawian political economy. For the majority

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of Malawians, land is the most critical resource for livelihood. Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy. It employs about 80 per cent of the workforce and contributes over 80 per cent of foreign exchange earnings (Malawi Government, 2006a: 15). The vast majority of people in the country directly depend on the land to produce their own food, especially in rural areas, where 81 per cent of the active population aged over fifteen years are classified as subsistence farmers (Malawi Government, 2005: 95). The majority of Malawians also rely on land for their curative health needs. Due to the limited access to state healthcare facilities and for cultural reasons, most Malawians rely on traditional medicines that are mostly derived from plants and herbs growing on communal lands (Chanyenga, 1999). Land is crucial in meeting other social needs such as housing. For most Malawians, land provides not only space for building, but also the materials for constructing houses and other shelters. In this regard, it is important to note that over 66 per cent of houses in Malawi are constructed with ‘traditional’ materials (Malawi Government, 2005: 81). These materials mainly consist of tree poles, grass thatch and soil. The environmental dimensions of sustainable development are inextricably tied to land. This is evident from the stated objectives of the national environmental policy, which are dominated by land-based activities such as crop production, management of forestry resources, meeting national energy needs, tourism and mining (Malawi Government, 2004).

Critical Variables in Land Historically, three elements in the land question have determined its interface with the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. These are equality of access, security of tenure, and civil society participation in land policy formulation and implementation. The dynamics of the interaction of these three elements has been influenced by legal interventions by both the state and traditional political institutions. That the issue of equality of access to land has a direct impact on the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development in Malawi is widely acknowledged. It has been recognised that inequalities in access to land create significant constraints on the economic activities carried out by various social groups in Malawi. This has been the case

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most notably with respect to gender inequalities, and to inequalities based on social differentiation and between different regions of the country. There are clear gender inequalities in access to land which have, among other things, led to low levels of productivity among women (Malawi Government, 2006a). Such inequalities have also constrained agricultural and livestock production at the national level (Malawi Government, 1995). Similarly, inequalities related to different levels of poverty have also determined the relative contributions to agricultural production by the poorest groups. In 2002, for example, the ‘ultrapoor’ and non-poor held 0.16 ha of land per capita and 0.28 ha of land per capita, respectively (Malawi Government, 2002c). Predictably, this contributed to inequalities in levels of crop production, with mean production of maize per capita being 48.5 kg for the ultra-poor, 63.3 kg for the poor and 115.8 kg for the non-poor (Malawi Government, 2002c). Unequal access to land between people in different regions has led to the regionalisation of poverty. Thus, the concentration of the highest proportion of the poor in the Southern Region is explained in part by the small size there of per capita agricultural holdings, which in the last national census in 1998 were estimated at 0.178 ha, compared to 0.257 ha for the Central Region and 0.256 ha for the Northern Region (Malawi Government, 1998). The main reason for the regional inequalities in access to land relates to different population densities in the country’s three regions. In addition to equality of access, security of tenure is the other critical element in the nexus between land and sustainable development. In terms of the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, for example, it is now generally accepted that providing security of tenure is a precondition for facilitating the intensification of agricultural production and natural resource management. Thus, in Malawi, insecurity of customary land tenure has been said to be a disincentive against long-term economic investment in land (Kishindo, 2004: 216). Insecurity of tenure for primary resource users has been said to lead to the country’s biggest environmental challenge, namely the over-exploitation of biological resources and its negative impact on natural resource management (Seymour, 1998). Insecurity of land tenure also affects the social dimensions of sustainable development and the fulfilment of social needs. Tenure insecurity

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has been said to be a significant contributing factor to the creation and perpetuation of poverty (Malawi Government, 2006b). Since land is the only source of income for most Malawians, the poverty caused by lack of security of tenure for the majority of Malawians has in turn affected their access to health services, education and other social needs. This is particularly the case as these services become increasingly privatised, which limits access only to those who have incomes that enable them to pay. Sustainable development is also dependent upon the ability of land users to influence the formulation and implementation of land policy. This relates to the role of social movements and civil society groups in mobilising and agitating for increased access to land by historically disadvantaged groups, such as the landless, and for enhanced security of tenure for people whose tenure is precarious or non-existent, such as occupiers of customary land and tenant labourers. The potential of grassroots organisations to influence improvements in access and tenure has certainly been evident in some countries (Economic Commission for Africa, 2004). This potential has not been realised in Malawi for two reasons. First, there has been limited civil society organisation within rural Malawi because historically rural society has been directly emasculated by colonial and post-colonial land and agrarian policies (Minnis, 1998). Second, urban-based civil society has been dominated by non-governmental organisations that are too dependent on donations from governments and institutions that extol the virtues of liberal democracy and the benefits of capitalism. Consequently, little or no funding is granted to civil society activities that fundamentally challenge the current liberal democratic legal order and its underlying capitalist control of land (Kanyongolo, 2005).

Land Law Reform and Sustainable Development As in many countries, the law in Malawi has been used as a tool for the management and direction of the relationship between access to land, security of tenure, and public participation, on the one hand, and sustainable development, on the other. The specific ways in which the law has been used is best appreciated by briefly outlining the three major phases of the history of the land question, namely the colonial, the post-colonial period until 2002 and the period since then.

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Colonial land policies and law From 1891, when Malawi (then called Nyasaland) was proclaimed a British Protectorate, to the time of independence in the early 1960s, the power to make state policies and laws resided in a small clique of colonial officers and settlers. During this period, the main aim of land policy was the facilitation of white economic enterprise (Krishnamurty, 1972). Unlike the other territories in the region, however, Malawi was relatively unattractive to colonial settlement, mainly because it lacked mineral resources, good communications and a conducive climate (Macdonald, 1975). Nevertheless, the relatively few settlers who chose to lay claim to land in Nyasaland did so under a legal regime that sought to facilitate and enhance white economic enterprise. Colonial administrative law, therefore, did not seek to address the problems of access to land by the majority, insecurity of tenure and limited public participation in the formulation of land policy. On the contrary, the laws legitimised dispossession of the African peoples of their land, which they had historically used for meeting their social and environmental needs. Access to land for many Africans became limited, as a direct result of the application of laws that alienated their lands to settler landlords. For example, through the application of the law that granted Europeans private titles over African lands, as much as 15 per cent of the land area of the Southern Region was alienated to white settlers at the expense of the Africans, within less than 10 years from the start of colonial settlement (Nyasaland Government, 1960: 164). Although, in theory, from the 1910s the law allowed Africans to acquire private titles to land in the same way as the settlers, in practice, lawyers’ fees and other costs associated with obtaining leases made this prohibitively expensive (Nyasaland Government, 1910). Colonial land laws did not only reduce access to land for the majority Africans, but also directly affected their security of tenure. African tenure effectively depended on the benevolence of the colonial administration. However, such benevolence was not much in evidence. Various laws were formulated and applied, which aimed to extinguish the land tenure rights of African subsistence farmers and convert them into labourers for export crop production. Through the enactment and application of various laws under colonial administration, without participation by the Africans in their formulation, subsistence farmers who had been the original owners of the land were

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not only deprived of their lands but also effectively prohibited from seeking alternative sources of livelihood of their choice. They were compelled by law to work for the settlers as a form of labour rent. Among the laws that were used for this purpose was the Native Tenants (Private Estates) Ordinance (1917), which compelled blacks living on the plantations to pay rent in labour and not cash. When some peasants sought to become labour migrants in order to search for the best price for their labour, the state enacted and applied laws that limited labour migration. For example, the Native Labour Ordinance (1928) prevented the recruitment of black labour without government permission; the law was specifically aimed at preventing the depletion of the labour supply by recruiting agents for the South African and Rhodesian mining industry. Legislation introduced in the 1920s institutionalised racial inequality in land tenure between settlers and Africans. The legislation only safeguarded security of tenure for white settlers, with the exception of the Central Region where so-called visiting white tenants ‘possessed no security of tenure and lived in “temporary grass shacks”, lacking sanitation and “inferior to the native’s own home” ’ (McCracken, 1983). It is important to note that inequalities in access and relative insecurity of tenure of the original inhabitants of land in the Southern Region had been complicated further by the in-migration of large numbers of Lomwe immigrants from neighbouring Mozambique, which reached its peak in the early 1900s. Apart from affecting tenure relations and the labour market, the migration increased pressure on the environment – between 1926 and 1931 the immigrants were said to be responsible for increased deforestation and poor land management practices (Chirwa, 1994). However, there is also evidence that the immigrants accounted for significant improvements in agricultural production in the areas in which they settled (Chirwa, 1994). It is also worth noting that, as Vaughan (1982: 360) describes, the first Lomwe immigrants had been welcomed on to Crown Land by the Nyanja, with whom they quickly established kinship ties based on free and semi-servile marriages. As land availability decreased, however, the later immigrants were forced to reside on estates as tenants.

The 1920 Land Commission took the view that European settlement in Nyasaland was to be encouraged because it was the stimulant for development and progress (Nyasaland Government, 1920). The total area of land occupied by white European settlers increased

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from 13,757 acres in March 1919 to 118,506 acres by March 1921 (Gray, 1960). Since the land granted to settlers had hitherto been customary land, the increase in land available to settlers was accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the land that could be accessed by Africans. In 1946, another Land Commission was set up with the remit to report on the needs of blacks resident on the land that had been alienated to white settlers. Clearly, the most critical question to be investigated by this commission should have been the relative legal validity of the competing claims of tenure by the settlers and the black ‘residents’. The commission itself had recognised the lack of agreement between settlers and natives in the conceptualisations of land tenure to be a major land problem (Nyasaland Government, 1946). However, the commission preferred not to address the problem explicitly, dismissing such an undertaking as being of interest only ‘to the student of history or comparative jurisprudence’ (Nyasaland Government, 1946: 7). The effect of this indifference by the commission was, however, an implicit recognition of the racial status quo, namely the superiority of the tenure claims based on English law over those based on indigenous customary law. Most colonial settlement took place in the Southern Region of the territory. By 1959, the Southern Region had 6,745 whites, while the Central and Northern regions had only 1,720 and 535, respectively (British Government, 1959). Within the Southern Region, most settlers acquired land in the area known as the Shire Highlands, where, by 1946, they held over 51 per cent of land (Nyasaland Government, 1946). The Southern Region also had the highest population density of blacks. This was due to a number of reasons, including the Lomwe migration, and geographic and transport barriers that made migration to the other regions very difficult (Nyasaland Government, 1946). The rest of the territory remained relatively unaffected by colonial settlement. Therefore, the Southern Region would emerge as the major focus of conflicts over access to land and land tenure, and thus the main target for the application of land legislation.

Post-colonial reforms: The limits of de-racialisation The first significant land reform initiatives in the immediate postcolonial period were concerned with stimulating agricultural development through promoting individual property rights. It was argued in

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policy circles that only private land had value as a commodity on land markets, which could attract collateral for commercial credit. The normative tools for pursuing the policy objective of increased individualisation of title were various enactments by Parliament in 1967, including the Land Act, the Registered Land Act and the Customary Land Development Act. These laws sought to facilitate the conversion of customary into private tenure and led to a dramatic increase in the number of privately owned estates, mainly dedicated to producing tobacco (Mhone, 1992). The overall impact of the liberalisation of the market over the years was the steady reduction in the total amount of customary land (see Table 3.1). Coupled with increases in the population, the effect of these laws was to aggravate the problem of access to land and to institutionalise the inequalities in security of tenure between holders of customary and private land, respectively. While the reforms of 1967 were predicated on the assumption that the problem with land was customary ownership and its relative security of tenure, none of the enactments addressed the legacy of landlessness and land hunger bequeathed by pre-colonial and colonial land tenure regimes, particularly for women and peasants. Having purportedly de-racialised access to land and security of tenure at the formal level, the 1967 enactments created a normative framework for land ownership that obscured, rather than addressed, the class and gender character of the land question and, thereby, shielded class and gender inequalities in land access and tenure. Consequently, instead of facilitating the transformation of class and gender inequalities in property relations and reducing inequalities in access to land, the 1967 reforms only entrenched them further. The reforms also entrenched gender inequalities in access to land. The Registered Land Act of 1967, for Table .

Different types of land ownership in Malawi

Year

Customary

Public

Freehold

Leasehold

Customary loss

1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

7,459,278 7,455,190 7,446,705 7,427,128 7,398,284 7,388,516 7,384,484

1,640,594 1,639,931 1,641,607 1,641,993 1,654,953 1,655,113 1,655,961

52,058 52,065 52,016 52,016 53,903 53,903 53,903

296,811 301,555 308,413 327,603 341,601 351,209 355,492

13,057 4,088 8,484 19,577 28,843 9,768 4,032

Source: Malawi Government (1999, vol. III, p. 9).

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example, provided for a system of land registration that entitled ‘family heads’ to register customary land in their names. Within the context of the patriarchal nature of Malawian society, ‘family heads’ were almost invariably male. In effect, therefore, the act perpetuated rather than transformed unequal gender relations. The Registered Land Act failed to deliver economic and social benefits to peasants because the expected marketability of their land did not occur, despite the fact that the legislation facilitated the increased conversion of communal titles to land into individual ones held by ‘family heads’. In practice, the land that had been privatised under the Registered Land Act remained unattractive as collateral for loans on the financial markets (Nankumba and Machika, 1988). The benefits of the privatisation of customary land, therefore, accrued mainly to those who could afford to acquire leaseholds under the Land Act. This perpetuated the inequalities in land ownership. The various acts and the policies that complemented them facilitated the conversion of large tracts of customary land into privately held leasehold estates that gave their holders tenures of a typical duration of up to 99 years. The state further promoted the exploitation of such estates through preferential policy initiatives. As the government readily admitted, [m]uch customary land was converted to private leasehold land during this period. Malawi’s agricultural policies, particularly since the 1970s, [were] characterized by a marked bias favouring the estate sector in terms of pricing, production and marketing policies. (Malawi Government, 1995: 5)

The law was, therefore, responsible for facilitating inequalities in access to land. It also facilitated conditions in which economic production by commercial farmers was prioritised over subsistence farming aimed at meeting basic social needs. This view of development, which skewed it in favour of the economic at the expense of the social and environmental needs, was not conducive to the promotion of sustainable development. By the mid-1990s, many areas under customary tenure suffered from high population pressure and a decreasing capacity of the land to support this population. This had a negative impact on the environment and the prospects of sustainable development. According to the government, ‘[p]opulation pressure on customary land [was] most severe in the South and Central Regions with average population densities of 265 and 254 per square kilometre respectively’ (Malawi

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Government, 1995: 4). The lack of adequate land for smallholder farmers was aggravated by declining soil fertility. As the government acknowledged, because of this pressure on land, there is little opportunity for fallowing and rotation to restore soil fertility, and smallholders have expanded their cultivation to marginal, less fertile soils often on hill slopes which are not suitable for intensive cultivation. Inevitably, this expansion has led to rapid woodland depletion, soil degradation and erosion. If allowed to continue this could undermine the very basis of Malawi livelihood. (Malawi Government, 1994: 4)

The  reforms and accelerated privatisation of customary land In the early 1990s, Malawi underwent a historic political transition from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy. This was reflected in the adoption of a new constitution in 1994. In 2001, new land reforms were introduced, which resulted from the recommendations of the Land Policy Reform Commission that had been established in 1999. This has identified the key objectives of land reform in Malawi to be efficient use of land under market conditions, the infusion and internalisation of environmentally sustainable land use practices, security and equitable access to land without discrimination, and accountability and transparency in the administration of land matters. Following a relatively elaborate consultative process, the commission made recommendations that eventually formed the basis for the Malawi National Land Policy that was published by the government in 2002. Although the policy recognises that land is not only an economic, but also a political, social and political resource, its underlying logic is based on neoliberal conceptions of promoting land as a commodity to be exchanged on the market, and as a store for individual property rights. The policy explicitly states that social welfare problems have to be addressed ‘in a way that will not compromise the expectation of the market or ignore the realities of resource constraints’ (Malawi Government 2002b: 1). The land policy focuses on investment. It does not sufficiently examine the effect of insecurity of tenure on the social, economic and development needs of the poor. The orientation of the policy towards the interests of the market is also evident in its guiding principles, one

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of which explicitly asserts that the thrust of the policy ‘is to encourage citizens with the ability and resources to make productive and sustainable investments in land to have access and security of tenure’ (Malawi Government, 2002b: 4). The focus is not on securing access and tenure for those who lack the ability and resources to make investments. Yet, historical evidence shows that it is precisely these people who need better access to land, and increased tenure security. The policy is more radical than its predecessors in that it recognises land redistribution as one of the key aims of land reform. However, it suggests that this should be achieved through a process whereby the government will buy land from willing landowners and redistribute it to the landless. It does not explain what should happen in cases where landowners are not willing to sell their land, or how the beneficiaries of the programme will be identified. The policy envisages that the money for the process will come from ‘donors’. Clearly, a programme that relies solely on the goodwill of donors and landowners is unlikely to be sustainable.

Limitations of Land Law Any assessment of the impact of the law on the interplay between land and sustainable development depends on the particular definitions of law and sustainable development that are adopted for the purpose. Predominant definitions of sustainable development ground the concept in the principles of intra-generational equity and integration of environmental and developmental needs (Sands, 1995). The central principles of sustainable development provide a set of general standards by which the constituent elements of the land question may be assessed in terms of their effect on the balance between the needs of present and future generations and, second, on the trade-offs that necessarily characterise the relationship between economic development and environmental interests. Thus, the factoring of the land question into the prospects for sustainable development is subject to political interpretation since there is no single objective method of balancing the economic, social and environmental interests that come into play. It is equally true that land law is also an expression of particular subjective political choices, as has been demonstrated by the brief discussion of some of the laws that have been used to facilitate land reforms over the years. Land law does not govern the interplay between

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land and sustainable development in any objective manner. It is used as a tool to achieve specific goals. There is, therefore, no reason for expecting that the law will necessarily facilitate equality of access to land, increased security of tenure or any other goal that will promote sustainable development. The law may very well perpetuate or aggravate various problems. An overall examination of the general nature of current Malawian land law is illustrative of its limitations as a tool for optimising the contribution of land to sustainable development. The starting point is to note that the overarching policy goal of the government is economic growth (Malawi Government, 2006b). This means that within the framework of sustainable development, social and environmental goals are likely to be subordinated to economic ones. In practice, therefore, any role that land law can play in mediating the balance among the three dimensions of sustainable development will be conditioned by the prioritisation of economic development and is not predicated on equilibrium between them. The major reason why Malawian land law will not seek to affect the balance between economic and other objectives in any way other than that defined by policy lies in the fact that it is predicated on notions of neoliberal legalism. Fundamentally, these notions posit law as an apolitical and ahistorical phenomenon, which does not look beyond individuals as bearers of rights. As such, the law generally takes no interest in the racial, gender, class or any other identity of people whose interest it seeks to regulate, since all people are in theory equal before the law. This approach also does not facilitate social transformation because it ignores the inherent collectivity of economic and social claims such as those based on gender and class (Kanyongolo, 2004). Consequently, the law does not promote the interests of groups that have been historically disadvantaged in terms of access to land and security of tenure. On the contrary, the policy imperative of economic growth, which prioritises individual property ownership and liberalisation of land markets, is likely to militate against the use of the law to reverse the balance between individual economic rights and collective social and environmental rights. Another limitation is the restriction of the ability of groups disadvantaged by the current policy regime on land to use legal institutions to advance their interests. The major constraint is the restrictive legal rule of locus standi in Malawian courts, which effectively bars civil society groups from representing victims of injustice in the courts (Gloppen and

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Kanyongolo, 2007). The rule gives a right of audience only to the direct victims of the injustice. In practice, most of such people will not have the material, knowledge and other resources to access the formal justice system and can only do so through representative bodies. The rule restricting representative actions, therefore, effectively bars groups such as those who are disadvantaged by unequal access to land and insecure tenure from using the courts as a counter-weight against the pre-eminence of the economic growth agenda in legislative policy. Neoliberal theories replace the concept of class relations with that of civil society, which is seen as acting as a counter-lever that expresses popular aspirations against state interests. However, civil society is not inherently democratic (Sachikonye, 1995, 1998), and itself embodies various class and gender interests. It is neither an autonomous entity nor capable of being a neutral force in various struggles over land. In the context of the land question in Malawi, it is doubtful that civil society is a useful concept in understanding the dynamics of land reform, because the various class forces that it embodies make it incapable of acting as a check on the state in relation to the formulation and implementation of agendas for land reform. The more powerful and influential sectors within civil society are likely to encourage the state to implement policies that advance their parochial interests at the expense of those of the poor.

Prospects for Land Reform and Sustainable Development The official government policy is committed to achieving sustainable development through a number of very specific interventions. These interventions are spelled out in key policy documents, such as the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy, the National Environmental Policy and the National Land Policy. The government recognises that land is critical to the achievement of sustainable development. Consequently, it has articulated specific policies aimed at addressing the factors that constrain land from contributing effectively to meeting the economic, social and environmental needs of both present and future generations. A number of these policies recommend legal reforms. For example, the Malawi Growth and Strategy Paper calls for the enactment of land legislation to enhance tenure security and encourage investment in land (Malawi Government, 2006b). The National Gender Policy calls for substantive reforms in the law regulating land, including improvements regarding equitable access and security of tenure and a review

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of oppressive statutory practices and customary laws that perpetuate gender inequality in granting access to land and security of tenure (Malawi Government, 2000). Perhaps the most wide-ranging recommendations for reform of laws related to access to land and tenure are those contained in the National Land Policy (Malawi Government, 2002b), which calls for a comprehensive review of all land laws in order to achieve a number of aims, including • •

•

• •

to guarantee secure tenure and equitable access to land without any gender bias and/or discrimination to all citizens of Malawi; to guarantee that existing rights in land, especially customary rights of the smallholders, are recognised, clarified and ultimately protected in law; to promote community participation and public awareness at all levels to ensure environmentally sustainable land use practices and good land stewardship; to provide formal and orderly arrangements for granting titles; instil order and discipline into land allocation and land market transactions to curb land encroachment, unapproved development, land speculation and racketeering.

In assessing the prospects for land law reform, it must be borne in mind that the government has expressed scepticism about both market-led and welfarist reforms. In this regard, the Malawi Growth and Strategy Paper states that [m]ost of the past market-based policies and interventions have been inefficient, fiscally unsustainable and mostly benefiting the non-poor than the poor. Consequently, all the market-based policies of social protection were abolished under the economic reforms. The administered programs are fragmented, uncoordinated and are poorly targeted. On the other hand, direct assistance and social welfare transfers are small in size and limited in coverage, largely due to financial constraints. (Malawi Government, 2006b: 45)

Despite the statement, it is difficult to see how the government’s agenda for law reform can depart from the over-riding policy imperative of prioritising economic growth and the economic liberalisation since this is not only the overarching goal of current policy but also the basis on which virtually all donors have committed themselves to provide development assistance. It is likely, therefore, that the various reforms of the land law on equalising access to land and improving security of tenure will predominantly be market-led. This will necessarily

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entail that land laws will embody principles of neoliberal legalism that dichotomise law and politics and, therefore, focus on individual rights rather than class or group injustices. In the same vein, the legal reforms are unlikely to secure tenure in customary law, to any extent that obstructs the operation of the free market. Equally, any reformed law will probably maintain the restrictions that limit civil society groups from using the courts to advance the interests of those who cannot themselves access the courts. Within these constraints, it is unlikely that the law will facilitate the contribution of land to the achievement of sustainable development. An alternative approach to the reforms of land laws would be to predicate them on progressive legal theories that are critical of the purported objectivism and formalism of neoliberal legalism. Progressive theories that might be considered include Marxist, feminist and critical legal theories. Marxist legal theorists conceptualise private property relations as being exploitative and incapable of providing a basis for the achievement of social justice (e.g. see Gould, 1978; Nielson, 1985). Feminists (Smith, 1993; Cain, 1991; Smart, 1989) and critical legal theorists (Kennedy, 1976; Unger, 1976; Kelman, 1987; Hunt, 1990) echo at least part of the Marxist view by postulating the law as a system that perpetuates substantive inequalities that characterise individual and social relations, while obscuring those inequalities with the rhetoric of formal equality guaranteed for all. The progressive legal theories may also be used to explain the limits of law in transforming property relations. Marxist legal theory, for example, offers an analytical perspective that explains the relationship between the material and the legal normative realms in a political economy context, in which the former determines the latter (Cotterrell, 1992). From this perspective, the conflicts that dominate the land question in Malawi are a product of the social and economic conflicts inherent in the underlying economic structure – conflicts that liberal jurisprudence has so far proved to be incapable of resolving. In Malawi, the limitations of liberal jurisprudence are reflected in the constitution’s lack of a coherent normative reconciliation of the right to private property, which it upholds and protects, with the reality of other conceptions of property in Malawi’s pluralistic legal context, which are normatively dominated by customary laws. Land conflicts are conditioned not only by the tension between state and customary law(s), but also by the problematic nature of customary law itself. While customary law is often conceptualised as a system of

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autochthonous norms whose origins predate the establishment of the colonial state, it is also a construct of the colonial state. It was used as part of the indirect rule strategy of using apparently indigenous institutions to promote the imperialist agenda, and as an ideological weapon that enabled various dominant social groups to advance their class, gender and other interests (Chanock, 1991). The problematic nature of customary law necessarily means that customary land is itself a contested concept.

Conclusion Sustainable development is possible only when land reforms facilitate the elimination of inequalities in access to land substantively and not merely formally. Further, reforms must entrench security of tenure not only as a means to encourage economic production, but also as a way of safeguarding social and environmental interests, even against the demands or imperatives of economic policies, such as those aimed at facilitating economic growth. In resolving challenges of sustainable development, the law must aim at substantive changes in property relations because only that level of change can address the underlying structural inequalities relating to land which threaten the achievement of sustainable development. Legal reforms must address the particular vulnerability of women and rural peasants as groups. Sustainable development initiatives must be informed by history because inequalities in access to land and insecurity of tenure are not accidental but products of deliberate historical design. The law must strive to strike a balance among the various components of sustainable development without pre-positioning the pursuit of market-based economic growth above social and environmental goals.

4 The Struggle for Sustainable Land Management and Democratic Development in Kenya: A History of Greed and Grievances Karuti Kanyinga, Odenda Lumumba and Kojo Sebastian Amanor

At independence in 1963, Kenya inherited a highly skewed system of landownership that could not contribute to poverty reduction and sustainable development. Despite land being central to the decolonisation struggle, post-independence Kenya has retained, virtually unaltered, the colonial legal framework and ordinances for land administration, for the protection of private land rights and the regulation of access to land. This has strengthened the position of the state over the control of land by making it the ‘main landlord’. It has also served to entrench private ownership of land and in the process has ratified the titles of colonial settlers as absolute owners of expropriated land. This has sealed the fate of the landless and squatters, thereby intensifying the tenure insecurity of the poor. The current legislative framework reaffirms the history of land dispossession and land grabbing and ties this into ethnic factors. The history of land administration in Kenya has resulted in a skewed distribution of land resources that has left Kenya with complex and difficult land problems. In many respects, evolving inequalities in the structure of landownership remain a challenge to democratic development. In the contemporary framework for land reform and administration, there is a tendency to ignore the relationship between landownership, political economy and political factors, and to focus on market factors and the interactions between population increase and the economy. However, in Kenya, the landownership pattern is associated with political processes and with the creation of people without rights in land – the squatters. This

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chapter draws attention to the centrality of land to political struggles and shows how the tensions in the land question are rooted in the colonial period and its attempts to polarise land relations around class, ethnic factors and political affiliations. The chapter also discusses the various dimensions of the land management or land questions in Kenya. These include demands to satisfy land hunger among the landless and demands for a democratic, equitable and sustainable land distribution that is capable of increasing livelihood opportunities as well as redressing historical wrongs and re-establishing justice. Although the Kenyan state adheres to supporting objectives of sustainable development, these are largely defined in narrow technical terms and are largely contradicted by policies of land accumulation and land grabbing, which have existed since the colonial period. These policies have resulted in unequal access to land which undermines the ability of the majority of rural people to achieve sustainable livelihoods and results in growing impoverishment and violent conflicts over land. The logic of this process of land accumulation has resulted in the increasing privatisation of public lands, including forest reserves, which has led to popular opposition and struggles to defend livelihood rights. Thus, sustainable development in Kenya needs to be placed within this context of land accumulation, inequitable land relations and market-based land reforms, which have fuelled this process. The discussion underlines that equitable and sustainable access to land is essential for economic and democratic development in Kenya because of the agrarian nature of Kenyan society.

Land Expropriation, Colonial Law and Native Reserves Following the creation of the East African Protectorate in 1895, the British Foreign Office decided to promote the development of the area by encouraging settler colonisation. Legislative instruments were created that invested all ‘waste and unoccupied’ land in the Crown and enabled the colonial government to release this land to settler farmers on leases for 999 years. Land was effectively divided into ‘native reserves’ and areas scheduled for European settlement. A dual system of land administration developed based on what Mamdani (1996) refers to as citizens (settlers) and subjects (natives). Customary tenure governed the native’s relation to land. It was enforced by chiefs, who were appointed by the colonial government to help in the administration of the natives and in

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the consolidation of the power of the state. On the coast, the land question assumed a different dimension. In the territories under the sultan of Zanzibar, subjects were able to register private property rights, since the British had signed a treaty in 1908 with the sultan in which the British recognised the lands of the sultan and his subjects. Islamic law prevailed in this area, and it included recognition of individual rights to land. An individualised tenure regime with high levels of civil rights was limited to the ‘citizen’ white settlers (Mamdani, 1996). The land ordinances effectively vested the land rights of the African people in the Crown and transformed them into ‘tenants of the Crown’ (OkothOgendo, 1991). The state located the reserves in areas deemed unsuitable for European settlement, drew their boundaries along ethnic lines, and made laws that prevented subjects from residing in any reserve other than the one allocated to their ethnic group. This set the stage for the construction of ethnic identities and divisions and the administration of ethnic identity through the political control of land. The appropriation of land by the Crown created land shortages for the ‘subjects’ (Mbithi and Barnes, 1975), which resulted in future political crises linked to access and control of land. Buffer zones were created through European settlement on land disputed by various African peoples. Alienation of land followed in earnest in areas proximate to the highlands – parts of central Kenya and the Rift Valley (Sorrenson, 1967, 1968; Mbithi and Barnes, 1975; Alila et al., 1985; Lonsdale, 1992a). Forced labour recruitment and hut tax were used as mechanisms to acquire labour for settler farmers. Africans were forced to seek wage employment on European farms to meet tax obligations (Van Zwanenberg, 1975; Berman, 1990). Establishment of native reserves had profound consequences. Access to land became based on membership of individual families rather than extended clan- or kinship (Okoth-Ogendo, 1976; MigotAdhola and Bruce, 1994). Boundaries designed for the reserves made it impossible for people to acquire land rights elsewhere, because they prevented migrations into new frontier lands. This increased population pressures because it did not allow communities to adjust to the land carrying capacities through migration, as was the practice before colonial rule (Okoth-Ogendo, 1976, 1979). The effects of land alienation, especially in the Kikuyu areas of central Kenya, triggered unofficial migrations to the Rift Valley. These added to the mass of squatters who had settled on European farms and estates in

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the period between 1918 and 1928 during the first wave of displacement (Kitching, 1985). The high numbers of squatters on settler farms led to a review of labour regulations. This resulted in more displacements or evictions from settler farms, and increased the social unrest in the reserves and the white highlands (Kitching, 1985; Bates, 1989). The earliest interventions that addressed the problems of land pressures in the reserves were driven by conservation objectives. However, these engendered mass political unrest as those in the reserves had no adequate means to secure a livelihood and/or were coerced into conservation programmes. The possibility of looking for additional land to resettle surplus population was discounted by the colonial state, since expansion of the reserves would have led to encroachment on areas scheduled for the settlers. A Settlement Board was set up and helped resettle the landless. The policy of resettlement failed ‘because there was no high priced cash crop suitable for marginal land used for resettlement’ (Smith, 1976: 124). The resettlement schemes failed to address problems of access to land. They were not a solution to the congestion in the reserves and the declining land carrying capacity, both of which were central to the growing unrest. Among the growing class of aspiring capitalist farmers, demands for more individualised land holdings in the reserves and for title deeds grew from the 1920s. The idea of privatisation of land had been debated for decades by both the administration and African political organisations, such as the Kikuyu Central Association. However, the colonial state feared the political repercussions of such reforms and believed that privatisation would entrench class divisions and possibly arouse class conflict in the countryside and weaken administrative controls through chiefs, and that the conflict would later spread to settler areas. It was also feared that this would occasion mass displacements, especially of ahoi or tenants who would then seek to settle in areas scheduled for settler farming (Njonjo, 1981). The problems in the reserves and the colonial state’s neglect of African agriculture in favour of the settlers led to political unrest and economic crisis, and eventually to a political uprising, the Mau Mau resistance movement, organised around the issue of control of land. These problems could only be addressed by paying attention to the Africans’ demands for more suitable land and for greater integration as producers into the expanding economy. The state found a quick solution to the unrest: land tenure reform in the reserves.

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The Kenyan struggle for independence, thus, was about secure access to land as a development concern. Secure access to land provided the most viable and realistic opportunity for the majority poor to improve their livelihoods and reduce their vulnerability. From that period, issues around control of land continued to occupy a central position in Kenya’s development agenda. Debates around land policy reforms continue to shape discourses on poverty reduction and sustainable development on the argument that alteration of the structure of landownership is critical for sustainable and democratic development in Kenya.

African Agriculture and Land Tenure Reform The rise of the Mau Mau resistance movement altered government policy thinking. The problem of land had to be addressed to arrest the spread of discontent. Previously, it was feared that such a reform would occasion unprecedented violent rebellion and conflicts, particularly in the densely populated Kikuyu areas in central Kenya. However, in the context of the political emergency created by the Mau Mau movement, a plan of land reform was executed with urgency in 1954. Swynnerton’s Plan to Intensify the Development of African Agriculture in Kenya diagnosed the problem of agriculture in the reserves as rooted in the system of land tenure. Swynnerton argued that the tenure system, which was characterised by diffuse rights and some form of collective control over land in the reserves, needed reform. This reform needed to provide African farmers with security of tenure through indefeasible title to encourage them to invest their labour and profits into the development of their farms. The plan envisaged that farmers with registered land would be able to use their titles to mortgage land and gain loans from government and other approved agencies for farm improvement (Swynnerton, 1954) and by that lay a foundation for economic development in the reserves. Swynnerton, nonetheless, warned that evolving land markets would create landlessness since they would ‘enable energetic and rich Africans to acquire more land and bad ones less land thus creating landed and landless classes’, which is a ‘normal step in the evolution of a country’ (Swynnerton, 1954: 10). The plan concluded that the reserves could only have an ‘agrarian revolution’ in which they would experience significant economic growth, if the customary tenure constraints were removed and replaced

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with an alternative system based on private landownership in the form of individualised holdings, such as obtained in the ‘settler sector’ (Kiamba, 1994). The Swynnerton Plan had the objective of introducing private property rights in land by first consolidating individual holdings and then registering them as freeholds. The procedure for registration, which continues to apply even at present, began by first ascertaining (adjudication of ) individual rights in land, that is, ‘recording existing rights’ over different plot fragments. This was then followed by aggregation (consolidation) of such fragments into single units on which a title was registered. The Swynnerton idea of land consolidation meant that some individuals could be moved away from the area they had occupied for many years to new areas, in spite of their individual investments in the holdings. This form of displacement, locally referred to as songa songa, became the source of incessant disputes, some of which held up the reform programme. This procedure has remained in practice, with the exception that consolidation does not apply to all areas. Adjudication on a ‘where is basis’ was introduced later (in the late 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s) to facilitate the reforms in areas where land adjudication had not started and in areas where consolidation had not been completed. The Swynnerton Plan was implemented in central Kenya (the heartland of Mau Mau) but with different consequences from those envisaged. More peasant farmers (non-master farmers) began to grow cash crops contrary to the expectations that this was to be confined to master (wealthy) farmers, who, it was assumed, would evolve alongside the developing land markets following land registration. This led to a markedly skewed distribution of land. The chiefs, loyalists and the wealthy acquired much land while the ‘lower social groups’ lost considerable amounts of land especially if they did not participate in the adjudication of their rights. Studies continue to show that the reform generated disputes rather than resolved them, and that it decreased people’s tenure security (Haugerud, 1983; Fleuret, 1988; Shipton, 1988; Mackenzie, 1989; Kanyinga, 1996; Wanjala, 2000). The exercise itself was – and continues to be – open to abuse by those involved in defining the existing structure of rights. Furthermore, in its initial stages, most of the militant Mau Mau fighters, who were in detention, lost their land rights and user rights in the former mbari or communal land to chiefs and other loyalists (Sorrenson, 1967; Lamb, 1974).

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Several political reasons hastened consolidation and registration. It was expected that the plan would create a stable class of yeomen or relatively wealthy farmers, too busy in their farms to participate in politics or collaborate with the rebels. The reform would establish an African political leadership whose economic interests would ensure their continued interest in cooperating with British interests rather than rallying around radical African nationalist leaders with their demands for independence (Harbeson, 1973). The reform did not resolve the various land questions. The Swynnerton Plan did not attempt to address the issues of land alienation, the need for redistribution, the inequalities in ownership between the settlers and Africans and inequalities between and within the various African communities. However, in addition to the reform of land tenure in the reserves, the government introduced in the early 1960s a parallel programme for ‘re-Africanisation’ in the white highlands. This programme aimed at altering the racial structure of landownership in the highlands as a way of addressing some of the ethnic and political dimensions to the land question complex. Accordingly, the government established several settlement schemes for the landless who had been displaced by reform of land tenure in the reserves, and for some of the squatters, who were already occupying parts of the highlands. A land purchase programme was also introduced to provide for the turning over of some of the settler farms intact to African farmers in a way that did not affect the stable structure of agricultural production (Leys, 1975; Njonjo, 1981; Leo, 1984). Both the reform of land tenure and the ‘re-Africanisation’ programme had profound effects on the nation-building project, particularly because they allowed the land question to remain at the centre stage of some of the main political events in the country. Both considerably shaped the politics of transition and have continued to shape local and national politics ever since. Colonial interventions in land have resulted in underlying tensions within Kenya’s land question. Expropriation and alienation became the basis for the construction of national and ethnic identities emanating from the control of land, and gave the land question both a national and an ethnic dimension. The imposition of alien land laws enabled the state to control land to meet narrow interests. However, land reform has encouraged disputes over multiple rights and the emergence of class dimensions of the land question. Since independence, the colonial framework for land has continued to exist. Enormous powers of control over land that had been vested

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in the state through the governor were transferred to the president to hold in trust for the state. This allowed the president to make grants of land both to individuals and to corporate interests. Concentration of power over land in the presidency and the central government reflected tendencies towards centralisation and state control of political and economic activities. The legislation did not seek to democratise structures governing the control of land nor did it invest powers over land in popular institutions. The result was that both the presidency and land became increasingly intertwined in the exercise of political power at the expense of popular democratic institutions. Colonial land policies evolved three distinct categories of land that have remained intact in the post-colonial political setting. The first consisted of government land. This was defined by the 1902 Crown Lands Ordinance as all public land subject to the control of Her Majesty’s protectorate, and all land that was acquired for the public service, including unutilised land reserved for future use by the government itself or by the public. The second category included the Trusts Lands, which were defined and gazetted in 1926 for use by residents of the different native reserves. At independence in 1963, the government declared all the Native Lands, Reserves, Temporary Reserves and/or leasehold areas, which had been set aside in 1926 for use by the different tribes, to be Trusts Lands. This land is held under the trusteeship of local governments (County Councils) for the benefit of the residents of the respective districts. This category of land is occupied and utilised within the confines of customary rules. However, it changes status when it is registered to individual residents. The third category comprises registered or private land. This includes land under lease or freeholds held by corporate interests. It includes land owned by companies, land-buying cooperatives and state parastatals. Private land may be owned privately in freehold or in leaseholds after registration and issue of titles, following land consolidation and adjudication. Freehold title gives a holder absolute ownership of land. It has no restrictions regarding use or occupation. Leaseholds, on the other hand, provide ownership for a definite term of years. Leases are granted by the government for government land, by the County Councils for Trusts Lands, and by individuals owning freeholds. The maximum length of a lease is 999 years for agricultural land and 99 years for urban plots, although it is common to find 33-year leases (Republic of Kenya, Ministry of Lands and Housing, 1991: 18). Ownership of all categories of land is not absolute in the real sense of the word. The state owns the

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‘radical title’ and has an unlimited control over access to land. The doctrine of ‘eminent domain’ allows the government to compulsorily acquire land for public purposes provided it compensates the owners. Individual ownership of land is limited to a piece of land only as far as the state has no immediate interest in it. On the whole, the state remains a central actor in the structure of landownership at both the local and the national levels. It regulates both access to and control of land in both rural and urban areas.

Politics of Land, Uhuru and After: The Political Impasse At the time of transition to uhuru (Kiswahili for independence), the land question directly influenced the debate on the constitutional and economic arrangements that Kenya was to adopt.1 The constitutional debate revolved around whether Kenya should adopt a unitary or a federal form of government. The economic debate centred on whether the market or political processes should determine the allocation of basic resources. Central to these issues was the question of the status of colonial settlers, and what was to become of landed property on the coast and in other parts of the country (Harbeson, 1973; Bates, 1989). In these debates two positions emerged, which were based on political alliances founded on ethnic identities rather than political ideology. Ethnic group interests in land and the approach to the land question that these groups articulated spilled over into the formation of political parties with ethnic land interests forming a major component of political support. The Kenya African National Union (KANU) was formed around a Kikuyu–Luo alliance. The Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) gained support from the KAMATUSA (Kalenjin, Maasai and related Turkana and Samburu pastoralists group) and other groups such as the Mijikenda and Luhya, while the New Kenya Party got support from the settlers. Divisions around the land issue became the foundation for different projects of ‘national independence’. On the one hand, KANU preferred a unitary form of government and a stay on further land reforms until political independence was obtained and pending the release of Jomo Kenyatta – their leader – from detention. On the other hand, KADU, because of the fear of domination by the Kikuyu and the Luo, preferred a federal system of government (Majimbo) with regional assemblies whose most significant duty would be administration of land matters. KADU saw this as a check on the

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land-hungry Kikuyu squatters who were already settled in the white highlands to which the KAMATUSA groups had historical territorial claims (Harbeson, 1973; Bates, 1989). Internally, both parties were deeply divided over the land reforms. In KANU, a radical faction rooted in a nationalist position on land championed nyakua (Kiswahili for seizure, referring to the wholesale seizure of expropriated land) in the white highlands to settle the landless and squatters who had lived in the Rift Valley for decades. For them, the resettlement schemes of 1961 did not make sense since squatters and other landless people were required to pay deposits and acquire loans to buy the farms. Opposed to the radical wing were groups of liberals and proto-capitalists who sought to promote a free market in land – from a liberal viewpoint to promote more rapid economic growth and from the proto-capitalist perspective to provide a basis for greater security for accumulation. Those in the radical wing included Oginga Odinga (a Luo), who later became the country’s vice president, and Bildad Kaggia (a Kikuyu). Odinga and Kaggia advocated nyakua, warning that ‘the settlers must realise that the land they are farming is not their property’ (Harbeson, 1973: 90–101). KANU’s liberal group, led by Tom Mboya and Kenyatta, preferred a cautious approach to the land question, fearing that any radical departure from the existing reforms would jeopardise economic growth by antagonising relations with foreign investors. The liberals also placed preference on a unitary and centralised government because of the desire to protect Kikuyu gains in land outside their heartland. KADU represented a number of numerically small pastoralist groups who wanted to protect their land from encroachment by other groups. Their leaders feared that the small ethnic groups that they represented might be in danger of domination by the larger alliance and proposed a federal system of government (Majimbo) with regional assemblies as a plausible defence against KANU. Led by Ronald Ngala and Daniel Arap Moi, they made it clear that they wanted a constitutional provision that guaranteed their ethnic groups fair compensation for already effectively expropriated land. They also emphasised that respect for property rights in land should apply to individuals as well as ethnic communities (Harbeson, 1973: 115). They got support from the settlers’ New Kenya Party. This made their bargaining position stronger in the pre-uhuru constitutional deliberations – the Lancaster House Conference; KADU secured a federal system of government.

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The geographical distribution of the major ethnic groups and their sub-divisions increasingly influenced the drawing of the boundaries of each of the jimbo (a federal unit) and the administrative districts in the jimbo. The evolving structure also increasingly reflected the geographical coverage of the main parties in terms of political support: each of the jimbo was identified with a particular political party. KADU won these concessions after KANU politicians reluctantly agreed to them fearing that further disagreements would delay independence. Following these concessions, KADU politicians in the regional assemblies became increasingly aggressive in pushing the land claims of their constituents against those of outsiders, by which they meant the Kikuyu. The Nandi and Tugen Kalenjin sub-ethnic groups pressed for their eviction and threatened them with land seizures (Bates, 1989). This divided the nationwide independence struggle further. The country assumed uhuru in 1963 without a resolution of the land question. KANU emerged as the dominant party and KADU dissolved and shelved their interest in the land question. However, interparty conflicts emerged within KANU between the radical and liberal wings, which led to the break-up of the party into rival factions. After formal independence, the radical faction in KANU activated the nyakua position. This began to tear the party apart. While in the past they could threaten to defect to KADU if their demands were not met, this was no longer a viable strategy. The radical faction, including non-Luo members such as Kaggia, remained opposed to all forms of accumulation from above, while the liberals pursued a capitalist path of development based on state-led accumulation from above through extra-economic coercion. The radicals sought to advanced the cause of those who had not benefited from the state under colonialism – the nationalists who had lost their land while in detention or had their land forfeited under the Land Forfeiture Act of 1953 (Sorrenson, 1968; Lamb, 1974). Other divisions also affected KANU. Shipton (1988) argues that the Luo became increasingly concerned over their region’s relatively weak economic position and for their having not benefited from the promise of agricultural development under the Swynnerton Plan program. The liberals won against radical demands for redistribution. Consequently, in 1966, the radical faction resigned their positions in government and formed an opposition political party, the Kenya Peoples Union (KPU). However, in the ‘little general election’ that followed, several of them, including Kaggia, lost to KANU candidates.

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Several factors contributed to the defeat of the KPU in spite of its popular stand. The state mobilised all its political and financial resources against the KPU. The president, cabinet ministers and senior government officers including the Provincial Administration campaigned for KANU candidates, and portrayed the KPU as having betrayed Kenyan unity. KANU launched a personal attack upon Odinga, whom they accused of’ establishing a personality cult to promote his own position and power. The government and KANU portrayed the KPU as a clique that owed its existence to Odinga and had no national legitimacy (Gertzel, 1970). The contest for political power had strong ethnic overtones – Luo versus Kikuyu. However, the liberals around Kenyatta, including Tom Mboya, a Luo, cast the party as one comprising dissidents with subversive objectives which would undermine ‘the young nation state’s’ efforts to meet post-independence expectations (Gertzel, 1970). In 1969, the liberal faction within KANU succeeded in banning the KPU and detaining several of its leaders. This paved the way to a de facto one-party state. By 1970, therefore, the radical nationalists who challenged the resettlement schemes were contained and the state carried out the land policies without any organised challenge. The political conflict at the time of transition to independence, and the overwhelming defeat of the radicals, had two significant outcomes. First, a constitutional arrangement evolved that favoured the sanctity and inviolability of private property rights and that provided protection from deprivation of property without compensation. Second, it resulted in the adoption, without alterations, of the legal framework on which the colonial reform of land tenure was based. These outcomes, and the protection of private property in particular, encouraged unlimited accumulation of land in the ‘scheduled areas’ – the highlands that had been set aside for settler occupation – by the liberals in KANU (and former KADU elites) for it allayed the fears that accompanied the radicals’ threats to confiscate land in the settler sector. The liberals assumed central positions in the government from where they, in turn, influenced the direction of economic policy and ensured that private property rights retained a sound foundation in law. The liberals were keen not to disturb the legal framework on economic development laid down by the colonial state. They were convinced that consolidating property rights in land would lead to the intensified agricultural productivity on which the economy had to depend. Finally, the dissolution of KADU led to a centralised form of government in which most of the powers, including regulation of

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access to land, were concentrated in the hands of the president and executed through the Provincial Administration.

The Kenyatta Regime: Freezing the Land Question Within the highlands, land reform took place in the context of funding from the British government, the World Bank and the West German government, from the 1960s onwards. Land reform was centred on the Million Acre Settlement Programme. This was based on purchase of land from European settler farmers and its redistribution to the landless and other land-hungry groups. A land purchase programme for the ‘economically able Africans’ was also introduced (Leys, 1975; Wasserman, 1976; Okoth-Ogendo, 1981; Leo, 1984). The resettlement schemes and the land purchase programmes did not resolve land hunger; neither did they considerably alter the land question. This was partly because the demand for land was much larger than the amount that had been made available. The redistribution of land was also carried out in favour of aspiring capitalist farmers and the politically influential. In the redistribution that followed, grants of large land holdings were given mainly to politicians allied to Kenyatta, bureaucrats and other men of influence, including police officers. In Nakuru alone, in the late 1970s, there were 40 individually owned African farms with over 500 acres each and on mixed farmland (Hunt, 1984: 287–8; Bradshaw, 1990: 1–28). In other cases, the peasants in high-density schemes were bought out by the urban elites who had the means to raise the required deposits (Harbeson, 1973). The resettlement schemes resulted in the concentration of landownership (Njonjo, 1981). Other schemes were also introduced – the Haraka (Kiswahili word for ‘hurry’ meaning haste in buying and subsequent settlement) and the Shirika (land-buying cooperative) schemes. The schemes became a focus of political and urban elites, and political careers were built on the management of land purchase groups. Officials in these organisations mobilised support in return for positions in government offices (Wanjohi, 1984). The schemes became centres for struggles between the landed and landless groups. Njonjo (1981) and Wanjohi (1984) have noted instances where the landed Kikuyu endeavoured to expropriate more land from these schemes through state-backed extra-economic coercion. This aroused intense divisions among even members of the Kikuyu ethnic group and between them and other ethnic groups and sub-groups.

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Leaders in the land-buying companies who found their way into national political positions used their new power to weaken the support of their rivals or even to undermine the organisation of the land-buying companies if they did not further their own interests. Mismanagement and embezzlement of funds featured in most of the land-buying companies. Many of them were faced with liquidity problems and could not sub-divide holdings to shareholders. The resettlement schemes provided grounds for further interethnic conflicts, around the amount of land apportioned to the Kikuyu in the eastern part of the Rift Valley and elsewhere because the Kikuyu had been identified by the administration as the most land-hungry group. Bates (1989), on the other hand, argued that violent conflict was averted because of the mixture of motives surrounding KADU’s approach to the land issue, and because the structure of political institutions governing land resettlement programmes enabled Kenyatta and other national politicians to exploit them to disorganise regional political opposition. Due to their wealth, numbers and the support they enjoyed from the Kenyatta-led state, the Kikuyu found their way into schemes meant for other ethnic groups. They could be found as far away as in the Lamu and Kilifi settlement schemes on the coast, in Trans Nzoia and in Uasin Gishu. At independence, the British government entered into an agreement with Kenyatta’s government and the sultan regarding control of land in the Mwambao. Kenyatta conceded to the sultan’s demands for recognition of private land rights on the coast and promised to adjudicate and register such rights where they were not adjudicated, notwithstanding the negated land rights of the indigenous groups – the Mijikenda and ex-slaves. This agreement intensified the squatter problem by giving full recognition to the freehold titles acquired through the 1908 Land Titles Ordinance. The evolving constitution also protected property and existing land rights irrespective of how they had been acquired and in spite of protest from radical politicians. Both the agreement and independence thus concluded the process of creating the squatter phenomenon: they transformed the Mijikenda into squatters or ‘tenants of the Arabs and the Swahili landowners’. The transfer of rights to land from Europeans to Africans in the former white highlands was not based on historical claims of ownership. Land was sold as private property to willing buyers, financed by loans from the government. The Swynnerton Plan addressed neither the potential of reactivation of historical territorial claims by the different ethnic groups nor the multiple claims on the same holding by

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different individuals. Thus, both the resettlement schemes and the changes in land tenure intensified disputes over land. Disputes over land in turn continue to undermine local-level development initiatives especially in trusts land and areas where individualisation is going on. Furthermore, the land purchase programme evolved a situation in which economic elites bought large tracts of land. Some of these remain idle and under-utilised; they exist alongside small patches of land held by land-hungry families and used for subsistence purposes.

The Moi Regime: Thawing the Land Question Moi ascended to the presidency in 1978 after the death of Kenyatta. Although the new president promised to pursue carefully the policies initiated by Kenyatta – and the latter’s political path – Moi’s political upbringing in KADU during the decolonisation struggle and KADU’s pursuance of regional and ethnically biased land policies marked him out as different from Kenyatta, whose policies had swept the land question under the carpet. Moi was keen to pick up the land question once again in line with KADU’s political agenda in the early 1960s. With the ascension of Moi to power, therefore, regional conflicts over land and the unresolved nature of the land question were used as a political tool to build a support base and contain political opponents. Moi evolved a strategy that aroused new political interests among his Kalenjin and related KAMATUSA constituencies. The strategy involved ‘resuscitating’ the Majimbo project (Ngunyi, 1996) and subsequent reactivation of the ethnic differences that had the potential to evict Kikuyu from the Rift Valley. This resulted in ethnic conflicts and eviction of some Kikuyu and other non-Kalenjin families from the region following the reintroduction of multi-party politics in the early 1990s. While this strategy had the effect of bolstering Moi’s political support among the Kalenjin and related communities, it turned into a tool for containing political opponents, and the Kikuyu in particular. But KAMATUSA’s demands for more land and fears over the Kikuyu presence were difficult to pursue after the falling out with the Luhya leaders, who had provided the numeric strength in KADU to champion further distribution of land. Furthermore, differences among the agricultural and pastoralist Kalenjin (and Maasai) provided another base for the suspension of these demands. Upon appointment to the vice presidency in the late 1960s, Moi had to contain his Kalenjin group

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in order to enhance his new national status and to give sense to the principle of ‘collective responsibility’ in parliament, where he served as the ‘leader of government business in Parliament’. However, upon his ascendancy to presidency after the death of Kenyatta in 1978, Moi was as interested in the suspended land question as he was while in KADU in the 1960s. Most of his public pronouncements underscored this: they touched on controls over land acquisition ‘in order to protect popular interests’. These pronouncements had an important consequence in leading to the closure of frontiers in the Rift Valley where land-hungry groups migrated to acquire land. From as early as 1980, in the process of constructing his independent bases of political support Moi began to order rapid individualisation of farms owned by land-buying groups (cooperatives, companies and partnerships) and registration of titles for the individual shareholders. Again, this closed avenues for further entry into the heartland of Rift Valley by land-hungry groups, such as the Kikuyu. Moi’s ascendancy to the presidency had the consequence of reactivating KADU’s agenda that inter-twined ethnic interests with territory and control of land. This agenda, nonetheless, was relaunched in a radically transformed economic and political context. Notably, the economy was firmly under the control of African elites and the Kikuyu bourgeoisie in particular. Some of them had ascended to control the former white highlands and had entrenched themselves in the agrarian fields. Politically, a unitary form of government obtained following a gradual dismantling of the Majimbo (federal) structures in the 1960s. The constitution also firmly protected the institution of individual property rights wherever established. Faced with a new context and new land questions, Moi integrated the land question into his administrative mechanisms and began to use it as a tool for building political loyalties and punishing dissent. Three interrelated strategies were used alongside political administration of the society: (1) use of land for purposes of political patronage, (2) ethnicisation and politicisation of the land question and (3) use of the land question to manage political reforms and the politics of transition.

Political Patronage, Land Grabbing and Livelihood Struggles During the Moi regime, there was an increasing tendency to use land as a patronage resource, in which supporters pressed for grants of farmlands in

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the Rift Valley and on the coast, where there were vast amounts of government land. This appropriation of land for Moi’s support base intensified in the mid-1980s in the context of deepening economic recession, when his support base began to decline. Moi turned to resource-rich (agricultural) parastatals where he placed his own people in managerial positions to act as political gatekeepers, thereby tapping the flow of resources for patronage purposes. However, with the imposition of structural adjustment conditionalities, it became increasingly difficult to use parastatals as conduits for the distribution of patronage, particularly with constraints on agricultural subsidies (Klopp, 2000). At the same time, structural adjustment conditions eroded the legitimacy of the state because of the inability of the state to deliver services. Political support declined significantly especially among ethno-regional areas outside Moi’s area. In order to build new forms of political support and prevent dwindling of what was in place, Moi shifted towards the use of public land to reward ethnic elites from communities he considered as strategically important. In the meantime, the late 1980s were marked by declining returns from public agricultural economic institutions – a decline that was stimulated by both low prices of primary commodities in the international market and farmers’ lack of interest in the main cash crops due to political control over their marketing. Economic growth declined considerably and the state’s capacity to support social development initiatives weakened. This in turn impacted on regime legitimacy. This ensued with land as the main patronage resource for use in maintaining important ethnic elites who in turn became the avenue through which Moi and KANU would reach the base of the society for political support. From the early 1990s and with pressures for political liberalisation, appropriation of government land by ethno-political elites who were close to Moi took on an even faster pace as Moi struggled to retain a clientele of loyalists, a clientele that was otherwise rapidly disintegrating. The elites expropriated public land in urban and rural areas. Klopp (2000) has documented the interconnection between land grabbing and accumulation of political power. Land grabbing has used three interrelated strategies. First, public land was allocated to state corporations ostensibly for public purposes. Parts of the land would later be deliberately excised for allocation to powerful individuals. The second strategy involved excising public land and allocating parts to individuals, who would in turn sell the same land to public corporations at prices way above the market rate. The aim here was to generate maximum benefit and resources to support the maintenance of loyal constituencies and to

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support a search for new forms of support from among the elites representing strategic communities. The third strategy involved the use of force to evict squatters settled on public land. Squatters would be evicted with the support of the local provincial administration and their land would be allocated to influential elites. The latter would then sell to new buyers. Klopp (2000) describes incidences of people organising spontaneously to defend their livelihood interests, and of civil society organisations taking up the struggle to preserve public lands. The poor would organise to bring down fences and to fight the armed police, who were brought in by political elites to guard their ‘patronage resource’ – illegally acquired land. Forested public land or forest reserves have been a central target for political patronage and attendant land grabbing by bureaucrats and politicians. For instance, the Karura Forest Reserve was originally gazetted in 1932 and covered an area of 1,062 ha. Between 1964 and 1996, various excisions took place, but their number increased dramatically between 1996 and 1998, and half of the remaining forest reserve was allocated to political elites who later sold the land ‘private developers’. This was achieved by ostensibly allocating public land to state organisations, then modifying the boundaries through official surveys, and illegally transferring excised lands to developers. For instance, in the case of the Ngong Road Forest, in 1996 a title deed was issued to the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury to hold in trust for the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. A portion of the forest reserve was excised for the Department of Prisons, which provided the pretext for allocating large areas to private developers (KNCHR and KLA, 2006). In the case of the Nakuru/ Olenguruone/Kiptagish Extension Forest, a settlement scheme was established in 1997 to resettle the Ogiek forest dwellers on 1,812 ha of forest land. However, in the process of surveying and allocating the land, most of it was allocated to wealthy individuals and companies. Only a small number of Ogiek received land. The most significant development in this forest reserve was a tea plantation owned by former president Moi. While tea zones were originally allocated around forest reserves to act as a buffer and to prevent illegal encroachments into forests by local communities, 2,588 ha of land was reallocated to this estate. Yet landlessness is high in Nakuru and existing farm sizes are small, averaging about 1 ha (KNCHR and KLA, 2006). In the Maasai Mau Forest Reserve, several thousand people living within the perimeter of the forest reserve were evicted in 2006. The decision to evict was praised by conservationists as an important step

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in saving the country’s forests. However, after the eviction the forests were re-surveyed and demarcated. About 3,000 ha were quietly excised for future allocation to private developers (Mathangani, 2006). Pastoral people have endured the worst aspects of political patronage and land appropriation from the 1990s. Since the colonial period, the government has favoured wildlife conservation over pastoralism, and many pastoral peoples have found their grazing areas converted into game parks. At present, at least 90 per cent of protected areas such as national parks, wildlife reserves and gazetted forests have been carved out of the best grazing areas of pastoral groups. Many pastoralists have been evicted from their territories to create room for new forms of development. Evictions intensified from the 1980s as the Moi regime began to promote wildlife tourism. The expansion of tourism facilities and game parks resulted in the eviction of pastoralists and violent conflicts resulting in deaths. The controversy over the forced evictions compelled the Kenya Wildlife Services to introduce a policy of participatory conservation. However, this failed to address the land rights of pastoral people. New land reforms in pastoralist areas emerged with new challenges. Notably, the government introduced the policy of land privatisation and group ranches. This reform of the structure of rights among the pastoralists enabled rich pastoralists to accumulate more land at the expense of the poor members of the community. New forms of class differentiation emerged among pastoralists. The Moi regime has influenced the land question in another important way: politicisation and ethnicisation of various aspects of the land question. As already mentioned, upon ascending to the presidency, Moi reactivated Majimbo and its ethnic content of the land question in order to address the grievances of his former KADU membership. The discourse particularly revolved around local demands for land that had been given out to non-local people. Owing to its political nature, the discourse spread to the Rift Valley and coast region where there are large multi-ethnic settlements. This resulted in politically instigated ethnic land clashes between members of the former KADU groups and immigrant populations in the Rift Valley, and on the coast between the Mijikenda and upcountry Kikuyu and Luo immigrants. Large groups of Kikuyu and Luhya families were evicted from the Rift Valley, their titles to land notwithstanding. These clashes took place (and continue to simmer) in areas where migrant ethnic groups settled during the colonial period, such as in the middle of the former white highlands and scheduled areas in Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia and Olenguruoni.

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Many of the ethnic conflicts around land and illegal allocations of public land take place around election years, which reinforces the view that land is used to promote political reward and patronage (Kenya Land Alliance, 2006). In the run-up to the multi-party elections of 1992, up to 300,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the Rift Valley Province, and violence in the coastal regions caused 120,000 people to abandon their homes and caused the deaths of about 4,000 people.2 These conflicts often have a political origin, in which politicians mobilise their supporters around land rights and ethnic disputes (Birongo, 2006). In these ethnic conflicts, there has been considerable loss of life and property, particularly of the poor. Wealthier people often gain from being allocated the land of those who have been evicted or forced to leave and form new allocations of land. Since more than 2 million people are classified as squatters, the poor are highly vulnerable to ethnic-based land clashes and to the loss of their rights in land (Kenya Land Alliance, 2006). Political interests in land have also hindered the development of constitutional reform and political transition. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Land Law Systems of Kenya (‘Njonjo Commission’) which was constituted alongside the Constitution Review Commission of Kenya has sought to circumvent any initiative seeking to address the land question. The Njonjo Commission skirted around the land question but noted the need to have a land policy that would facilitate efficient administration and management of land, and promote equitable distribution and access to land and other resources. The Njonjo Commission also recommended the vesting of public land in a national institution, which would hold land on behalf of the people (Republic of Kenya, 2003: 37). The Njonjo Commission was dissolved in November 2002, a month before the general elections, upon handing in a partially completed report to the president. The discussion this far shows that political patronage and land grabbing led to considerable concentration of land into the hands of the political elite in Kenya. Land grabbing intensified landlessness. For instance, around Nakuru the average peasant family farming holdings are around 2.5 acres while public lands have been carved up to support large estates. Of concern is that new agrarian investment opportunities, highly dominated by wealthy individuals, are emerging to occupy the space meant for the landless. These are eroding opportunities for the rural and urban poor to obtain a livelihood. With the new forms of

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investment opportunities on land and increasing hunger for land accumulation by elites, the numbers of landless people will continue to increase. Sub-division of holdings to levels that are not economically viable will also increase. Both trends are a threat to sustainable development especially because they threaten the framework for the livelihood of the poor who constitute over half of the population. In the meantime, the mainstream framework for sustainable development usually blames deforestation on population growth and inappropriate farming strategies. It largely focuses on the inappropriate management strategies of farmers and herders and empowers the state and corporate sectors to manage land, control the rural poor, expel squatters from forests and create corporate buffer zones around the forest reserves. These strategies have enabled land grabbing to occur in forest zones and the allocation of land to private investors and the tea estates.

The Kibaki Regime: Moving the Land Question Around the Circle The Kibaki government came to power after the December 2002 general election in which a coalition of political parties (National Rainbow Coalition, NARC) won the election. The coalition won on a platform premised on the need to conduct wide-ranging reforms, including a comprehensive constitutional reform. A new government was constituted in early 2003 comprising various groups and individuals including those who articulated a clear reform agenda and those who failed to ascend to power in the previous government. In 2003 the constitutional reform process, which the previous government had stalled, was a priority for the new government. The reform process began with the reconstitution of the National Constitutional Conference (Bomas Conference), which the previous KANU regime had called off in order to prepare for the elections. The process towards a national land policy began through popular struggles in the 1990s. Civil society groups under the auspices of the Kenya Land Alliance and several social movements based in urban areas organised to articulate issues around land. Ethnic conflicts in various parts of the country and grabbing of public land by political elites gave impetus to organisation of these struggles. Furthermore, the 1990s witnessed violent evictions of squatters from land allocated to elites. A combination of factors ensured that the land question remained

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on the national agenda. First, the Njonjo Commission of Inquiry had recommended formulation and subsequent implementation of a national land policy (Republic of Kenya, 2001). The second factor was the constitutional reform process. The discourse of constitutional reforms also paid significant attention to sustainable development of natural resources and land in particular. The issue of control of land remained central in these discourses. The Kibaki government picked up these issues and began a process to formulate the national land policy. The new government reconvened the constitutional conference for delegates to finalise discussions on the draft constitution. One of the dominant themes in the conference was the land question. Delegates from all parts of the country began to relate the land question to the various social, political and economic aspects of their societies. Some people wanted the constitution to address historical grievances and wrongs. Others wanted a ceiling on the total amount of land that one person could hold. Still others wanted mechanisms to be put in place to address landlessness in the country. The draft document finally settled on establishment of a National Land Commission that would hold title to public land and manage land on behalf of the national government and devolved governments. The draft underlined that land belonged to people and recognised the people as the sovereign owners of land in whom rights of control of land are vested. It also pointed out that people could hold land as public or community or private. The draft land policy, however, was developed in anticipation of a new constitution. A draft of the new constitution was subjected to a referendum in November 2005 and the people voted against it. The defeat of the draft constitution means that the land policy will have to be reviewed to be in line with the current constitution, in lieu of a new constitutional dispensation. In terms of policy, therefore, the government has not been able to resolve the land question. The government instituted several other initiatives geared at addressing various aspects of the land question. These include an inquiry into the allocation of government houses and the land on which they were built; and a Commission of Inquiry into Illegal and/or Irregular Allocations of Public Land (‘Ndung’u Commission’). The government sought to unearth the types of grievances and the nature of the plunder of public land during the previous regime. The government sought to examine the relations between elite greed around land and community grievances over the appropriation of land. The two initiatives found

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that political patronage played the central role in the loss of land rights of many people and that politically influential people grabbed land on which the poor were settled or land that was meant for the landless. In both instances, it was recommended that the grabbed land be taken over by the state for subsequent reallocation to the poor. While these measures are in line with popular demands, the Kibaki government has failed to address or implement the recommendations. Divisions within the ruling coalition deflected attention away from the land question and other grievances. The commission of inquiry on land allocations in the past (the Ndung’u report) identified large tracts of land across the country which had been allocated and/or grabbed by influential economic and political elites. It recommended seizure of these tracts of land and possible prosecution of individuals involved in land-grabbing activities. However, they include members of political parties whose support was critical to maintaining political stability at the height of incessant internal conflicts within NARC, who formed part of the coalition for a Government of National Unity. The intertwining of politics with land accumulation and appropriation has again thwarted attempts to solve the land question, and old habits continue to hold. The dominant concerns with the political stability of the coalition have preserved the status quo. The Kibaki government has skirted around the land question, moving around in circles without addressing fundamental issues. Another important feature of the Kibaki administration has been the direct intervention in the land questions on the coast and in other parts of the country. Notably, the government identified the squatter had problem as critical on the coast and took measures to acquire land owned by absentee landlords. By the end of 2006 and following these initiatives, squatters had organised themselves and invaded land owned by absentee landlords. Forced seizures or nyakua began to occur in different parts of the coastal areas and in particular in areas dominated by squatters. The government once again intervened to warn against nyakua, promising to buy land from the landlords and to establish settlement schemes for the landless. In other areas, the government settled some members of the Ogiek huntergatherer people and gave out title deeds within sections of the Mau Forest complex. However, the government has also evicted thousands of families settled in water catchments areas of the Rift Valley. The land on which these families were settled had been grabbed by political elites in the previous regime but then sold to poor families.

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The latter were evicted from their holdings notwithstanding their title deeds. The Kibaki administration, like the previous governments, has not been able to resolve the land question. The government has moved the land question around the circle of constitutional reforms and the politics of regime survival. The Kibaki administration has eroded the patronage aspect of the land question. Allocations of public land by the state to politicians has diminished and land is no longer used as a resource to create loyalties among individual ethnic elites. Nevertheless, land is used to generate political capital and support from strategic ethnic communities rather than individual elites. This implies that the forms – rather than the content – of political patronage over land have changed. Interventions on the coastal land question and the alleged resettling of the Ogieks and others with historical grievances are evidence for this. Unable to get a new constitutional dispensation, the government has turned to the draft constitution and the draft national land policy to pick out selectively some aspects of the land question for interventions, without addressing land administrative reform comprehensively or the political resistance to reform and accountability. This confirms the popularly articulated fear that Kenyan political leaders lack the political will to confront the elites, who use the political process to protect their selfish interest from the demands of the landless and poor for land reform. As poverty in the rural and urban areas persists, the problems of sustainable and democratic development are becoming more complex and difficult to disentangle. Thus, exclusion of the landless poor from decision making is associated with the history of the land question rather than economic dynamics. At the same time, the growing complexity of the land question – particularly when environmental sustainability is added into the equation – is shrinking the margins in which the Kenya government can undertake reforms.

Conclusion In Kenya, the intensification of land appropriation from squatter communities and of public lands has provoked resistance and public outcry. The uncoordinated resistance of many communities to attempts to expropriate them and the violent repression of their struggle by the state have thrown the brazen grabbing of public land into the political limelight. This has resulted in a growing public unease and condemnation

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of these activities and the way in which political patronage has been used to accumulate land. This has resulted in a growing bridge between the spontaneous struggles of communities to defend their land, which often involve violent resistance to repression, and the demands of middle-class civil society organisations for accountability, the rule of law and the integrity of public spaces including the preservation of forest resources. However, this does not sit easily with neoliberal notions of the integration of state, civil society and the private sector, and the application of the rule of law, particularly since community actions have often been organised based on self-defence of rights to a livelihood and shelter, and self-defence against state security forces. Klopp (2000) notes a donor unwillingness to be drawn into debates about land grabbing of public lands. Within Kenya, land grabbing has a long history, which originates in the creation of a white settler economy in the highlands and the creation of the category of squatters. The land reforms introduced in the 1950s condoned the expropriation of land of Mau Mau fighters in detention and allocated them to loyalists, thus ushering in the use of land in patronage politics. Land was the single most important resource around which uhuru politics organised. However, the unevenness of struggles over land in different parts of the country and the failure of the Mau Mau to create a national movement against colonialism left the land question unresolved at independence. Aware that the land question was a threat to the nation-building paradigm and that command over land was to be regarded as key for political action to ensure political stability and economic development, the first independence government – the Kenyatta administration – accommodated the individual ‘economic’ interests of various factional leaders who articulated its ethnic dimension. However, the conflation of the interests of the capitalist class and those of the state did not mean that the land question was resolved. Land was used in particular to build a privileged political and economic class into the structure of the state. This re-activated ethnic dimensions of the land question and at the same time evolved ethno-political patronage as an important means of acceding to land rights. As Birongo (2006: 3) comments: Thus, in the late 80s for example, if Moi differed with any of his allies, the unfortunate fellow’s estate would be publicly auctioned ‘to pay for loans owed to banks’ followed by speedy ‘bankruptcy’ proceedings that threw one into the political abyss.

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This also results in the political collusion of all parties, since all have been involved in land grabbing; questioning of contemporary practice will raise issues concerning past practices and past appropriations. An analysis of the largest landholdings in Kenya reveals the history of alliances around land appropriations from the colonial period onwards. In a report in the Standard, Namwaya (2004) writes: Kenya’s two former First Families and the family of President Mwai Kibaki are among the biggest landowners in the country . . . A residual class of white settlers and a group of former and current power brokers in the three post independent regimes follow them closely while a few businessmen and farmers, many with either current or past political connections, also own hundreds of thousands of acres . . . The extended Kenyatta family alone owns an estimated 500,000 acres – approximately the size of Nyanza Province – according to estimates by independent surveyors and Ministry of Lands officials who spoke on condition of anonymity . . . The Kibaki and Moi families also own large tracts of land though most of the Moi family land is held in the names of his sons and daughters and other close family members . . . Most of the holders of the huge parcels of land are concentrated within the 17.2 per cent part of the country that is arable. The remaining 80 per cent is mostly arid and semi arid land.

The structure of landownership and land administration within the post-colonial state has been characterised by continuity with colonial land policies rather than change. The land question became the theatre on which patronage politics would be played. Patronage politics evolved into the means around which attempts to settle the land question revolved. However, political patronage brought about a new set of issues, which have deepened differentiations in the structure of landownership. The new elites who inherited political power also inherited intact the scheduled areas and penetrated the peasant agricultural land through the resettlement schemes. A new class of big landowners continues to threaten security of tenure for those with smallholdings. Big landowners have increasingly accumulated landholdings through distressed land markets and allocations of public land through political patronage of the state. This has amplified the social–economic inequalities in Kenya. The result has been a significant increase in the numbers of smallholdings and a decline in their size: many of them are not adequate to provide sustainable livelihoods. They are inadequate for laying the foundations for sustainable development within the agrarian context of Kenya. This has resulted in the deepening of poverty to the extent that over half of

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the population live below the poverty line. The accumulation of land and the growth of popular struggles demanding access to land continue to reshape the socio-economic and political order of Kenyan society and the struggle for popular democracy. The solution to the land question requires a redistribution of land that resolves both ethnic and class dimensions, promotes sustainable livelihoods and social justice, and democratises the mechanisms for redistribution.

Notes 1. 2.

This section draws from Kanyinga (1996). ‘Comment: It’s a Tough Life for the Displaced’, Sunday Standard Online Edition, 12 September 2004, http://www.eastandard.net/archives/september/ sun12092004/reports/rep12090406.htm

5 Sustainable Development, Corporate Accumulation and Community Expropriation: Land and Natural Resources in West Africa Kojo Sebastian Amanor

In West Africa, both land reform and natural resource management are characterised by a common framework of institutional reform. Influenced by neoliberal economic development paradigms, policies in both sectors seek to decentralise resource administration, promote community participation, foster corporate social interventions or responsibility, and develop linkages between the state, the corporate sector and civil society. Policies in both land and natural resource management are increasingly underpinned by a communitarian framework, in which communities or civil society are seen as playing an important role in holding the state accountable, and creating more equitable frameworks that address the needs of localities and sustainable development. In the land sector, current policy frameworks are underpinned by a belief that state administration of land has resulted in the appropriation of land by political elites at the expense of communities, and the extraction of rents by bureaucrats. In the forestry and natural resource sector, it is argued that state management of forests has alienated local communities from resources and prevented communities gaining benefits from local management. Alienation prevents local people from participating in the management of resources, and enables free riders to degrade natural resource bases and elites to appropriate community resources. In both sectors, local or community management of land and natural resources is held to be the key to a more equitable and efficient development. In land administration, the main innovation has been a movement away from a focus on land titling and registration in state-run cadastres, to community management of land and registration of customary rights.

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Current policy frameworks argue that land titling programmes in the past have been limited and cumbersome, with land registration often restricted to a narrow range of elites in the major towns. As a result, the vast majority of people hold land under customary arrangements that are not formally recognised by the state. This lack of recognition hampers the development of land markets, since potential investors are either forced to depend on the state to expropriate land and concessions for their use, or transact land in the customary sector. The lack of procedures for formally recognising land transactions within the customary sector undermines security of ownership and results in the majority of land transactions occurring outside of any regulatory environment. Transactions within the customary sector, which comprises the largest land sector within West Africa, result in lack of information on plots for sale, large transaction costs in arranging land purchases and collecting information, high risk, and long periods in conducting transactions and securing legitimate papers. The failings of the institutional framework for land transactions constrain foreign investment in West Africa. Present reform initiatives attempt to find ways of harmonising customary and state land administration, and to find cost-effective ways of documenting customary ownership and creating information systems for customary holding, which will enable investors to purchase land from the informal sector with more confidence and efficiency (Lavigne Delville, 2000; Toulmin and Quan, 2000). Contemporary policy frameworks in natural resource management also attempt to promote community management, stewardship and ‘ownership’ of natural resources and forests. In both land and natural resource management sectors, sustainable development is associated with a greater role of the community in the administration of resources and devolution of management functions to the community level. However, this framework presumes that community and customary relations are equitable and can act as a check on the abuses of the state. It ignores social stratification at the community level, and the linkages between local political elites within rural areas, national political elites and the state. In this chapter, it is argued that, in the contemporary communitarian framework, the rift between the state and the customary is often exaggerated. From the colonial period, the state has often allied itself with rural political authorities and elites to exert control over the peasantry and expropriate their resources. The concept of the customary originated in colonial concerns with building linkages with local ruling classes to establish an administrative structure that promoted colonial interests. The concept of the customary essentially revolves around notions of the privilege of

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the chieftaincy class, and its hereditary right to deny the peasantry secure rights in land and natural resources. This has continued into the post-colonial phase with states recognising African values and customs and building alliances between ‘traditional’ and modern elites for development. Traditional and modern elites frequently straddle each other (Bayart, 1993). They are connected by political and economic interests, kinship and marriage, since modern elites often emerged from the old nobilities who commanded resources (Arhin Brempong, 2001) and gained political recognition from the colonial state. Thus, rural communities are often highly stratified and the elites frequently form alliances with the urban and national elites. A second assumption in contemporary policy frameworks is that more clearly defined land rights and land markets will promote foreign investment and that this will result in a ‘win–win’ situation of improved opportunities for rural people and economic growth. In contrast, this chapter argues that security of landownership rather than security of rights to land for livelihood purposes often results in expropriation. The consequences of increased foreign investment and efficient land markets will be increasing expropriation and displacement of the rural

Figure . Fig. 1).

West Africa and its vegetation zones. Based on Amanor (2004:

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peasantry, as its existing resource base is claimed by foreign investment, and as the state creates an ‘enabling environment’ to encourage foreign investment and participation in global trade. This chapter critically examines relations between the customary, state and corporate sectors within a historical context, and examines how the processes of accumulation within agriculture and the natural resource sectors affect access to resources. It documents struggles over the control of resources in specific sectors, which involve both the displacement of the peasantry and the rural poor, and attempts by these groups to protect their livelihood interests. Sectors involved include export crops, corporate agribusiness, forestry resources and mining.

Colonial Land Policies in West Africa In contrast with southern and eastern Africa, a settler white agricultural population never consolidated itself in West Africa. The only attempts at settler colonial agriculture were limited to south-eastern Côte d’Ivoire. These were unsuccessful and disbanded in the 1950s. Export crop production was largely carried out by indigenous African producers. Colonial interventions largely occurred in the import–export trade, which was dominated by European mercantile companies, who established control over the internal trade by subsiding networks of brokers and agents. Export crop production has a relatively long history dating back to the early eighteenth century with production of palm oil in southern Nigeria, Dahomey and the Gold Coast, and groundnut oil in the Senegambia region for the European markets. Because of the comparatively early development of trade and export agriculture, which preceded colonial annexation, early colonial policies were largely concerned with establishing control over the marketing of peasant produce rather than direct interventions in production (Amin, 1972). In British West Africa, the Manchester and Liverpool Houses of Commerce campaigned against attempts by Lever Brothers to gain concessions for plantation development. In French West Africa, CFAO, the dominant French trading company, also opposed the development of plantations (Hopkins, 1973). Colonial administration in West Africa was based on alliances with existing political elites and the creation of systems of chieftaincies in areas without chiefs, which were modelled on the relations built in other areas with hierarchical social formations. While historians have characterised British colonial rule as being based on indirect rule and

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French on direct rule or the introduction of French administration within its colonies, in reality both systems of colonial rule converged. In French West Africa, the constraints of managing large areas with limited resources resulted in a policy of association, under which local political heads and chiefs were used in rural administration. In British colonies a system of ‘indirect rule’ was established based on Native Authorities in which chiefs and their courts became responsible for local administration. While the chiefs (chefs de canton) in French colonies were often appointed from allies sympathetic to French interests, this was also the case in British areas, where the colonial administration often interfered in local politics to get sympathetic individuals appointed as chiefs. British colonialism also created and invented chiefs in many areas, such as in northern Ghana, eastern Nigeria and Sierra Leone, in societies in which chiefs had not ruled in pre-colonial times. In some areas, where religious authorities had significant influence over the population above chiefs, they played an important role in establishing rural administration, such as the Mourides in the organisation of the groundnut economy in Senegal (Wade, 1967; O’Brien, 1970). Alliances with traditional authorities were important in regulating export crop frontiers and in providing and organising labour for public works, the colonial enclave economic sectors (such as mining) and export crop production. In both British and French colonies, rural people were integrated into the colony through customary law, which provided them with rights to land and obligations to chiefs, who were empowered to make local byelaws. However, this insistence on the customary occurred in a period of rapid social change, which meant that the customary was often invented and made to fit to on-going change rather than based on ancient ways of doing things (Chanock, 1991; Ranger, 1993). This framework of local administration had particular significance for the control of land and natural resources and labour. The initial pretext for establishing colonial rule was to halt domestic slavery and bring about human rights in Africa. However, colonial conquest was usually about gaining spheres of influence and control over resources and trade. Once colonial rule was established, two immediate concerns were to gain control over land and to gain access to labour for public works and the creation of infrastructure, and for the colonial enclave economies. The colonial authorities sought to halt the development of land markets and land speculation among the aspiring and rising indigenous capitalist class in West Africa. Initial interventions sought to control land by placing all uncultivated land

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under the state. However, this was often opposed by the colonial subjects, as in southern Gold Coast and southern Nigeria (Cowen and Shenton, 1994; Amanor, 1999). Consequently, different land regimes came to exist in different areas, reflecting political processes and conflicts. In northern Nigeria, northern Ghana and the Crown colony of Sierra Leone, land was placed under the British Crown, while in southern Nigeria, the Gold Coast Colony and the Protectorate of Sierra Leone, land was under the control of chiefs. In the French colonies, land was placed directly under the colonial authority in 1935. Colonial governments developed alliances with chiefs to secure labour and taxes. Chiefs were empowered to control the land and extract revenues from the land and customary obligations. In return, they provided the colonial authority with forced labour, and levied taxes on adult males. This forced men to engage in export crop production and in seasonal migration for wage labour to meet tax obligations. This enabled coercive measures to be introduced, which the colonial authorities would argue originated from African custom rather than from the injustices of colonial impositions (Mamdani, 1996; Ribot, 1999). In the French colonies, the indigénat formed the basis of rural administration. The indigénat prescribed a series of legal domains suitable for African subjects and appropriate regimes of punishment, including flogging and imprisonment for evasion of forced labour for those subject to customary law. The indigénat was used to recruit labour for road and railway construction, expatriate coffee and cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire, and the cotton-growing projects of the Office de Niger. The indigénat continued until 1947 (Ribot, 1999). Forced labour was officially abandoned in British colonial policy in West Africa in the 1920s. However, it continued to exist in pockets when labour recruitment was difficult. Under British colonial rule, chiefs had power to levy communal labour on their subjects for public works, such as road building. Although British and French colonial rule had introduced legislation to end domestic slavery, forced labour and the system of chiefs ensured that the coercion of labour continued. For instance, in northern Nigeria, colonial rule placed all uncultivated land under the British Crown. Stringent controls were introduced to prevent former slaves from settling in new areas and developing their own independent livelihoods. The former slaves were forced to remain with their former masters and work to pay manumission fees (murgu) before they could claim their freedom. The former slaves were compelled to work in ways dictated by the colonial authorities. Taxation, payable by their owners, ensured that the former slaves were put to work in export crop

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production and in public works to gain cash to pay taxes (Lovejoy and Hogendorn, 1993). Similarly, non-free labour continued to exist throughout the French West African colonial territories. Although after the emancipation of slavery many former slaves fled to the urban areas, descendants of slaves who remained in rural areas found it difficult to get access to farmland freely, without being subject to many demands upon their labour by the former slave-owning classes. French colonial rule frequently forged alliances with the former slave-owning aristocracy, whose customary privileges were used to gain access to labour and labour services for the colonial authority (Boiro, 1996; Ribot, 1999). During the 1940s, rural administration in West Africa was reformed. The system of Native Administration began to be dismantled making way for elected local government in the 1950s and 1960s. In French West Africa the indigénat was abolished in 1947. The reforms were partially a product of growing rural discontent and the growing support of the independence movements. However, they were also influenced by post-war restructuring and a growing concern in colonial policy circles that the state should play a more active role in development (Hailey, 1943). The lack of government intervention in agriculture was seen as resulting in the stagnation of food production and in rising food imports. For instance, laissez-faire policies had sacrificed the development of oil palm production in West Africa, the home of the oil palm, which could no longer compete with plantations in South-east Asia. The state was now to intervene directly in agricultural production by developing state-led agricultural schemes, which incorporated smallholder peasant cultivators and transformed their cultivation. State-led economic development in rural areas transformed the relationship between chief, state and peasant. Through state ownership of development projects and responsibility for development, the state became directly responsible for the production of peasant farmers, and the land on which the projects lay came under the trusteeship of the state. The state needed to expropriate land for development projects, such as irrigation and large-scale agricultural mechanisation schemes. Through ownership of development projects, the state was to assume a new relationship to the land, in which it managed the land on behalf of the community. This radically transformed the relation of the state to land and created an eminent domain through which the state could expropriate land for development initiatives. Through its ownership of agricultural schemes, the state was responsible for developing infrastructure, providing inputs and extension services, transportation and marketing, and directing the planning process and crop production targets.

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Through control of the agricultural scheme, the state also came to control the production of the peasantry whose participation in the scheme was dependent upon compliance with regulations for agricultural modernisation. Thus, rural development projects created a modern smallholder agriculture in which the peasant agriculturalist had limited rights in land, in which property rights were invested in the community and in which the state stood as the landlord, directing the reorganisation of agricultural production (Cowen and Shenton, 1991). The central task of development was to transform the smallholder peasant proprietor into a force for development through state-led agricultural schemes. Intimately associated with the state-led agricultural scheme were the concepts of community development and mass education, which became pillars of British colonial policy in the 1940s (Cowen and Shenton, 1991). This sought to instil in farmers the concept of self-help and communal labour, and to arouse the community to undertake development projects designed from above. The local chiefs often became instrumental figures in mobilising and coercing communities to cooperate with the development projects. The direct coercion of the chief under association or indirect rule was now replaced by more subtle coercion by the state and its levers of development administration in the rural communities. This formed the origins of contemporary theories about social or community participation. In addition to supporting state schemes for agricultural development, the state also promoted private investment in agriculture, and the development of estate agriculture using modern inputs. It sought to create institutions that would support land titling and cadastres to encourage capital investment in agriculture. A third important development in this period was the reorganisation of the marketing of export crops, which now came under state marketing boards. This arose in the context of increasing friction between producers and mercantile companies over prices of primary commodities during the recession of the 1930s. This enabled the colonial state to profit from the differences between locally set producer prices and world market prices, while creating more stable pricing structures.

Post-colonial Developments and Their Impact on Land The transition to independence occurred in a period in which state economic interventions and controls were increasing throughout the

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Western world. The increasing control of the state over economic planning and development policy was reflected in increasing state interventions in land administration. Reform of land administration took different forms in different West African colonies, although the dominant trend was to nationalise land or introduce forms of eminent domain that gave the state increasing control over land, or to vest land in the state to administer on behalf of chiefs, as occurred in Ghana. In some of the newly emergent nation-states in West Africa, national agrarian reforms were enacted, which attempted to place customary tenure systems within a more modern egalitarian and democratic framework. In more radical land reform programmes, the state made exploitative systems of land tenure illegal. In Senegal and Guinea the landowning noble classes were denied their customary privileges to demand labour services and tithes from dependent or subservient castes. These reforms often established the principle of land to the tiller or mise en valuer, which recognised the importance of claims to land through development of its capabilities, and prevented owners from accumulating undeveloped land or claiming customary rights to sell land, collect rents and tributes, and exercise control (Boiro, 1996; Galvan, 2004). In Côte d’Ivoire, a policy of land to the tiller was extended to migrants on the cocoa frontier, and chiefs were admonished to release land to migrants, in return for which they were rewarded with the provision of development services in their areas. Radical land reforms often made important concessions to the poor, which is often overlooked in contemporary frameworks. However, they also continued the colonial tradition of defining the land rights of the poor as based on communal user rights. This created conditions in which the peasantry could be expropriated to make way for state and joint state and private sector projects without providing adequate compensation for the loss of the land. The lack of secure rights has also meant the peasantry became increasingly dependent upon the state for their rights in land (Chauveau, 2000). This has enabled the concession of land granted to the poor in the early post-colonial period to be taken back in later epochs. In Guinea, Boiro (1996) argues that the gains that former slaves made in the allocation of rights to land they cultivated in the early post-colonial period are being overturned. As customary land administration is being strengthened, land is reverting back to its former ‘customary’ status and to the former owners. Former landowners from the noble classes are now claiming back their lands

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and cultivators are being expropriated. This is resulting in increasing conflicts over land, and insecurity of ownership. In Côte d’Ivoire, the recognition of the land rights of Sahelian migrants from Burkina and Mali has subsequently been removed as a policy of Ivorité was introduced in which only the customary user land rights of Ivorians were recognised. From the 1960s to the 1980s, land administration in West Africa was characterised by contradictory and conflicting trends, reflecting the mixed economy that governments have attempted to manage, including old export crop frontiers controlled by state monopsonies, state enterprises, joint state and multinational projects, agribusiness and indigenous agricultural estate farmers with close ties with political administration. The state came to manage three different land-related agrarian sectors, including the following: 1.

The old export sectors in which production largely lay outside the hands of the state, but in which marketing was controlled by state monopsonies. 2. A clientele of large-scale estate farmers, who registered their land and gained subsidised inputs and soft loans from the state. Many of these aspiring capitalist farmers had close ties with the political regime. 3. Large-scale projects in the rice, cotton, vegetables, palm oil, and groundnut sectors in which the state created infrastructure and support services to promote agricultural intensification. These often incorporated peasant cultivators under prescriptions to cultivate particular crops and sell their produce to the marketing organisations of the project. While many of these schemes collapsed, others have evolved into agribusiness schemes. These farm sectors are characterised by different dynamics. The export crop sectors provided the state with some of its most important revenues in the early independence period. Production relations in these were left intact and the state largely intervened in the marketing, reorganising the marketing boards established by colonial authorities and siphoning off revenues from the difference between farm gate prices and world market prices. The land question in these areas has also been influenced by the dynamics of frontier development. Migrations and migrant labour have often been central to the export crop frontiers in West Africa. The filling up of these frontiers and the impact of economic crisis often result in deep

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social conflicts and crises of production, which revolve around the land question. While customary land institutions and institutional linkages between state and customary organisations have been important in building export crop frontiers, the state has also supported aspiring capitalist estate farmers and has provided them with favourable subsidies and loans, until the introduction of structural adjustment measures in the 1980s. Modern land tenure institutions have been created to enable these estate farmers to register large plots of land and use them as collateral for loans. However, with the introduction of economic liberalism and conditionalities that ban agricultural subsidies, state patronage of this sector has declined. The state has been directly involved in the expropriation of land for the development of new agricultural infrastructures such as irrigation or agro-industrial plantations. While the early developments in this sector were joint undertakings between the state and donors, these were transformed into joint ventures between the state and agribusiness, and in recent years increasingly into corporate sector agribusiness concerns with contractual arrangements with smallholder farmers. These are often portrayed as developing community participation and corporate social responsibility in promoting sustainable development.

Export Crop Frontiers Export crop frontier areas operate under intense pressures to produce cheap but quality crops for the world market. The attraction of producing export crops ultimately undermines the frontier as it results in the uptake and expansion of production in other areas, producing gluts on the world market (Ruff, 1997). The abundance of factors of production and labour migration to new frontier areas results in lower costs of production, which undermine production in old frontier areas. New frontiers expand quickly and become hubs for labour migration. When they first come into being, the necessary labour for the conversion of wilderness areas into agricultural productive settlement is not locally available. The opening up of the frontier frequently depends upon the influx of migrations, and the main frontier areas are usually characterised by heterogeneous populations. However, as the frontier matures, migrants are frequently perceived

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by local people as undermining their interests, alienating their land and creating land shortage and limited economic opportunity for the autochthonous population (Boni, 2005; Chauveau, 2006). Migrants come in two forms: those that are wealthy and accumulate large areas of land for investment and profit, and those that are poor and migrate to eke out a livelihood and work as labourers (Hill, 1963; Arhin, 1985; Chauveau and Léonard, 1996; Amanor, 2001). The opening up of frontiers results in complex patterns of social differentiation that affect both migrants and local populations. In Ghana, the cocoa frontier in the southern high forest zone was able to expand into the largest cocoa production zone in the world between the 1920s and the 1970s through large-scale migrations of people from Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), Niger and Mali. During the late 1950s and 1960s, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in Ghana encouraged the continued migration of labour into the cocoa sector from these countries. However, the state did not intervene in regulating the production and tenure relations in the cocoa sector, which continued to be defined and regulated by chiefs. Migrants from Sahelian countries rarely acquired land in their own right but worked under share-cropping arrangements or as annual labourers. Annual labourers worked on a yearly contract, returning to their hometowns at the end of the contract, after the harvesting of cocoa, when they were remunerated for their work. By the late 1960s, the cocoa frontier was in decline in Ghana; the last cocoa frontier areas in the western region were being colonised, as production began to expand in Côte d’Ivoire. Growing land scarcity in the cocoa belts resulted in increasing friction between local people and migrants, and declining production resulted in lessattractive remuneration (Amanor, 2001). Long-distance Sahelian migrants relocated to Côte d’Ivoire, where they were provided with better remuneration. In Côte d’Ivoire, the expansion of the cocoa and coffee frontiers began in earnest during the 1950s following the abolition of forced labour and native administration (Chauveau and Léonard, 1996). The ascendancy of the Parti Démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) under the leadership of Houphouët-Boigny, brought cocoa interests to the fore in the Ivorian state, particularly of the Baole and other migrant farmers moving into the south-western frontiers. Since the Baole cocoa farmers depended upon mobile labour networks from the Sahelain region, the rights of these long-distant migrants to farmland in Côte d’Ivoire were

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assured in order to attract migrants (Chauveau, 2000, 2006). In 1971, at the Congress of the PDCI, Houphouët-Boigny stated: There is enough cultivatable land, but a shortage of manpower. The government and the party have decided, in the national interest, to grant all citizens – whether Côte d’Ivoire is their country of origin or adoption – who cultivate a plot of land of whatever size, the right to permanent ownership which can be passed on to their heirs. (quoted in Diaby, 1996: 151)

The PDCI recognised the primacy of labour in opening up land. The PDCI did not radically transform the mode of rural governance and continued to depend upon an administrative structure based on village headmen implementing policy in coordination with sub-prefecture councils and central government. Migrants were organised under chiefs representing their areas of origin, and migrant farmers gained access to the policy world through these chiefs rather than through formal democratic platforms and institutions. Chiefs continued to maintain control over land. While government policy encouraged the opening of land by all who were interested, this was carried out within a conception of customary tenure. Landowners and chiefs transacting land with migrants maintained recognition of their position as the original owners of the land through the institution of the tutorat (guardianship). Under this arrangement, the user of the land made annual presentations to the landlord, recognising the landlord’s prior rights to the land (Chauveau, 2006). Since migrant farmers moving into new frontier areas frequently had more capital than locals, chiefs could gain significant revenues through transacting land with migrants, which they could not get from the local people who had rights to farm freely within their domain. Chiefs and established landowners could also enter into arrangements with migrant labourers, in which in return for labour services the migrants were remunerated with land. This labour was used by the chiefs and landowners to create their own cocoa plantations. Chiefs who released land for cocoa plantations were rewarded by the state with the provision of development projects, and physical and social infrastructure in their areas. Since the state controlled the marketing of cocoa, the expansion of cocoa production provided the state with its major sources of revenues. Thus, the state had direct interests in the rapid expansion of the frontier (Chauveau, 2006). By the 1980s, land became increasingly scarce in south-west Côte d’Ivoire as new frontier areas declined. Local youth began to experience land shortage and a lack of livelihood options, which they blamed

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on the influx of migrants and on the sale of land to migrants. Aware of the growing scarcity of land, chiefs began demanding larger payments for tutorat, which led to increasing friction between migrant farmers and chiefs (Léonard, 1997; Chauveau, 2006). By the late 1980s, Ivorian cocoa production had entered into crisis. This was the result of a collapse in world prices for cocoa as new cocoa production areas in Malaysia developed, and new frontier areas declined in Côte d’Ivoire. From the 1980s, new production in Côte d’Ivoire originated from rehabilitating old plantations rather than moving into new areas. However, world market prices for cocoa did not reflect the increasing costs of production. Growing shortage of land and decline in cocoa production resulted in increasing friction between local and migrant producers, which ultimately spilled over into ethnic conflict and xenophobia. Under the leadership of Bédié, the state abandoned its support for migrants and for the rights of the cultivator to land. Increasingly, local citizens began to challenge the rights under which migrants held land and began to question the arrangements under which land was given out. The tensions were sometimes exacerbated by donors who funded projects that supported attempts to introduce reforms of land administration based on customary and community-based land tenure administration and ‘indigenous rights’ (Diaby, 1996). The implementation of a pilot phase of the Rural Land Plan further encouraged friction over land between chiefs, migrants and local youth (Chauveau, 2003). The objective of the Rural Land Plan was to take stock of existing customary land tenure relations and record rights to land as they were perceived by village people (Stamm, 2000). Traditional chiefs were invited to provide information to parliament on the traditional rules governing land tenure in their area and solicit their views on the new laws (Chauveau, 2003). The Rural Land Plan contained a clause that restricted ownership of rural land to Ivorians (Chauveau, 2003). The growing uncertainty in land relations resulted in autochthonous communities taking actions against migrants to exert their own claims to land under the banner of Ivorité or ‘Côte d’Ivoire for Ivorians’. This was fuelled by a number of NGOs and projects which supported ‘indigenous’ and ‘community’ land rights, which were conflated with Ivorité, and who portrayed migrants as degraders of the environment (Diaby, 1996). The tensions escalated in late 1999 into violence against Burkinabe and other migrants, and resulted in large numbers of Burkinabe fleeing the country. The Ivorian state’s encouragement of migrants to settle in Côte d’Ivoire, and the provision to them of easy access to land to create an

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expansion of cocoa cultivation, provided the relatively high rates of growth the Ivorian economy experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, the customary arrangements through which the migrants gained access to land denied them secure rights in land. The system of customary rights sanctioned by the state and representation through chiefs has made the rights in land secured by migrants dependent upon the patronage of the state. In this context, the state is able to manipulate and control the definition of customary practice in relation to its political networks, its political interests and economic circumstances (Chauveau, 2000, 2006). The similarity in frontier developments in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in different periods underpins the contradictions that underlie frontier development. The early phase of frontier development requires considerable labour to open the frontier. Labour is more scarce than land, and institutional arrangements are created to encourage migration to frontier areas. However, processes of accumulation on the frontier undermine the interests of the poorer sections of the local populations, who begin to suffer from land shortage and lack of alternative livelihoods to agriculture. The initial enthusiasm for the opening up of the frontier and the promise of development eventually turns to disillusionment, and the poorer strata of migrants become targets of social frustration, resulting in ethnic frictions and xenophobia. As the frontier matures, new export-producing areas in other regions compete with the old frontier areas and are usually able to undercut production, resulting in economic crisis. Frontier developments are not usually economically sustainable since they depend upon a narrow range of export crops, in relation to which fluctuations in world markets and competition from new areas of production can result in severe economic crisis and vulnerability, and the identification of new areas of land in which farmers can expand to keep down costs of production.

Agricultural Modernisation and Agribusiness Three different types of agricultural modernisation ventures have been in operation in West Africa since independence: • • •

mechanised large state farms with hired labour; private sector mechanised farms; contract farming schemes in which peasant producers are integrated into schemes directed by state organisations or the corporate sector.

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State farms have suffered from managerial problems and hostility from donors. They have largely been privatised following structural adjustment. State support for large-scale mechanised agriculture has also been constrained by removal of state subsidies. However, contract farming schemes involving corporate agribusiness continue to expand and gain support from donors. While they originally developed as joint state and donor-funded programmes in the 1960s and 1970s, they have largely been privatised with the introduction of structural adjustment. One of the major problems facing state farms was the ability to attract a stable labour force that could be hired for cheap wages. The labour constraint has been addressed by developing projects with contractual obligations, in which farmers gain access to land and other resources in return for complying with prescriptions laid down by the project. These can include obligations to produce crops according to laid-down prescriptions and practices, and contracts that force farmers to sell their crops to the project marketing authority at prices determined by the project (Konings, 1986; Watts, 1994). In many cases, land was initially expropriated by the state for the creation of a development project. Once the project infrastructure was created, the land was redistributed back to the peasantry, but they were reintegrated with contractual obligations, which undermined their autonomy. Through control over land and infrastructure, the state project could coerce the peasants to produce what it wanted, and those who failed to keep the agreements could be ejected from the land. In Côte d’Ivoire the state began to develop oil palm plantations in the early 1960s. Between 1967 and 1970, 4 per cent of state agricultural investments were in the oil palm sector. The state supported two different types of oil palm plantation. The first were agro-industrial nucleus plantations, which were state owned and employed hired labour. The second consisted of plantation villageoises (outgrower schemes), based on contract farming. Peasant farmers were encouraged to participate in the project through government subsidies, loans and cash advances. The majority of nucleus estate plantations were established on forest reserves that had been created in the colonial period. The parastatal companies concerned with oil palm production provided technical advice and inputs to the farmers, and loans for hiring labour. In return for these loans and cash advances, which were eventually deducted from the farmers’ harvests, the parastatal gained rights to market all the produce of the contract farmers. The smallholders had to agree to follow instructions laid down by the company and to harvest on

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designated dates. Failure to comply could result in the parastatal company possessing the farm and harvesting its products until the cost of loans had been defrayed. By 1984 nucleus oil palm estates covered 52,304 ha, and 8,582 contract farmers worked on 44,374 ha. Private sector independent plantations accounted for 11,528 ha of oil palm. These projects were heavily supported by donors including the World Bank and the European Development Fund (Daddieh, 1994). As in the Ivorian cocoa sector, favourable conditions were created for the participation of migrants, and rights to land were secured through cultivation. However, the land rights of the smallholder had to be recognised by the village chief before the company could enter into a contract with farmers. Thus, chiefs were seen as important intermediaries enforcing property rights. Similarly, in irrigation projects in northern Ghana, Konings (1986) reports that chiefs were responsible for selecting farmers within the community for incorporation within the project. The chiefs were responsible for controlling the farmers and explaining the project objectives to them. Chiefs were rewarded by the project with choice plots of irrigated land. Konings (1986) claims that the authority of the chief on these irrigation projects had been so well consolidated by the state that none of their directives could be challenged by the peasant farmers. The chiefs had at their command an array of ‘traditional’ sanctions, which were supported by the state. This made it dangerous for farmers to question the authority of chiefs, since the chiefs could exact violent retributions against them or evict them from their villages. During the 1970s, oil palm nucleus estates with outgrowers were developed in Ghana (Gyasi, 1992). One of the largest oil palm projects is the Ghana Oil Palm Development Corporation (GOPDC), which was created in 1976 as a joint project between the Ghana government and the World Bank funding. It has subsequently been privatised, in 1995 and is currently owned by SIAT (Ghana), a joint venture company, which has acquired 80 per cent of the shares as against 20 per cent which remain with the government of Ghana. SIAT (Ghana) is owned by nv SIAT sa of Belgium (Société d’Investissement pour l’Agriculture Tropicale), which acquired 51 per cent of the company, in partnership with the Social Security and National Investment Trust of Ghana and the African Mutual Fund (Ghana) Ltd. The state expropriated land for the nucleus plantations with the collaboration of chiefs. The site selected for GOPDC was in the Kwae area and involved the expropriation of 9,000 ha that was being cultivated by

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about 7,000 peasant families (Gyasi, 1992). This land was acquired under the instrument of the Stool Lands Act of 1962, which gives chiefs the power to expropriate land for the use of government. Farmers were only compensated for the crops on their land. Compensation for the land was to be paid to the chiefs, who, it was claimed, were the allodial owners of the land. Some of the farmers in the area took up legal proceedings. Others petitioned the Lands Department to demand compensation for the loss of land. Some of the communities organised to prevent the Kwae authorities from entering their lands. Some of the expropriated farmers have taken to squatting on undeveloped parts of the plantation which they refuse to vacate. Because of these actions, GOPDC has been unable to use 4,400 ha of their concession (Gyasi, 1992; Amanor, 1999). As in Côte d’Ivoire, GOPDC is organised into three sectors: a nucleus plantation and oil-extracting mill established on 3,500 ha; a smallholder perimeter on 1,051 ha of land; and outgrowers, who are supplied with loans to cultivate oil palm on their own land. Selected smallholder farmers are supplied with 8 ha of land each, of which they have to use 7 ha for the cultivation of oil palms. Both smallholders and outgrowers are subject to contracts, which give GOPDC rights to occupy their plantations if they fail to comply with farming prescriptions or fail to deliver their harvest to GOPDC at pre-determined prices. While oil palm plantations are regarded as highly profitable, the company’s control over the marketing and pricing of the crop is considered unfair by many farmers (Amanor, 1999). The expropriation of land and the creation of a modern oil palm sector have had a major impact on agricultural relations of production and resulted in increasing social differentiation. There is much unemployment in the areas and a large underclass of poor households, youth and women who have lost access to land and livelihoods based on food production. Significant numbers of youth and women are involved in pilfering palm fruit bunches from the plantation. The youth harvest fruits at night from the nucleus plantation and the women process it into palm oil. The GOPDC has to maintain a large security force to police its plantations (Amanor, 1999, 2005b). The area around Kwae has been transformed into a monocultural zone of large oil palm plantations, replacing a formerly diverse economy. Food production is scarce in the Kwae area and food is expensive because much of it has to be acquired from outside the area to feed the local population. Gyasi (1988: 8) comments: The imbalances and other problems emerging in the rural economy including ecological perturbations, agricultural instability, marginalization

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of peasants, and shortage of wood and local staple foods resulting from the monocultural trend associated with large plantations, underscores the need for a strategy of diversification focused more on the small farmer to prevent destruction of the ecosystem, and to encourage local self-sufficiency for sustained local development.

In contrast with this assessment, the web site of nv SIAT sa declares SIAT to be in the forefront of sustainable palm oil production: As an organization we subscribe to the view that a rational compromise can be obtained between environmental and social concerns and the need to have plantation type production in order to feed the millions inhabiting this planet. We believe that there should be intergenerational fairness and as such always go through a rigorous environmental and social impact assessment before any planting . . . Occupying large stretches of land has a great impact on the host communities. Therefore it is our group’s policy to invest in social projects such as schools, clinics, potable water, and road maintenance but also in outgrower programmes so that the local population is a major stakeholder in the company.1

This gives a very different perspective on the palm oil industry from that of farmers in the Kwae area or that of researchers. However, SIAT has highly respectable credentials. SIAT is one of the founding members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil – a multi-stakeholder movement sponsored by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) and ProForest. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg in September 2002, GOPDC received one of the World Summit Business Awards for Sustainable Development Partnerships, organised by UNEP and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), in recognition of effective multi-stakeholder partnerships designed to pursue and achieve sustainable development. While GOPDC is being toasted in the highest global circles on sustainable development, within the Kwae area there is much disquiet among the rural poor, youth and women, who express many grievances about the project. The development of outgrower schemes run by large agribusiness companies is a growing trend in recent transnational agribusiness (Watts, 1994). It is promoted in neoliberal agricultural development policies, where smallholder production is seen as the most efficient form of agricultural enterprise when integrated into infrastructures provided by large agribusiness companies (Binswanger and Deininger 1993; Lipton, 1993; Deininger, 2003). The divestment of state agricultural companies, and conditionalities that have removed agricultural subsidies in Africa (while allowing them to continue in various forms in Europe and the

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United States) create favourable frameworks which enable large agribusiness companies to move into this field. Concepts of community participation and sustainable development provide banners through which agribusiness companies can create new institutional linkages and interfaces for accumulation, based on the reorganisation of communities and promotion of community institutions, which will enable communities to be integrated into markets and held accountable before the rule of law. They also allow companies to carry out a process of expropriation and accumulation, while claiming to be socially responsible.

Community Forestry Developments in community forestry in West Africa from the 1980s and early 1990s mirror many of the dimensions of contemporary land policy. This is not surprising, since the framework for land administrative reform builds upon communitarian concepts developed in forestry. Participatory forest management is now an established principle in most donor-supported forestry sector programmes and became institutionalised throughout West Africa during the 1980s, as part of a movement towards decentralisation and devolution of state enterprises under structural adjustment programmes to lower administrative bodies, communities and the private sector. Most West African nations have introduced new forest policies during the 1990s which are based on promoting community participation in forestry. Community forestry is promoted as a way of increasing efficiency and equity in forest management and giving rural communities greater roles in managing forests. However, this does not really address issues of the redistribution of resources. In some instances, the framework of community participation has eroded the access of the rural poor to forest resources. Community participation is frequently concerned with delegating work to communities to perform as contractual services while forestry services lay off workers. As the director of forestry in Gambia stated: Conscious of the economic and manpower constraints that the government faces, and the availability of a large pool of cheap labour in the form of village community labour forces which could be harnessed for achieving wider forest protection, provided . . . adequate empowerment and incentives could be ensured, it was decided in 1987 to venture into community forest management. (Bojang, 1994: 2, quoted in Schroeder, 1999: 6)

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Within the Sahelian region comprehensive forestry reforms have been carried out in Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal in the 1990s. The 1994 Forest Law in Mali delegates responsibility for forest management to collectives territoriales décentralisées (decentralised territorial collectives) which form the basic unit of local government. These local government units have rights to manage forests and develop forest management plans by decree. They allocate the management of specific forest areas to the Structure Rurale de Gestions de Bois (SRGB – Rural Wood Management Structure), which constitute local associations or cooperatives. In collaboration with the forest service, the SRGBs develop a management plan for exploitation of the forest, which has to be approved by local government. The SRGBs consist of groups that are mainly interested in wood fuel exploitation. The forest management plan includes an annual exploitation quota and sustainable production targets. Once a management plan has been approved, the SRGB gains access to a permit upon payment of forest exploitation tax (Ribot, 1999; Intercooperation, 2001; Kone, 2001). The 1997 Forest Code for Burkina Faso makes similar provisions for the decentralisation of forests. The code makes a distinction between public forestlands of national interest and those of local interest. The former, which are the most valuable forest, are maintained by the state, while the latter can be delegated to be managed by the collectives territoriales décentralisées and by local communities organised into cooperatives and community groupements or by private concerns. The groupements must draw up a management plan with the Forest Service. However, the groupements do not control the cutting of wood fuel. The Forestry Service issues permits to merchants. The local price for wood fuel is fixed by the state. The price is paid by the merchants at a Forest Service Control Post. Parts of the revenue are retained by the Forest Service and a part is distributed back to the groupement (Dorlöchter-Sulser et al., 2000; Ribot, 2001) for their management services. In Senegal, the decentralised forest reform of 1994 enables the state to delegate management of forests to Rural Councils. The Rural Councils are elected local government bodies. To participate in forest management the elected Rural Council must ask the Forestry Service to draw up a management plan for their zone. The plan specifies the quantity of wood that can be cut from different locations, the methods to be used and the reforestation measures that should be in place to encourage sustainable wood fuel production. The Rural Councils can

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delegate to individuals, cooperatives and corporations the rights to exploit designated areas within their zone. If the Rural Council does not accept the conditions of the management plan or does not apply for a management plan for forest exploitation, the Forest Service can allocate exploitation rights to commercial interests. However, permits for the transportation and sale of wood fuel have not been decentralised and are allocated to large urban merchants. Local rural producers are obliged to sell at low producer prices to a few licensed urban merchants, who control the wood fuel trade in Senegal and gain windfall profits (Ribot, 1999, 2000). In all these examples, participatory forestry involves the state maintaining the most economically viable forests, and divesting management of the least commercially viable forests to communities. However, even with these poorer forests, communities have limited abilities to gain financially, since a system of transport and marketing permits prevents them from marketing this produce beyond their villages. This enables large merchants to capture the main profits and the state to gain revenues from the sale of permits to the merchants. As forest resources become more valuable, the inequities of participatory forest management become more glaring. In contrast, with the Sahel, the high forest zone has valuable tropical timber resources which are important in international trade. In Ghana, timber is the third most important export resource. With the adoption of structural adjustment in 1983, the timber sector became a major focus for the promotion of export-led growth. Large credits were made available for the development of the private sector, which resulted in considerable corruption, extraction of illegal timber, and the development of over-capacity in the timber industry (Friends of the Earth, 1992). In the second phase of the development of economic liberalisation, donor support focused on the restructuring of the forestry service and the building of capacity to more efficiently manage and monitor forest resources. This has involved the creation of new legislation and a framework of participatory forestry. Within Ghana, there are five main interest groups in forestry: 1. the state, which manages the resource through its forestry service; 2. timber concessionaires, who gain rights to extract resources in delimited areas; 3. chiefs, who claim ownership of the resources and the rights to royalties from concessions;

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farmers who work among forest resources and preserve, maintain and conserve them; and 5. user groups, who gain a livelihood from small-scale extraction of forest resources usually for the domestic market. The main significance of chiefs is that their claims to the ownership of forest resources enable the state and concessionaires to expropriate timber without paying compensation to the farmers, who have maintained and preserved the resources on their farms. While this is presented as a ‘traditional’ arrangement, this ‘tradition’ originated in the expansion of the timber industry in the 1940s and the 1950s and the creation of a concession system (Amanor, 1999, 2005a). The timber industry is based on a political collusion between the state, chiefs and timber concessionaires, which denies farmers rights to timber resources. Before the existence of the export timber industry and the concession system, these ‘customary’ arrangements did not exist and farmers transacted timber resources on their farms with sawyers (Amanor, 1999, 2005a). With the expansion of the timber industry the fiction was created that timber trees belonged customarily to chiefs. The 1962 Concessions Act placed all timber trees in the hands of the office of the president to manage on behalf of the chiefs in which it claimed the resource was vested. This enabled timber trees to be appropriated for the timber industry. Royalties were payable to chiefs, but the stumpage fees on timber were extremely low, enabling timber concessionaires to gain windfall profits. During the economic crisis of the 1970s many timber companies collapsed in Ghana, and the main producers of timber for the domestic market became small-scale chainsaw operators. Many youth experiencing land shortage took up chainsaw production of timber as an alternative or supplementary activity to farming, with encouragement from the state. Chainsaw operators were registered by district assemblies and district forest offices. During the 1980s, the timber industry received considerable support from donors to promote export-oriented growth. As the capacity of the timber industry to process existing resources expanded beyond the resources within forest reserves, and unfarmed frontiers and existing farmlands became the main focus of timber extraction. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, 80 per cent of timber exports from Ghanawere sourced from farmland (Amanor, 1999, 2005a). Timber concessionaires created considerable damage to farmland in extracting timber, without paying farmers realistic compensation. Chainsaw operators

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increasingly found their operations criminalised as the areas in which they operated were given out as concessions. This has resulted in violent conflicts between rural youth, chainsaw operators and farmers. Local communities frequently resist attempts by timber concessionaires to fell timber on their land. The forestry service and the military have frequently intervened to control ‘illegal’ rural extraction of timber. In 1994 a new Forestry Policy was introduced which declared a commitment to community participation in forest policy. The policy also led to the centralisation of off-reserve forestry resources whose management was transferred from district assemblies to the forestry service. Prior to this, district assemblies were responsible for giving out permits for timber resources in farming areas for individual trees. Since 1994, timber resources in farming areas have been allocated by the forestry service to timber companies. In 1994 legislation was also introduced which banned the use of the chainsaw in processing timber into beams, effectively criminalising small-scale farm processing of timber and monopolising timber resources for the export-oriented timber trade. Many craft sectors that also use timber have found their livelihoods criminalised, including wood carvers, mortar carvers and producers of dugout canoes. The expansion of concessions in farming areas has resulted in the rapid denuding of these areas of all tree species that can be used for timber. The main developments in community forestry in Ghana include the introduction of Community Forest Committees (CFCs) and corporate Social Responsibility Agreements (SRAs). The creation of the CFCs has been influenced by the downsizing of the forestry sector and retrenchment of forest workers. The CFCs are engaged contractually by the forestry service to carry out forest management tasks originally carried out by the labourers employed by the service. These tasks include boundary clearance and policing to control encroachment into the forestry reserves. While the CFCs are represented by the forestry service as civil society and community organisations, in reality they represent sections of the community that are willing to collaborate with the forestry service for financial reward. Since they are contracted to carry out specific tasks in forest management they do not represent the autonomous interests of farming communities, and certainly not those elements that have been criminalised and robbed of their livelihood by the expansion of export timber. The SRAs are influenced by concepts of promoting corporate partnerships in community development. Timber companies make provisions for the development of social

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infrastructure projects in the communities in which they work, for reforestation projects and for the development of alternative livelihoods to the use of forest resources by the communities. However, the moneys that timber companies are required to put aside for community projects are a very small proportion of the value of timber and the profits. The SRAs frequently do not meet the needs of the communities and they are often negotiated with chiefs, who are selected to represent the communities. The chiefs have interests distinct from those of the communities of forest users and they have a direct interest in the appropriation of community forestry rights, since they gain royalties for the timber resources exploited by concessions. The chiefs have been co-opted by the timber industry or connive with the timber industry to gain access to part of the surplus profits. Many chiefs are timber concessionaires in their own rights or serve on the boards of timber companies. The SRAs detract from the main problem that has emerged in recent times, which is communities’ considerable loss of access to forest resources and forest-based livelihoods. The livelihood options promoted under SRAs are often inconsequential and do not constitute viable livelihood strategies for the rural poor, particularly when compared with the extent of their loss of access to forest resources that has resulted from the expansion of timber concessions and export timber into farmland. A civil society consisting of chiefs, financially rewarded CFCs and environmental NGOs is being created around the export timber system; significant numbers of rural people – particularly youth – are being increasingly marginalised, criminalised and made destitute (Amanor, 2005a, 2005b).

Minerals Similar developments to those in forestry can be found in the West African minerals sector, particularly in the oil sector in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and the gold mining sector in western Ghana. In these areas violent conflicts are escalating around access to land and natural resources and the expansion of global corporate investment. The Niger Delta region has a population of over 30 million, comprising 23 per cent of Nigeria’s population, with high population densities averaging 265 people/sq. km, but rising to over 1,500 people in some areas. The Niger Delta is home to a number of national minorities,

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who since colonial times have felt poorly represented in Nigeria, and marginalised as an economic backwater. This has been exacerbated with the development of oil production. Oil exploration began in the 1950s in the Niger Delta, and over the next two decades large areas of land were expropriated for oil companies, with negligible compensation for the people. As with GOPDC in Ghana, the government only paid compensation to farmers for the crops on the land, since the allodial title in customary tenure was vested in chiefs. Since then, the expansion of oil has created an ecological nightmare, of pipes, oil spills and 24 hour flaring of gas. Nearly 80 per cent of gas in the area is flared, emitting large quantities of methane and carbon dioxide. The agricultural and fishing livelihoods of the people have been disrupted by the oil industry (Human Rights Watch, 1995; Idemudia and Ite, 2006). The revenues received by the Niger Delta area for oil have been small. Between 1970 and 1980, the revenues of the Niger Delta comprised 2 per cent of the value of oil produced. Within Nigeria, a principle of division of revenues has emerged based on derivation, in which a region receives a portion of the revenues it contributes to GDP in recognition of its contribution to the national economy. Originally, a region received 50 per cent of the proceeds of its mineral revenues as derived revenues. However, as oil production increased and the Nigerian state became increasingly dependent upon these revenues (and other sources of revenue declined), derived revenues dramatically dropped to 2 per cent in 1984 and 1.5 per cent in 1992, before being raised to 13 per cent in 2001, as a result of increasing political crisis in the Delta (Watts, 2000; Idemudia and Ite, 2006). The Delta region is poorly developed. It lacks transport and electricity infrastructures, and health and school facilities, and it is characterised by widespread unemployment and poverty (Watts, 2000, 2006). By the 1990s deteriorating social, economic and environmental conditions and growing awareness of the expropriation of the petroleum wealth of the area by transnational oil companies and the Nigerian government resulted in increasing discontent and organised opposition. In 1992, the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), led by Ken Saro-Wiwa, organised to articulate the demands of the Ogoni people for rights as a national minority and for environmental justice against the Nigerian government and Shell (Human Rights Watch, 1995; Watts, 2000; Bob, 2002). In late 1992, MOSOP issued an ultimatum to the oil companies demanding $10 billion in accumulated royalties, damages and compensation, a halt to environmental

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pollution, and negotiations between the petroleum companies and the Ogoni people for agreements on future drilling. As the conflict escalated in 1994 and spread to other areas in the Delta, the Nigerian government unleashed military repression and a campaign of terror of the Ogoni people. By mid-June 1994, 30 villages had been destroyed, 600 people had been detained, and at least 40 people had been killed. Nine leaders of MOSOP, including Saro-Wiwa, were arrested and sentenced by a special tribunal to death. In 1998 the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) was formed to take up the struggles of the Ijaw people, the dominant population in the Niger Delta. The IYC issued the Kaima Declaration in which they denounced the loss of control of their homeland to the oil companies and made demands for the oil companies to suspend operations and withdraw from Ijaw territory. The IYC launched a campaign of direct action, evocatively named Operation Climate Change, which sought to struggle peacefully for self-determination and ecological justice. The government’s response was military repression, and soldiers were sent in to halt the demonstrations by carrying out brutal beatings and killings of many members of the communities around the oil installations. Despite this intimidation, Operation Climate Change continued and campaigners disrupted Nigerian oil supplies throughout 1999 by turning off oil valves throughout Ijaw territory (Human Rights Watch, 1999). Amnesty International (2005) has estimated that about 1,500 people were killed in 2003 and 2004 in the Niger Delta. Women have also played an important role in opposing the Nigerian oil industry and standing up for the rights of the communities (Ukeje and Odebeyi, 2003) Since then the conflicts have become increasingly violent, with a plethora of well-armed groups emerging, dominant among which has been the Niger Delta People’s Voluntary Force. These groups have been involved in armed attacks and kidnapping of foreign oil workers, and bunkering, a process of siphoning off oil from pipelines into barges (Human Rights Watch, 1999; Ukeje and Odebeyi, 2003; Amnesty International, 2005; Ikelegbe, 2006). The actions of these groups have considerably disrupted the operations of the Nigerian oil industry. With the failure of repression to halt discontent, and a growing bad international press, the oil companies within the Delta area have increasingly turned to policies of attempting to co-opt communities through promoting SRAs and corporate partnerships for community development. These projects focus upon building capacities to promote

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individual initiatives in small businesses. These include provision of micro-credit and training for small business development and agricultural modernisation projects. These community projects tend to focus on the prosperous and middling elements within the communities and the chiefs rather than the poor and dispossessed. They attempt to divide the communities by buying off or winning over sections of them. They do not address the disruptions of the livelihoods, health, environment and ways of life of the people that the oil industry has unleashed in the Niger Delta area. As Idemudia (2006: 23) writes: corporate social investments have little or no impact on how oil MNCs carry out their core business operations and they do not help prevent and compensate communities for the negative social, economic and environmental externality generated by oil production . . . Unfortunately, there is no amount of road or bridge construction, provision of electricity or the award of scholarships that can compensate for 24 hours of daylight resulting from gas flaring. Neither do cash payments compensate for future loss of livelihood.

Idemudia and Ite (2006) argue that the environmental and social changes brought about by the oil industry in the Niger Delta have undermined sustainable livelihoods within the areas and led to deprivation. This combined with the disillusionment that has resulted from the failure of the oil boom to provide discernible benefits of modernisation has resulted in discontent, which expresses itself in growing violence and conflict. In Ghana, the introduction of economic liberalism has resulted in the rapid expansion of foreign investment in mining. The government has made 70 per cent of the land available for mining concessions. In recent years gold mining has been transformed from deep-pit to opencast cyanide heap-leach mining, which reduces operation costs but creates more environmental damage and requires larger areas of land. In the Wassa district, between 1990 and 1998, 30,000 people have been forced to move from their settlements to make way for mining operations (Akabzaa, 2000). Many communities have lost access to farmland and have suffered from the contamination of their water supplies through seepage of toxic mine waste (Akabzaa, 2000). Many of these expropriations have taken place without compensation being given to the communities, or with inadequate payments of compensation. Chiefs have frequently collaborated with the state and mining companies in alienating the resources of the communities and in accepting derisory compensation packages for community members (Akabzaa, 2000).

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The communities within the main mining areas in the western region are some of the poorest and most marginalised in Ghana, poorly served by roads, hospitals and schools. High unemployment exists and many youth have taken to informal gold mining as a livelihood. In the early days of economic liberalisation, the informal mining sector was encouraged. However, with the expansion of the corporate sector, concessions have expanded into the areas of operation of small-scale miners, forcing them to abandon their livelihoods or continue mining illegally in areas granted as concessions. Inadequate areas have been allocated to the informal sector and usually in the most unproductive areas. The expansion of mining concessions has resulted in growing tensions and increasing violence as communities attempt to protect their rights in land, their rights to a livelihood, to settlements and residence, and to a healthy environment. Attempts by communities to defend their interests often result in repression by military and security forces, which are sent in by government at the behest of mining companies. This has resulted in savage beatings of informal sector miners and dissenting community members and a number of deaths. As in Nigeria, the responses of the government security services, often acting at the request of mining companies, are creating conditions for future violent conflicts. The law courts too have introduced harsh sentences against members of mining communities who resist expropriation and the bullying tactics of mining companies. In December 2006 five activists of the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM), an organisation which seeks to defend the interests of communities in the Wassa area against mining companies, were arrested for meeting with disaffected members of communities in an area mined by Newmont. When brought before the court, the five activists were sentenced to two weeks’ prison custody. The judge stated ‘in recent times, the mining communities had been disturbing the foreign companies and he would use this case to set an example so that the community people would stop harassing the mining companies’.2 In research into relations between the corporate mining sector and communities, Obara and Jenkins (2006) found that while some mining companies advocated military intervention to enforce the laws on mining, others were attempting to promote Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through developing linkages with the affected communities. The main focus of this approach, as in forestry, was to attempt to develop and support alternative livelihoods to mining for the affected communities.

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However, as in Nigeria, this does not address the loss of land and livelihoods, the disruption of settlements and communities, and the health risks. CSR distracts from this process of brutal expropriation and seeks to promote the mining companies as enlightened, socially responsible and committed to sustainable development.

The Role of Civil Society Donors are increasingly supporting the development of civil society in West Africa, providing funds for service delivery by NGOs, for advocacy and for the development of civil society fora. Civil society is seen as an important agent for limiting authoritarian governments, strengthening popular empowerment, mitigating the unsettling forces of markets, enforcing accountability and transparency, and making demands on policy processes. Civil society is associated with liberal–democratic values, with the emergence of political society that conforms to notions of democratic representation, and with the rule of law. Civic society is confined to those organisations that agree to act within the rule of law and which eschew violence (Hadenius and Uggla, 1996). Within the West African context, this effectively excludes many of the organisations and movements of rural people who spontaneously organise to defend their rights to land, natural resources and livelihoods against repressive state policies. In recent years, these groups have experienced the rule of law and the expansion of the corporate sector as a form of social injustice, which expropriates them through legal processes. These legal processes rely on the dearth of secure rights given to rural land users within the framework of customary land tenure. When the communities and producers persist in defending their interests and organise, they are criminalised by the state. This justifies the use of repressive measures, including imprisonment and state-organised violence by security services. This usually leads to the escalation of violence, and the groups and social movements are frequently castigated as illegal, criminal and acting beyond the limits of civil society. Rural groups experience considerable difficulties in organising to protect their interests. However, they are not given priority in contemporary civil society initiatives, which tend to focus on middleclass elite NGOs and rural and customary elites. In recent years, much civil society funding in West Africa has gone into promoting the organisation of ‘traditional’ authorities and chiefs. Support is given to facilitate exchange visits and networking between chiefs in different

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countries. Donors have also funded development foundations established by chiefs. They have given support for national ‘decentralised’ programmes that give chiefs greater roles in managing ‘customary’ land and natural resources. Corporate interests also focus on supporting community initiatives that come under the control of chiefs and giving direct support to chiefs for community development initiatives. Many national and international NGOs have also developed community initiatives around strengthening customary organisations and chieftaincy. In a study of NGOs in Burkina Faso, Hagberg (2004) documents how successful NGOs seek to cultivate linkages with international organisations and with chiefly authorities. By cultivating close ties with chiefs, they are able to extend their influence within the rural areas using chiefs to extend their programmes. Through collaborations with chiefs, international civil society is able to impose its own agenda on the rural areas and ensure conformity. While many international NGOs do take up the causes of communities threatened by the excesses of international corporate interests, they also ramify the extension of corporate interests at the expense of communities by presenting the problems as being the creation of individual companies with bad consciousness, rather than as the expansion of global capital and markets. Thus, they often seek to negotiate corporate social responsibilities with individual companies, rather than analysing the problems that have emerged within the context of expanding global markets and the appropriation of community resources by capital. This enables companies to continue to expropriate and impoverish communities, while proclaiming corporate social responsibility and a commitment to sustainable development. The networks that are mobilised under the guise of civil society continue to be the old networks that were mobilised in the colonial period for community development, and in the early post-colonial period for modernisation.

Conclusion The contemporary framework of sustainable development in West Africa is based on building linkages between state, corporate investment and civil society and harmonising institutional frameworks of the state and customary relations. Harmonising state and customary relations and decentralising land administration to community organisations are concepts much in vogue in contemporary land policy frameworks.

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Civil society is expected to create pressures for the state to be transparent and accountable and for it to introduce reforms in the administration of land and natural resources that will create a favourable climate conducive to foreign investment. Foreign investment will introduce new technologies and investments that will improve productivity and lead to better management of resources and the reduction of poverty. Increasing corporate investment will translate into corporate social responsibility, enhanced community development, wealth creation and improved technology, leading to more sustainable development. The participation of communities in the expansion of the global economy will herald a golden age of sustainable development. In reality, growing impoverishment, increasing disparities in wealth, deteriorating environments, pollution, health hazards and increasing violent conflicts over resources are the hallmarks of the new investment sectors in which peasant producers are being stripped of their assets to create an enabling environment for global capitalist accumulation. This can be clearly seen in the ‘sustainable’ oil palm agribusiness estates, in the forestry industry, in the petroleum industry of the Niger Delta and in the gold industry in Ghana. Far from creating a ‘win–win’ situation of wealth for all, the expansion of these corporate sectors leads to growing impoverishment for the majority of rural people in the midst of increased wealth accumulation and increasing conflicts. The concept of sustainable development as an alliance between the state, the corporate sector and civil society appears as a tardy advertising banner, proclaiming the good life in the midst of increasing immiseration.

Notes 1. 2.

http://www.siat.be/index.cfm.introduction NV SIAT SA: A Partner for Sustainable Development 2 Html. Updated September 2004. Mining Violations in Ghana, 5 December 2006, http://www.blacklooks. org/2006/12/mining_violations _ in_ghana.html

6 Sustainable Development, Ecotourism, National Minorities and Land in Botswana Mpho G. Molomo

As Peters (1984) comments, land is about meaning, resources and power. Thus, the land question in Botswana cannot be discussed without locating it within the wider political economy of the nation-state. The intervention of the Botswana state in the allocation of land raises important issues about the nature of the process of democratisation. The main objectives of state economic policy, including conceptions of sustainable development and the role of privatisation in economic policy, are significant for the land question. Since nature tourism is seen as an important part of diversifying the economy, the development of games reserves, national parks, and wildlife management areas has occupied centre stage in national development and sustainable development in Botswana. This chapter traces the historical context in which land policies have been formulated and land tenure reforms have been introduced by the post-colonial state. It examines popular struggles and conflicts over land and natural resources, including ethnic conflicts over the land rights of national minorities, and the processes through which these struggles are mediated in the context of a weak civil society. Botswana is frequently promoted as one of the few economic success stories in Africa. At the time of independence in 1966, it was one of the poorest countries in the world. However, due to the discovery of minerals in the mid-1970s, eshpecially diamonds, Botswana developed into what the World Bank classified as a middle-income country. However, Botswana is heavily dependent upon diamonds, which account for 35 per cent of government revenue, 70 per cent of foreign

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exchange earnings and 45 per cent of GDP. Yet the diamond mines only employ 2 per cent of the workforce. Although Botswana has recorded impressive growth rates and huge foreign exchange reserves, it is caught in the contradiction of an economy where its people continue to live with high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment. About 47 per cent of its population live below the poverty line and unemployment is high, although it has declined from 24 per cent in 2002/03 to 18 per cent in 2005/06.1 The main economic strategy of the state is to diversify the economy, to achieve rapid sustainable economic development, eradicate poverty and realise social justice through promoting competitive markets by 2016. Diversification of the economy is being promoted through the development of agriculture and tourism. Botswana has signed or ratified a number of treaties as part of cooperation in sustainable development, including the Ramsar Convention, which is intended to preserve the remaining natural heritage sites. Although Botswana’s economy is small, it is attempting to position itself to compete effectively in global markets by adjusting its economic structures and institutional frameworks to take advantage of opportunities offered by globalisation. However, this focus on growth also produces increasing social differentiation and dispossession as increasingly land and natural resources are privatised. This chapter explores the paradigms of development invoked by the government and the impact of contemporary development policies on land, rural livelihoods and cultural identities.

Land Tenure and Administration in Botswana Effective land tenure reform lies at the heart of sustainable development. Without a land reform programme that achieves justice, equality and efficiency in urban and rural sectors, national policies cannot reduce poverty or care for the ecosystem (Turner, 2001). Botswana’s land tenure system is classified into three broad categories, namely, freehold, state land and tribal land. Freehold tenure comprises 6 per cent of the land area of Botswana and was originally granted to white settler commercial livestock farmers. Freehold title gives the owner unlimited rights to the land. It was introduced during the colonial period to create a buffer against possible incursions from the Boers in South Africa. The bulk of this land

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consists of farms in the Tati, Ghanzi, Tuli, Gaborone, Lobatse and Molopo areas. State land consists of the former Crown Land, which was ceded to the colonial administration after Bechuanaland became a British protectorate in 1890. After independence, this was converted into state land with the enactment of the State Land Act of 1966. State land comprises land for urban development, national parks and game reserves, and forest reserves and wildlife management areas. Two types of tenure regimes exist on state lands: Fixed Period State Grant (FPSG) and Certificate of Rights (COR). The FPSG is a title to a lease, in which land is passed from the owner, in this case government, to the lessee for a stipulated period of time. The FPSG was developed by the post-colonial state in the 1960s, out of the realisation that freehold permanently alienated land from government. FPSG was first applied to the development of the Selibe-Phikwe township. COR title to land first emerged in 1973, out of the attempt to control the squatter settlements in Botswana. Old Naledi is perhaps the first squatter settlement in Botswana and originated with the construction of the Gaborone Dam. Old Naledi mushroomed as a result of a lack of formal low-income housing for workers (Shonge, 1982). With the growth of Gaborone and other urban centres, it became clear that a coherent policy that addressed low-income housing was necessary. However, given the high cost of serviced land in the urban areas, government developed COR as a title that would not burden the recipients with costly formal titles. COR, like tribal land tenure, gives the holder unlimited right of use, but holders can also get a title deed if they so wish. Tribal land constitutes 71 per cent of the national land. Customary tribal land was divided into three land use types: residential, arable and grazing. This land was communally held. Its allocation was vested in dikgosi (chiefs) and dikgosana (sub-chiefs), who held it in trust for their people. Emanating from their hold over land, dikgosi created a bond with the people based on political allegiance. Land was apportioned on the basis of wards and was passed on to descendants. It was considered to be the heritage of all the people who live in the polity, and as such no one could claim exclusive control over it. The Tribal Territories Act of 1933 (Cap. 32: 03) defined land as belonging to particular tribes and their boundaries. However, new districts, which were not accorded tribal reserves during the colonial period, were created after independence from freehold and state land.

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These are the Chobe, Ghanzi, Kgalagadi and North East districts. With the advent of the post-colonial state and the passing of the Tribal Land Act of 1968, the jurisdiction of tribal land was placed under the Tribal Land Boards within the decentralised structure of local authorities (Proctor, 1968; Gillet, 1973). This act was critical in reinforcing institutional arrangements in the transition from colonial rule to the politics of the nation-state. There are 12 Land Boards in Botswana, with 39 Subordinate Land Boards under them. The Subordinate Land Boards only have the power to allocate land for residential purposes and fields for ploughing. In relation to applications for boreholes and common law grants, the Subordinate Land Boards are only empowered to process applications and make recommendation to the Main Land Boards. Each Land Board has 10 members, half of whom are elected at the kgotla (village assembly) through a secret ballot system. The other half are nominated by the minister of lands and housing. Land tribunals hear appeal cases from the Main Land Boards while the Main Land Board hears those of the Subordinate Land Boards. The statutory creation of the Land Boards removed land administration and allocation from the dikgosi and placed it directly under the control of the Land Boards. Nevertheless, the Report on the Review of Rural Development Policy continued to recognise dikgosi as major players in rural development (Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis, 2001). Their main function is the administration of justice based on the application and interpretation of customary law. The centrality of dikgosi is underlined by the fact that they preside over kgotla, which are regarded as effective fora for dialogue between government and the people on various issues of national interest. The dikgosi have a reduced mandate. Their roles as agents of development and political governance have largely been taken over by District Councils, and their role as custodians of tribal land has been transferred to the Land Boards. However, section 15 of the Chieftainship Act still grants the dikgosi a broad mandate in local administration, which is sometimes seen as being in conflict with those of the District Councils and the Land Boards. The act empowers them to ‘promote the welfare of members of their tribe’ and also to ensure that people are ‘informed about development projects’ in their area. Frequently during the deliberations at the Ntlo ya Dikgosi (House of Chiefs), they raise developmental issues in similar ways to members of Parliament or councillors.

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The Tribal Land Boards, which came into effect in 1970, were initially under the District Councils, but in 1987 they began to operate as separate entities. These boards are called Tribal Land Boards because their jurisdiction is specific to tribal territories. Until the amendment of the Tribal Land Act in 1993, section 20(1) of the act restricted the allocation of tribal land to tribesmen. However, this was deemed to discriminate against other citizens of Botswana who did not belong to that tribe. An exemption by the minister of Local Government, Lands and Housing was necessary to allow non-tribal members to be allocated land outside their traditional home area (Government of Botswana, 1993). This was seen as contradicting the constitution of Botswana, which recognises equality of all citizens. As things stand, dikgosi have a minimal role to play in land allocation. Initially when the Land Boards were created the dikgosi were made ex officio members of the Land Boards. However, following the difficult relationship that existed regarding who actually controlled land, the rights of dikgosi to allocate land have been removed. They are now only assigned a marginal role, in which their headmen act as land overseers. Their main role is to sign application forms for land in the area under their jurisdiction. However, the practice is often deemed to generate conflict because most of the time the headmen do not visit the sites to verify the land applied for, and frequently more than one person is allocated the same piece of land. Their marginal role in land allocation is also attested by the fact that during allocation hearings they are never invited to be part of a process that they initiated. Moreover, they are never given feedback on the outcomes of applications. To harmonise traditional and democratic institutions a deliberate effort needs to be made to formalise and streamline the role of the dikgosi in land administration. The Land Boards have been heavily criticised throughout the country as ineffective in terms of discharging their mandate. Their apparent weaknesses are said to emanate from a weak institutional capacity in terms of surveying land and allocating it to applications expeditiously. The Land Boards suffer a further limitation due to lack of competence and skills to appreciate the viability of projects for which land is sought. It has been widely recognised that most members of the Land Boards are young and lack experience to handle such a sensitive matter as land (Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis, 2001).

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The land question in Botswana is closely tied to the notion of ethnicity. The struggles for ethnic identity and autonomy play themselves out in the land question. This results from the Tribal Territories Act subsuming certain ethnic groups under the territorial domain of other ethnic groups. For instance, in the Central District several ethnic groups, including the Bakalanga, Batswapong and Babirwa, are placed under the control of the Ngwato chieftaincy. Similarly, in Ngamiland or the North West District, the Batawana royalty presides over an area that includes Wayeyi, Hambukushu and other population groups. The nexus between land and ethnicity is problematic, since dikgosi are ceremonial heads of tribal districts without executive powers. The area of greatest contestation has been the location of bogosi (chieftainship), especially paramount chiefs in Botswana’s social and political structure, particularly since the Tribal Land Act of 1968 established the Tribal Land Boards that curtailed their jurisdiction. Ethnic minorities detest the ex officio status accorded to the eight Tswana tribes while they have to elect their representatives to the House of Chiefs. In making their submission to the Balopi Commission, they argued that, with a view to recognise merit, qualification to the house should not be a birthright but through election. Increasingly, ethnic minorities have challenged the dominant paradigm of nation building through the diffusion of the values of the dominant Tswana culture. They have argued that Botswana is not the homogeneous society that it is often projected to be. The Botswana nation is made up of several ethnic nationalities. Therefore, nation building should be anchored on democratic ideals of individual freedom and civil liberty and should be founded on unity in diversity, rather than the images of the dominant Tswana groups. The ethnic question also contests the notion of citizenship (Werbner, 2001). Citizenship, under the liberal democratic set-up, guarantees the enjoyment of individual and civil rights as well as equality before the law, irrespective of race, class or tribe. However, these rights are ambiguous in Botswana, given the perception that some tribes are major and others are minor. The so-called minority tribes have rejected being treated as second-class citizens who are expected to assimilate Tswana cultural norms and suppress their own, under the guise of nation building. Ethnic minorities argue that their cultural heritage, language and ancestral homes should be recognised in the public sphere.

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The Society for the Promotion of Ikalanga Language (SPIL) is perhaps a frontrunner in articulating ethnic consciousness and the need to promote Ikalanga as an avenue of self-actualisation by Bakalanga speakers. As the name suggests, it is an exclusive organisation that seeks to promote the Ikalanga language. This obviously runs counter to the dominant Tswana culture, which is bent on promoting Setswana as the national language. The struggles for hegemony became more pronounced after the formation of Pitso ya Batswana (PYB), which translates as the Clarion Call for Batswana. PYB was formed to raise the consciousness of Tswana-speaking Batswana that, even though they consider themselves to be a numerical majority,2 they are increasingly being marginalised, especially by Ikalanga-speaking Batswana. PYB is regarded by other civil society organisations, especially SPIL and the Kamanakao Association, as a neo-conservative organisation bent on suppressing ethnic minorities. PYB stands for the dominant Tswana culture and feels that some minority groups, especially Bakalanga, make demands that seek to undermine Tswana culture and are unpatriotic. They argue that since the country is called Botswana this means it is essentially a land for Batswana. The Kamanakao Association, a Bayeyi cultural organisation, which has taken the government to court over the lack of recognition of its tribe, has also forcefully articulated the ethnic question. As far back as 1948, the Bayeyi articulated demands that they be accorded their own dikgotla (traditional courts) and given a voice in tribal administration. They also demanded the restoration of their land rights. On 24 April 1999, Bayeyi enthroned Kalvin Kamanakao as paramount chief and demanded his recognition by government. They made demands for jurisdiction over their tribal lands and for the designation of Gumare as their own district headquarters. The Bayeyi have also demanded that the Shiyeyi language be introduced into the school system. Botswana came under heavy attack at a United Nations sitting of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (2002), when Lydia Nyathi-Ramohobo, representing Bayeyi and other so-called minority groups under the banner of Reteng, lodged a complaint against perceived discrimination. The committee raised serious concern about the discriminatory character of certain domestic laws, such as the Chieftainship Act and the Territorial Act, which only recognizes the Tswana speaking tribes. Other tribes, especially Basarwa/San peoples, are reported to suffer from cultural, social, economic and political exclusion, do not enjoy group

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rights to land, and do not participate in the House of Chiefs. (United Nations, 2002: 3)

Following the Government White Paper on the Balopi Commission the membership of the Ntlo ya Dikgosi has been increased from 15 to 35 to accommodate other ethnic groups that were excluded. However, the new dispensation does not address the fundamental questions of exclusion and ethnic equality that were raised during the hearings of the commission. Ethnicity remains a central issue in the contestation of land rights for the Basarwa. The Basarwa are a minority who were historically exploited by the Tswana and other groups as cattle herders and servile labourers. They reside in remote area that are far removed from the major urban centres, and despite government’s rural development efforts, infrastructural facilities servicing their areas are limited. The government has used the provision of infrastructure as a pretext to move Basarwa out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). Basarwa are also remote from the locus of political power. Many of them have not benefited from formal education and do not have positions of influence in the public service or political administration. As a result, decisions are taken on their behalf in a paternalistic manner that conforms to the ethos of the dominant Tswana society. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination further expressed concern about the ongoing dispossession of Basarwa/San people from their land, and about reports stating that their resettlement outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve does not respect their political, economic, social and cultural rights. The Committee [drew] the attention of the State party to its General Recommendation XXIII on indigenous peoples be taken without their informed consent. The Committee recommend that negotiations with the Basarwa/San and non-governmental organizations be resumed on this issue, and that a rights-based approach to development be adopted. (United Nation, 2002: 3)

Agriculture and Land Reform Although the agricultural sector contributes only 2.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it is of vital importance to the economy because half of the rural population (or 20 per cent of the country’s population) depends on agriculture for income and employment. It is evident that land tenure is at the heart of a successful and co-ordinated

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rural development strategy. Communal land, which is often referred to as a social safety net for the majority of the rural people, is important in sustaining rural livelihoods. Since the early 1970s there has been a major drive for a fencing policy and the commercialisation of the arable and livestock industries (Molomo, 1999). The government aimed to improve productivity in the livestock sub-sector by implementing management reforms, including a new fencing policy, which was adopted in 1991. Following the dictates of the new fencing policy, the various Tribal Land Boards have demarcated most of the tribal land and have invited applicants to compete for such lands. The new fencing policy has intensified pressure on land, and the Land Boards are inundated with applications for commercial ranches. Moreover, the criteria set for land allocation for commercial livestock farming are so stringent that people without sufficient capital cannot be considered for allocation. Without doubt, the commercialisation of the livestock sector through fencing off the remaining tribal land is likely to have adverse economic implications for sustainable rural livelihoods. Small peasants who have been watering cattle at other peoples’ boreholes may be expected to give way, as individual land ownership begins to predominate. The Revised National Policy for Rural Development argues that the development of commercial livestock should introduce ‘use pays’ for national resources so as to discourage marginal farmers and offer new opportunities for efficient farmers.3 Rain-fed arable production has been severely constrained by unfavourable agro-climatic conditions that include endemic drought and high summer temperatures.4 The government has formulated various programmes to alleviate rural poverty and increase food security. The National Master Plan for Arable Agriculture and Dairy Development (NAMPAADD) articulates the vision and the constraints that face the arable sub-sector. NAMPAADD addresses the main areas in agricultural production, namely rained arable agriculture, irrigated agriculture and dairy farming. Through NAMPAADD, it is envisaged that with improvements in technology and management using existing resources, the goal of self-sufficiency would be within reach.5 Under NAMPAADD, it is envisaged that the optimum size of land to put under productive use when using appropriate technology in dry land farming is 150 ha. Subsistence farmers are only allocated 16 ha, and it is argued that they could group themselves into cooperatives to benefit from the assistance provided under NAMPAADD.

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However, as with the existing borehole syndicates, which operate under severe strain, it is doubtful whether the cooperatives envisaged under NAMPAAD would succeed. Nevertheless, there are prospects that with more concerted investment in research and technology, and more innovative production and marketing techniques, agricultural policies would begin to bear better fruit. Already, the pilot projects under the NAMPAADD Production and the Training Farms of Ramatlabama, Dikabeya, Glen Valley and Sunnyside, where ‘farmers are receiving technical support and mentoring’ (Gaolatlhe, 2006: 15), are beginning to show positive results. Already the country is selfsufficient in poultry and poultry products, which represents a significant step in the diversification of the rural economy away from beef. While NAMPAADD, the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency and other programmes articulate sustainable economic development objectives, the prospects of achieving these are doubtful if they do not address the land question and a more equitable redistribution of land. This effort would further be complemented by development of agricultural infrastructure in the form of dams, roads and electricity.

Land, Nature Tourism and Expropriation In its quest for economic diversification, the government is promoting tourism as an alternative engine of growth in Botswana. Tourism has now overtaken textiles, and has emerged as a third foreign exchange earner, after diamonds and beef. Tourism now accounts for 4.5 per cent of GDP. However, the development of tourism has given rise to major contradictions, since it has resulted in the alienation of land from people, including the Basarwa. To achieve the projections of the National Development Plan and Vision 2016, Botswana needs to develop its tourism industry and open up new areas to tourism. Tourism has largely been confined to the watery wilderness of the Okavango Delta, whose myriad channels of water ultimately disappear in the sands of the Kalahari. Chobe is also another prime tourist destination, and the forests in the Chobe National Park support a variety of wildlife including many bird species, and the river provides a relaxing site. Plans are under way for the improvement of wildlife resources and development of management plans at Makgadikgadi, Nxai National Parks and the Central Kalahari/Khutse

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Game Reserve to engage these natural resources in sustainable development. Moreover, negotiations are under way, as a tripartite arrangement, with Zimbabwe and South Africa to ‘develop a large trans-frontier wildlife conservation area centred at the confluence of the Shahe and Limpopo rivers’ (Gaolatlhe, 2006: 15). The ‘Transfrontier Park’ is jointly owned, funded and administered by Botswana and South Africa. Another transfrontier park is proposed between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers.

Expropriating the Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve The CKGR is the largest game reserve in Botswana. It remains a largely untapped wilderness environment. The CKGR was created in 1951 by the colonial administration with a view to conserve wildlife fauna and flora, as well as to create a sanctuary for the Basarwa to continue their traditional way of life, unfettered by the encroachment of cattle farmers from the dominant Tswana groups. As Rogers (1991: 15) comments, ‘The Central Kalahari Game Reserve was originally declared largely with the objective of providing an area where Basarwa people could continue their tradition of hunting and game culture.’ The Joint Advisory Council set up the CKGR in 1960 ‘with a dual and contradictory purpose of wildlife preservation and some kind of reserve for Basarwa’ (Parsons et al., 1995: 187). The recognition of the CKGR as the ancestral home of Basarwa continued well into the post-colonial period. Section 14(3c) of the constitution recognised the land use rights of the Basarwa in the CKGR. However, the National Parks Act of 1968 and the Wildlife Conservation Policy of 1986 regulated Basarwa rights of access and use of the game reserve. Basarwa are issued with special hunting licences that regulate the number and species of animals they can hunt in the reserve. However, different government departments have conflicting and contradictory policies for the Basarwa. The Remote Area Development Programme (RADP) of the Ministry of Local Government and Lands has initiated a number of projects that target Basarwa with a view to empower them economically. Under this programme they are provided with services such as schools and clinics as well as goats, cattle and donkeys. This is incongruent with the policy of the Department of Wildlife and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which has declared that according to the Wildlife Conservation and

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National Parks Act No. 28 of 1992, wildlife is not allowed to co-exist with people in the game reserve. Cattle, goats and donkeys cannot be reared inside the game reserve. In a bid to resolve this contradiction, the government decided to persuade the Basarwa to relocate outside the CKGR. While the government has not used direct physical force to remove the Basarwa it has cut off water and terminated special game licences, old age pension allowances, food rations and other essential services. Furthermore, the government has prohibited NGOs that are sympathetic to the plight of the Basarwa from providing them with food and water inside the CKGR. This relocation has disintegrated the social fabric and sense of community of the Basarwa. Some of them have been settled at New Xadi in the Ghanzi District while others are at Kaudwane in the Kweneng District. Research has shown that Basarwa who have been relocated to New Xadi and Kaudwane are disorientated and suffer from poverty and alcohol abuse.6 The cattle, goats and donkeys that Basarwa were supplied with have not resulted in sustainable livelihoods. It would be simplistic to attribute this state of affairs to a sense of dependence on handouts and irresponsibility, rather than seeing it as the manifestation of a deep-rooted societal ill resulting from their displacement from their ancestral land and refusal to be assimilated into the dominant Tswana culture. Roy Sesana, of the First People of the Kalahari (FPK), argues that the relocation of Basarwa is cultural genocide, which will prevent their children from knowing their roots and living their cultural way of life. Although there has been a protracted negotiation between the government and Basarwa over the relocation, the government has found it easy to relocate them because Botswana’s land tenure policy is conceived and based on the traditions of the dominant Tswana culture.7 The socio-economic existence of Basarwa appears to be at variance with Tswana norms and practices. Unlike other tribal groups, Basarwa never identified their territorial claim by permanent physical settlements and centralised political structures (Schapera, 1943, 1970; Hitchcock, 1978, 1982; Childers, 1981). This has been used to erroneously claim that Basarwa have no legal claim over land. However, on the contrary, Wilmsen (1989: 163) provides evidence that [t]he San land tenure . . . is part of that social universe negotiated by San peoples in their day-to-day relations with others, not only those acknowledged to be co-members of a particular group but those other people who share the same geographical space.

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Global development, tourism and land rights At face value, it appears what is being contested in the CKGR is the demand by government for the natural resource to be used for the public interest rather than to be enjoyed only by the Basarwa. However, this is essentially a struggle between different conceptions of private property rights, the right of people to a livelihood, and the expropriation of resources for tourism and international capitalist development. In essence, the Basarwa are being forced to give up their livelihood to make tourism attractive for capitalist development. The decision by the Botswana government to relocate Basarwa from the CKGR has been contested by both local and international actors. Within the country, the Basarwa have contested the relocation under the auspices of FPK or Kgeikani Kweni. With the assistance of Survival International (SI) and Ditshwanelo (The Botswana Centre for Human Rights), FPK took the government to court so that they could be pressured to respect their human rights and restore their land rights. Ditshwanelo is perhaps the leading national NGO that has taken government to task on the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR. Ditshwanelo argues that to relocate Basarwa from their ancestral land signifies the nation’s collective failure to recognise their aboriginal title to land. Ditshwanelo, as their ardent spokesperson, argues that negotiation between government and Basarwa should include NGOs and should adopt a ‘rights-based approach to development’.8 It argues that the relocation of the residents of the CKGR is ‘unnecessary’ and is a ‘breach of the constitution and their human rights’.9 Opposition parties have also raised their concern about the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR, which they consider as inhuman, unnecessary and inconsistent with the principle of equality of all ethnic groups. Articulating the official position of the Botswana National Front (BNF), the former secretary general, Paul Rantao, said that even though the party has not issued a statement on the matter, its position is clear based on the provisions of their Social Democratic Programme (SDP). The SDP espouses ‘fair distribution of the nation’s resources . . . and equal rights of all nations’.10 Rantao concluded that ‘Botswana is spacious enough to accommodate wildlife elsewhere, but for Basarwa, the CKGR is the only place where they

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can maintain a spiritual bond with their ancestors . . . Africans believe in ancestors as intermediaries between the living and God’.11 SI, a British NGO, which advocates for the rights of minorities and ‘tribal people’ internationally, has spearheaded the campaign against the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR. They have carried their campaign through the Internet, mass media and major international meetings. Perhaps the most visible campaign was when they staged a vigil outside the Botswana High Commission in London. They have also taken the campaign to other European capitals.12 Stephen Corry of SI says that Basarwa have lobbied the international community to help them tell the Botswana government that they have ‘sentenced us to death . . . there is no freedom in this country . . . they took our place and made it a game reserve’.13 Corry maintains that ‘Botswana is now being cast in the role of a destructive nation, the country where the most self-sufficient Basarwa left in Southern Africa are being smashed’. Mariam Ross, also of SI, argues that the settlements of New Xadi and Kaudwane are characterised by ‘despondency and helplessness’.14 Ross further points out that the ‘removal of Basarwa was not voluntary, as there was threat of force and harassment of those who showed resistance’.15 She adds that some men found their families had been moved without their consent. Lamenting the desperate lives of the Basarwa at the new settlements, she contends that in the game reserve, ‘Basarwa woke up knowing exactly what to do because they were familiar with the land’. Moreover, Basarwa are said to be bitter because they are removed from the land where their ‘ancestors are buried’.16 Furthermore, SI has labelled Botswana diamonds as ‘blood’ or ‘conflict’ diamonds because, as they argue, government uses the proceeds from diamonds to suppress and dislocate its own people rather than for their development. Based on the knowledge that diamond deposits were discovered at Gope inside the CKGR in 1980, SI decided to link the possible mining of diamonds at Gope with the relocation of the Basarwa population within the reserve. President Mogae has, however, attempted to discredit the campaign of these organisations as ‘malicious and misleading’.17 Since diamonds account for disproportionate amounts of government revenue, the SI campaign could possibly hurt the Botswana economy, if it gained international acceptance and support. Hence the Botswana government has developed a vigorous campaign to absolve itself from the label of conflict diamonds and to portray SI as an enemy of the Botswana government and its people. Professor Kenneth Good, a long-time outspoken critic of government

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authoritarianism and executive dominance of the political process, was declared a prohibited immigrant after he presented an article (Good, 2005) in which he referred to Botswana diamonds as blood diamonds. The relocation of Basarwa has also been a subject of discussion in the British Parliament. Lord Pearson asked the British government to intervene and ‘ask Botswana to stay the execution of its removal order of Basarwa from the reserve’.18 Richard Howitt, a member of the European Parliament, visited the CKGR and noted a sense of ‘helplessness’ and he resolved to table the matter before the European Parliament and request them to assist Basarwa inside the reserve.19 Howitt argued that Basarwa feel disempowered and not allowed to live their way of life. He lamented that the displacement of Basarwa was done in the name of development. He contended that development is about working with people, and is not something that is done to them.20 In 2006, Bishop Desmond Tutu joined the fray when he was quoted as saying ‘the Botswana government has always been a showcase of democracy in the way it cares for its people, but with respect to the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR [I wish] to request the Botswana respect the culture of Basarwa’.21 The government characteristically castigated Tutu and reiterated the same old cliché that ‘Basarwa could not be allowed to continue living like animals in game parks . . . [that] Basarwa like all Batswana deserve a decent life, they need to go to schools, better health care [and] potable water’.22 Articulating the position of the Botswana government, President Mogae told the international community that in line with the county’s development programme, and following a consultation process that started in 1985, the government has implemented a deliberated policy to relocate Basarwa from the CKGR. The decision by government to relocate them out of the CKGR was motivated by the desire to keep it as a wilderness and pristine environment that would be attractive to foreign tourists.23 Moreover, government promises them a ‘new life’ outside the game reserve where they are provided with schools, roads, clinics and other social amenities. Mogae maintains that Basarwa cannot be allowed to ‘lead a primitive life while other Batswana are enjoying the fruits of modernity’.24 Responding to allegations by SI that the primary motive for the relocation is to ensure that the government mines the diamond deposits discovered at Gope inside the CKGR, Mogae has been unequivocal. He admitted that diamonds were discovered at

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Gope but stated that they have been deemed uneconomical to mine and government has no plans to mine them in the foreseeable future. The government has engaged with SI and accused it of ‘pursuing a hidden agenda of wanting to see Basarwa living in perpetual poverty to satisfy the curiosity needs of western tourists visiting the CKGR and the research needs of western scholars’.25 The permanent secretary to the president, Molosiwa Selepeng, stated that the ‘government would rather lose foreign aid from western countries and their agencies, rather than submit to international pressure on what is essentially a domestic policy’.26 The former president, Quett Masire, maintains in his memoirs (Masire, 2007: 235) that Basarwa were resettled because the government wanted to provide them with the same kind of opportunities as afforded to other Batswana. Although opposition MPs expressed disquiet about some aspects of the resettlement, bipartisan consensus on the issue was achieved, especially respecting the tactics of SI. A sense of solidarity emerged between ruling-party MPs and opposition on what they referred to as ‘unwarranted outside interference in the affairs of Botswana politics’.27 The member of Parliament for Gaborone West, Robert Molefabangwe, ‘wondered what was so special about Basarwa of the CKGR’ when there are others in other parts of the country and concern is not raised about them. He concluded by saying that SI has ‘no mandate to speak for Basarwa’.28 Botswana youth also pledged solidarity with the Botswana government view that diamonds need to be seen as ‘diamonds for development and not conflict diamonds’.29 While the government and opposition parties closed ranks on the issue of conflict diamonds, the two parties hold divergent views on the relocation of Basarwa. In November 2006, the BNF held a mass demonstration in solidarity with the Basarwa demand that they should not be relocated from the CKGR. The government contrived to depict this as unpatriotic and ‘treacherous’.30 The Botswana Congress Party (BCP) also has said that government’s intransigence in the case involving the relocation of Basarwa showed that it had little respect for Basarwa as they have traditionally been viewed as ‘less than human’.31 Other opposition parties were also against the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR. Various NGOs such as the Botswana Council of Non-governmental Organisations (BOCONGO) and the Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM) have condemned SI’s confrontational stand and its linking of Botswana’s diamonds with conflict diamonds.32 BOCONGO and Ditshwanelo feel that there

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must be further dialogue and consultations, which would involve civil society and other stakeholders in the discussion of the Basarwa issue. BOCCIM for its part maintains the position that Basarwa in the CKGR should be treated ‘as an integral part’ of the nation of Botswana ‘from which entrepreneurial latent and skilled human resources for economic development . . . can be derived’. They further argue that ‘Basarwa like any other group of the Botswana population need to be exposed to a life full of choices and be given decent life-assuring tools such as education and skills training, in an environment conducive to learning and social interaction’.33 While Ditshwanelo is strongly opposed to the relocation of the Basarwa, it has distanced itself from ‘SI’s anti-Botswana diamonds campaign’.34 The ruling of the High Court on the relocation of Basarwa on 13 December 2006 has been indecisive. The High Court ruling states that the relocation of Basarwa was unconstitutional, but that government is not obliged to restore the facilities inside the reserve to the Basarwa. The fate or well-being of Basarwa who have been granted leave to return to their ancestral land depends on the goodwill of government. Underlying the conflict between the Basarwa and government are contradictions between international conventions and national law. International human rights maintains that indigenous people should be accorded special rights over land and minerals. However, the laws of Botswana maintain that all minerals and land belong to the state, which has power to disburse them in the national interest. The case of Basarwa in the CKGR is not unique, as Mtembezi stated: ‘Kenya’s nomadic pastoralists, the Masai, have been driven from their traditional grazing lands as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries were mapped out.’35 Without doubt, the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR has created the perception that the life of wild animals is worth more than that of human beings. Turner observes that people must be ‘motivated to conserve natural resources as they use them’. However, ‘if people consider their rights to natural resources to be insecure, or if they perceive themselves to be unfairly excluded from some of the nation’s heritage, they are less likely to use natural resources sustainable’ (Turner, 2001: 3). Instead of removing the Basarwa from the CKGR, they should have been given a stake in the development of tourism within the area. Historically, the Basarwa have coexisted with wildlife and they have considerable knowledge of the management of wildlife. The Basarwa could have been empowered to develop ecotourism and participate in Community Based Natural Resources

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Management (CBNRM) projects.36 Ideally, ecotourism should recognise the wealth of knowledge that indigenous people have about the ecosystem, and their role as ‘stewards of the environment’ should be acknowledged. Ecotourism as an industry has the potential for sustainable development and is ‘capable of providing the local people with the opportunity to manage their engagement with the outside world to their own benefit’.37 However, within the neoliberal economic paradigm on which Botswana’s economic policy is anchored, communities in potential nature tourist areas are being expropriated and marginalised, rather than empowered to engage in the development of appropriate forms of tourism and partnerships. For ecotourism to deliver on its promise of empowering local communities, it must be structured in such a way that ‘indigenous communities can exercise selfdetermination’ and retain ‘the largest measure of autonomy and power of decision making over their own affairs’.38 It needs to be recognised that ‘the globalization of tourism threatens knowledge and intellectual property rights, their cosmovision, technologies, religions, sacred sites, social structures and relationships’ and reduces indigenous people to ‘another consumer product that is quickly becoming exhaustible’.39 The displacement of the Basarwa from the CKBR illustrates the dangers of globalisation. They are being displaced to ensure that the game reserve remains a haven for wildlife so that it can become a prime destination for tourists.

The Kuru Development Trust The Kuru Development Trust is a Basarwa development organisation, which was formed in 1986 on a freehold farm situated at D’Kar near Ghanzi township in the Ghanzi District. In Naro, one of the Sarwa dialects, Kuru Masi means ‘to do or create for yourself’.40 Kuru Development Trust emerged with the objectives of economically empowering the Basarwa and creating opportunities for their development. It addresses issues of community-based and -owned development, issues of equity, participation, and awareness of Basarwa’s cultural needs. As Kuru grew in content and character, it began to articulate political views. However, its political programme was felt to be limited by Basarwa activists organised in D’Kar, who formed an organisation called FPK or Kgeikani Kweni in 1992, which attempts to gain recognition for Basarwa identity and land rights. The Kuru Development

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Trust, on the other hand, has established Dqae Qare Game Farm, and visitors to the farm are treated to cultural tourism, where they are guided to bush walks, observe Basarwa artists at work and buy their handicrafts. Visitors at the farm are accommodated in traditional Sarwa huts. They are also treated to a magnificent African sunset and the beauty of the African sky. Instead of Basarwa being relocated from the CKGR, so that the game reserve could be a preserve for wildlife to attract foreign tourists, they (Basarwa) could have been assisted to develop cultural tourism within the park. Contrary to the position held by government that SI ‘see Basarwa as a curiosity to be preserved’ (Masire, 2006: 236), and wish to maintain them as ‘hunters and gatherers’, the main issue is about their social dislocation and dispossession. Most people are in agreement that ‘hunting and gathering’ is no longer a sustainable way of life. The position held by the Botswana government that those who advocate that Basarwa should be empowered in accordance with their cultural way of life means that they want to maintain themin their primitive state misses the point. The issue is essentially about the relationship between development and cultural ways of life. The Kuru model, with some modifications, could perhaps be emulated.

Ecotourism, privatisation and foreign investment The year 2002 was designated by the UN General Assembly as the International Year of Ecotourism. The UN declaration is testimony to the growing importance of ecotourism, as a sector not only with great potential for economic development but with real possibilities for the marginalised and the poorest of the poor. It can also feature as a powerful tool for sustainable development and conservation of the environment. Ecotourism has been marketed as nature-based tourism and its basic tenets are conservation, sustainability, biodiversity and equality for local communities and indigenous people (Department of Tourism, 2002). To harness the promise of ecotourism, marginal communities, such as the Basarwa, need to be brought to centre stage. Nevertheless, globalisation has its own designs on ecotourism. Foreign investment in tourism is resulting in the re-colonisation of Africa’s land. Increasingly, land and natural resources are allocated to private concerns, concession companies and largely foreign-owned transnational corporations, and

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used for satisfying external markets (Tevera and Moyo, 2000). Tevera and Moyo (2000) observe that there is a growing unequal access to natural resources within this increasingly market-based framework. The capacity of the state to regulate access to land and natural resources through the Land Boards is limited. Moreover, the Land Boards as the institutions mandated to allocate land have no capacity to undertake an environmental audit to establish if the concession companies manage the land properly. A lot of trust is placed in safari companies and their ability to conserve the environment. More disturbing is the fact that these companies frequently undermine the rights of local communities, even though the leases of the concession companies stipulate that the local communities should continue to enjoy their traditional rights, such as in the area of harvesting thatching grass and reeds. There are reports that some safari companies chase local communities away. The drive towards privatisation, which puts land and natural resources in private hands, and the increasing role of international capital in the exploitation of these resources have placed the benefit of these resources beyond the reach of Batswana, especially the rural poor. The tourist industry in Botswana is based on the economic philosophy that scarcity enhances value. As a result, its underlying axiom is that in order to keep the wilderness in a pristine state, the industry must adopt the principle of high-cost low-density tourism. The assumption is that, if tourism were made accessible and affordable to all, it would not attract much-needed foreign exchange. Invariably, this type of tourism satisfies an export-led demand and the interests of the small local elite. As a result, tourism in Botswana is exclusive. While the laws of the land do not prohibit people from using tourist facilities, they are priced in such a way that the average Batswana cannot afford them. As a result, tourism becomes an enclave for foreigners and a tiny fraction of Batswana middle class. Tourism in Botswana is capital intensive and only a few Batswana, let alone Basarwa who are the poorest of the poor, can participate in this venture. By its structure, tourism in Botswana attracts large transnational corporations that have huge sums of money to invest. As a result, there is little hope that Basarwa can occupy centre stage in this process. It would be naïve to paint a rosy picture regarding the operations of the Community Based National Resources Management (CBNRM) projects. The power relationships that exist between the safari companies and local trusts are asymmetrical and unequal. Moreover, the

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technical committees that are set up by government to safeguard the interests of the trusts comprise civil servants, the majority of whom do not possess the necessary skills to ensure that the communities get value for money. The power sharing that is envisaged in CBNRM exists only in name. In reality, the concession companies have inordinate powers and tend to marginalise rural communities. Thus, the safari companies prepare the management plans without any inputs from the ‘participating’ communities.41

Popular Struggles for Land and Sustainable Livelihoods Botswana’s land tenure reform, even with the much-publicised relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR, has not been subject to a lot of public debate. Popular struggles for land resources and sustainable livelihoods can only be nurtured if there is an effective voice to articulate the interest of the weak, marginal and disempowered. The marginalisation of the poor under the neoliberal framework continues unabated in the face of a weak civil society. In order to nurture the development of democracy, civil society must constantly struggle to obtain autonomy to articulate the interests of their constituency (Molutsi and Holm, 1990). The discourse on the land question and sustainable development in Botswana takes place in a period in which the neoliberal paradigm has assumed a hegemonic position. Under this framework, there are no substantive differences between opposition parties and the ruling party (Moyo, 2001). Opposition parties no longer raise fundamental questions of who owns the means of production but are more concerned with getting a share of the national resources. Although there is widespread support for democracy in Botswana,42 voter turnout is lower than that of most countries in the region. In addition to being the oldest multi-party democracy in sub-Saharan Africa, Botswana has never been subjected to political repression. Unlike other countries in the region, where mass democratic movements have rallied civil society organisations to unseat governments, civil society has been relatively passive and uninterested in political issues. Botswana’s population has never been politically mobilised, unlike countries that experienced armed struggle. Furthermore, the relative peace that the country has enjoyed over the years has led civil society to be complacent. Civil society in Botswana lacks political organisation and orientation.

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The majority of civil society organisations in Botswana, with some notable exceptions, form a part of the mainstream neoliberal agenda. They are predominantly middle-class organisations that argue for their place in the power structure and the distribution of economic resources. While a significant number of them are locally based, many are driven by external linkages. The operations of many civil society organisations are characteristically self-help projects designed to alleviate poverty, which are dependent upon external funding (Moyo, 2001). They do not grapple with issues of control and ownership of productive resources. They do not organise to constitute a strong lobby that can decisively influence government policy. More disconcertingly, there are no coordinated civil society organisations to articulate the interests of the poor on matters relating to land policies and rights, although the Botswana media and Ditshwanelo have played important roles in defending the Basarwa against dispossession. The relationship between democracy and development is complex and must be problematised to ensure that people are not alienated from land ostensibly to give way to development. Much as it is understood that government has a moral and political authority, as a legitimately elected government, to formulate a development strategy for the country, the manner in which this strategy affects Basarwa remains problematic. The rising expectation of a democratic dividend, arising from the promised delivery of democratic institutions, explains the frustration created by the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR. In this regard, the relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR is seen as inconsistent with democratic principles and fundamental human rights.

Conclusion This chapter addresses various manifestations of the land question in Botswana. It is probably in the arena of the struggles for land that the real nature of the state becomes evident. The manner in which government intervenes in the struggles for the acquisition of land outlines whether it is driven by the imperative to empower its people or stands for profit. While Botswana’s development strategy promotes growth, it also produces acute inequalities, income disparities and dispossession. As a result of the increasing concentration of arable, livestock, game and tourism land resources in private hands, the poor are increasingly marginalised and deprived. The relocation of Basarwa and their

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dispossession from their ancestral land is a prime example. The state acts on behalf of private investors to create a conducive environment for investment, and this undermines one of its national objectives, that of social justice. To attain sustainable development, there is need for a shift in paradigm such that the development policies should be people-centred and should aim to empower the people. In the tourism sector, the joint ventures that government policy has identified should be based on a form of ecotourism that would adapt tourism to the needs of the local communities rather than dispossessing them. If ecotourism was properly conceptualised, there would be no need to relocate Basarwa from the CKGR. Innovative ways need to be developed in ecotourism in which people can participate in the industry at their own level, in which local communities are meaningfully integrated into the tourist industry. However, this requires recognition of the rights of national minorities to their ancestral lands. The weakness of both the political opposition and civil society has made government unresponsive to people’s needs and aspirations. The relocation of Basarwa from the CKGR epitomises the triumph of profit or capitalism over social justice. Through the relocation, Basarwa were dispossessed of their ancestral land and are relegated to deeper levels of poverty. As a people, they suffer political marginalisation, and ethnic stigmatisation; they occupy a low position in society. The struggles over their land rights represent an area in which the promise of democracy remains unfulfilled. The land question also exposes the contradictions inherent in Botswana nationalism. It brings to the fore the reality that Botswana is not ethnically homogeneous and the contests for hegemony and autonomy. The so-called ethnic minorities not only assert alternative perspectives on nationalism but also demand control of their territories. Marginalisation in Botswana embodies both class and cultural dimensions.

Notes 1. Central Statistics Office (2006), Stats Brief No. 02/2006, Gaborone: Central Statistical Office, p. 8. 2. In the absence of census data on ethnicity, it is debatable which ethnic group is in the majority.

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3. Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (2002) Revised National Policy on Rural Development: Government Paper No. 3 of 2002, Gaborone: Government Printer, p. 29. 4. Ministry of Agriculture (2002) National Master Plan for Arable and Dairy Development: Government White Paper No. 1 of 2002, Gaborone: Government Printer. 5. Ibid. 6. Research conducted by Molomo in New Xadi on 5 August 2000; interview with Roy Sesana on 7 August 2000 in Ghanzi; interview with Mogodu Mogodu on 13 February 2003 in Gaborone. 7. Basarwa feel that just as there are Tribal Land Boards that coincide with the territories of various ethnic groups, there should be a Basarwa Land Board, which would reflect their special circumstance as hunter-gatherers. 8. Staff Writer (2002) ‘Government Imposes CKGR Blockade’, Botswana Guardian, 6 September, p. 2. 9. Barry Baxter (2002) ‘Call to Mogae to Help Bushmen’, Mmegi, 8–14 February, p. 5. 10. Bashi Letsididi (2002) ‘Mzwinila Opposes Relocation of Basarwa’, Midweek Sun, 18 September, p. 2. 11. Ibid. 12. Letshwiti Tutwane (2002) ‘Survival Stages Another Vigil’, Mmegi, 8–14 February, p. 10. 13. Stephen Corry (2002) ‘They Took Our Place . . . Can Botswana Give It Back?’ Mmegi, 1–7 November, p. 26. 14. Letshwiti Tutwane (2002) ‘Survival International Visits Botswana’, Mmegi, 9–15 August, p. 18. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Joseph Balise (2002) ‘Mogae Takes SI Head On’, Midweek Sun, November 13, p. 2. 18. Letshwiti Tutwane (2002) ‘Basarwa Issue Reaches British Parliament’, Mmegi Monitor, 5–11 February, p. 2. 19. Reuters (2002) ‘EU MP Alleges Basarwa Forced Out of Kalahari’, Mmegi, 30 August–5 September, p. B5. 20. Ibid. 21. Tuduetso Setsiba (2006) ‘OP Dismisses Tutu Support for Basarwa’, Mmegi, 8 November, p. 2. 22. Ibid. 23. Lekopanye Mooketsi (2002) ‘Mogae Denies Diamond Link to CKGR’, Business Monitor, 12–18 November, p. 3. 24. Ibid. 25. Staff Writer (2002) ‘Survival International under Fire’, Botswana Gazette, Wednesday, 13 November, p. 4. 26. Spencer Mogapi (2002) ‘Gov’t Digs in Heels on Basarwa’, Botswana Gazette, 9 October, p. 2.

BOTSWANA 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

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Spencer Mogapi (2002) ‘EU Delegation Stays Out of War of Words over Basarwa’, Botswana Gazette, 27 November, p. 5. Ibid. Jerry Bungu (2002) ‘Youth Rally Behind Diamonds for Development’, Botswana Guardian, December 20, p. 1. Dikarabo Ramadubu (2006) ‘BNF Is Accused of Betrayal’, Botswana Guardian, 8 December, p. 1. Staff Writer (2006) ‘Basarwa Triumph’, Mmegi, 19 December, p. 4. Staff Writer (2002) ‘NGOs Speak Up on the Relocation . . .’ Mmegi, 13–19 December, p. 27. Staff Writer (2002) ‘BOCCIM Speaks Up on CKGR’, Mmegi, December 20–January 9, p. 21. Staff Writer (2002) ‘Ditshwanelo Washes Hands Of Survival’, Botswana Gazette, 13 November, p. 6. Thembi Mtembezi (2002) ‘Does the Host Community Benefit from Tourism’, Mmegi, 26 July–1 August, p. 3. Mtembezi maintains that we have to protect wildlife, but the best way is to show the people that wild animals have economic value. If people do not think that wildlife can be a source of income, they will kill the animals because they need the space for agriculture, cattle or trees. A few of these include Khawi Development Trust, Mababe Development Trust, Phuduhudu Development Trust, Xai Xai Development Trust and Ncoa Khubexea Development Trust. Thembi Mtembezi (2002) ‘Does the Host Community Benefit from Tourism’, Mmegi, 26 July–1 August, p. 4. Ibid. Ibid. Graham Mcleod (2002) ‘Ghanzi Home of the San’, Marung, 20(177), p. 14. Interview with Michael Maforaga in Gumare on 9 August 2000; interview with Kenneth Bodibelo in Maun on 10 August 2000. Voter turnout (at between 39 and 44 per cent) is lower than that of most countries in the region. For details, see the Voter Apathy Study of the Democracy Research Project (2002).

Conclusion: Transforming Sustainable Development Kojo Sebastian Amanor

This chapter critically examines some of the assumptions in current neoliberal approaches to sustainable development. In light of the various contributions to this work and recent literature rooted in political economic approaches to the environment, it suggests an alternative framework for sustainable development, which is critical of the impact of capitalist accumulation on land and natural resources and focuses on social justice. Power relations within global environmental policy institutions result in the dominant framework for sustainable development conforming to neoliberal economic paradigms. This framework requires good citizens and civil society to restructure their lives to fit into the parameter of externally defined ‘sustainable lifestyles’. This restructuring involves them suspending their own class or group interests for globally defined interests. However, these global interests are rooted in neoliberal restructuring and the pursuance of capital accumulation, rather than a social agenda based on redistribution of wealth and more access to resources for the poor and working people in the world. Thus, this framework for sustainable development attempts to propagate and depoliticise forms of political and economic change that are being advocated by dominant powers within global capitalism as part of the process of capital accumulation. Sustainable development has become a banner for new forms of capital accumulation, through which the powerful can reorganise economic activities and livelihoods and expropriate the natural resources of the poor. This results in a number of dogmas and assumptions about the environment, natural resources and society, which are presented as self-evident truths. These include the assumptions that environmental degradation results from the actions of the poor, and sustainable development arises from the expansion of markets and new technology (UNCED, 1992). This framework is contradicted by recent research findings on climate change. This shows

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that climate change has resulted overwhelmingly from the practices of industry in the most advanced capitalist countries, but has major consequences for the poor in the least developed nations (O’Brien and Leichenko, 2000; York et al., 2003; Mitchel and Tanner, 2006; Working Group on Climate Change and Development, 2006). York et al. (2003) argue that the market-based institutional and democratic reforms advocated by neoliberals have had little impact on ameliorating the ‘carbon footprint’ of capitalism and modernity. Concepts of community participation, civil society, the rule of law and corporate social responsibility are claimed to be progressive, modern and democratic. They are often used in policy circles to impose a new world order in which those who represent the community and civil society are those who collaborate in the new appropriation of resources. Those who resist expropriations are dismissed as lying outside the realm of democratic modernity and civil society. In the dominant framework for sustainable development, the corporate sector has become increasingly prominent and self-regulatory, and able to impose its own solutions on communities. These corporate ‘green’ programmes are often developed as part of an ideological rhetoric, which deliberately attempts to shroud and deflect from the despoiling of the environment by the corporate sector. Thus, oil and mining firms wreak massive environmental destruction, while they are able to claim to be environmentally sensitive by starting a few modest community tree planting projects and social welfare projects within communities, which attract very low levels of investment in comparison to their profits. Similarly, agribusiness firms expropriate large areas of land in forest areas, which they plant under monocultures. They often destroy local biodiversity, and create landlessness, lack of local food security, and increasing social differentiation and poverty. However, they claim to promote environmental and social responsibility by creating community projects alongside their devastating core economic activities. Ecotourism companies claim to involve local communities in developing community-based natural resource management, but usually appropriate the largest share of profits from tourists while reducing communities to becoming dependent on handouts from tourists. Again, the core activities of the tourism industry often lead to land speculation, land grabbing and the expropriation of local land and communities, which are conveniently ignored by those who promote ecotourism (Pleumarom, 1994; Chachage, 1999).

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The history of colonialism and white settler colonialism in Africa has resulted in a legacy of unequal land distribution and serious land shortage, which continually fails to be addressed. This has serious ramifications affecting natural resource management and the ability of poor people to achieve sustainable livelihoods. The dogma of market-based land reform hinders redistribution of land and natural resources, by reducing redistribution to a process of willing sellers and willing buyers. This has led to the continued existence of a privileged white settler farming class or its replacement by a black commercial farming class that continues the tradition of the settler farmers: land accumulation and export-oriented production. It has also led to the impoverishment of the majority of smallholder peasant farmers: who are doomed to insecure and unviable smallholdings under communal or customary tenure, and fears of future expropriation. The contradictions inherent in sustainable development are highlighted in the land question. The dominant approach to land reform in policy circles is to promote security in land rather than redistribution of land. Worked into a technocentric framework for sustainable development, the main argument is that the major impediment to sustainable development is the lack of long-term security in land, which hampers long-term investments in land. The aims of land reform are to promote security in land, individual rights in land and the fungibility of land, which will enable land to be more easily transacted in markets. These concerns essentially address the interests of new emerging commercial sectors, and the expansion of global investment in land, natural resources and real estate throughout the world, rather than the interests of the land hungry and landless. The commercial sectors require secure individual rights in land to enable efficient land markets to develop, in which purchases of land are not challenged and subject to litigation and contestation. They fail to address the growing emergence of social differentiation and landlessness in Africa (Peters, 2004). Where countries, such as Zimbabwe, attempt to break out of this stranglehold of market-based land reform, they are castigated for operating beyond the rule of law and accused of violent intimidation of their citizenry. They become subject to a series of international sanctions and threats, which attempt to break their independence and force them to cower to the international neoliberal order. Yet, for all the weaknesses of the land reform process in Zimbabwe, the level of violence is lower

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than in many other African countries, where rural people attempt to resist the accumulation and expropriation of land. In Kenya, for instance, the Kenyan Human Rights Commission estimated that there are over 600,000 internally displaced people (IDPs).1 Displacements and dispossessions in Kenya have resulted in over 4,000 deaths. The failure to introduce a comprehensive land reform process and to address social inequality in South Africa results in a society characterised by high levels of violence. Within the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, the expansion of oil drilling and opposition from the affected communities has resulted in violence instigated by the state in collaboration with international oil companies, which has resulted in thousands of deaths. Yet, these same oil companies are allowed to sit in international sustainable development fora and to pronounce their commitment to corporate social responsibility, while the communities that have opposed them and have become victims of the most inhumane intimidation are brand thugs and terrorists, and dismissed as beyond the limits of civil society. The supreme hypocrisy of the international policy stance is captured by the British social commentator George Monbiot, who writes: Robert Mugabe is portrayed as the prince of darkness, but when whites expel black people from their lands, nobody gives a damn. Ten years ago, I investigated the expropriations being funded and organized in Africa by another member of the Commonwealth. Canada had paid for the ploughing and planting with wheat of the Basotu Plains in Tanzania. Wheat was eaten in that country only by the rich, but by planting that crop, rather than maize or beans or cassava, Canada could secure contracts for its chemical and machinery companies, which were world leaders in wheat technology. The scheme required the dispossession of the 40,000 members of the Barabaig tribe. Those who tried to return to their lands were beaten by the project’s workers, imprisoned and tortured with electric shocks. The women were gang-raped. For the first time in a century, the Barabaig were malnourished. When I raised these issues with one of the people running the project, she told me, ‘I won’t shed a tear for anybody if it means development’.2

The ‘international community’ cannot afford to allow land reform to succeed in Zimbabwe, since this opens up the floodgates of popularbased demands for land redistribution in South Africa. The marketbased ‘willing buyer–willing seller’ programme touted by the World Bank and major financial donors has failed to introduce meaningful land reform and to address redistribution of land and the power relations of a highly unjust and unequal social system.

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In spite of the claims of stakeholder democracy, participation and poverty alleviation in the present world order, only certain sections of communities have the ability to express their demands and interests in policy circles. Many people have a sense of being increasingly powerless in a hostile and insecure world. Community participation has often been accompanied by policies of co-option and marginalising and maligning oppositional and critical social movements. Hajer (1995) argues that ecological modernisation works by building up coalitions that support or are willing to support dominant policy positions, and it empowers members of the coalition to regulate and block the activities of those outside the coalition, by scapegoating them as degraders of the environment. NGOs willing to work within this framework are given funding and a high profile, while those opposing this framework are marginalised. Nyamugasira (1998: 297, quoted in Perrons, 2004: 315) comments that NGOs have come to the sad realization that although they have achieved many micro-level successes, the systems and structures that determine power and resource allocation – locally, nationally, and globally – remain largely intact.

Fernando (2003: 18) argues that NGOs have failed to shield social development from the negative consequences of private-sector development, but have evolved as institutions that discipline social organisations among the people ‘to function according to the dictates of neoliberal institutions’. In South Africa, NGOs and civil society groups supporting radical land reform have had a difficult time surviving as the state has increasingly implemented market-based neoliberal policies, as exemplified by the decline of the National Land Council and the Landless People’s Movement (see Chapter 1). However, the repressive pressures brought to bear on the Landless People’s Movement at the Earth Summit in South Africa (as discussed in the Introduction, this volume) is symptomatic of broader political trends within contemporary society, such as the treatment meted out to anti-globalisation demonstrators at G8 meetings. The barricading of delegates at the G8 meetings resonates with the security measures taken at the Sandton Centre at the WSSD. As Naomi Klein points out, this form of barricading with high fences is a metaphor for an ‘economic system that exiles billions to poverty and exclusion’ (Klein, 2002: xvvv, quoted in Perrons, 2004: 316).

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We can expect to find a ‘flowering’ of civil society, when its representatives implement and support the policies of the dominant world powers, corporate capital and the state. However, this is likely to be accompanied by declining social consciousness and increasing marginalisation of the poor. Where social movements oppose these policies, we are likely to see increasing social conflict and an escalation of violence. There is a growing rift in many African countries between the positions of recognised civil society organisations and popular struggles, which is reflected in increasing localised and spontaneous violence as people attempt to resist the expropriation of their livelihood resources. In South Africa, those elements of civil society that espouse radical land reform have increasingly been marginalised, as the dominant civil society has been co-opted into the market-based policies of the state. In Zimbabwe, the dominant civil society organisations are opposed to the state, but align with dominant international policy interests and fail to articulate a radical land programme of redistribution. By redistributing land and accommodating the spontaneous land occupation movements, the current land reform programme of the government has gained significant rural support. However, it also responds to the interests of an aspiring black capitalist farming class, articulating policies of indigenisation of capital. This results in complex political alignments, and a land reform process that redistributes significant areas of land to small farmers, while supporting a process of land accumulation by aspiring commercial farmers. In Kenya, the state and private sector have engaged in a process of massive accumulation of land assets associated with expropriation of small cultivators and pastoralists. The urban and rural poor have in recent years resisted attempts by the state and indigenous commercial farmers and land developers to expropriate their livelihood interests and public resources, often engaging in violent confrontations with state security forces. The extension of land expropriation into public land and public resources has also resulted in much social concern among the middle classes about land expropriation. This has resulted in growing civil society and middle-class demands for accountability in land management and opposition to land accumulation. Within the Niger Delta of Nigeria and the mining areas of Ghana, communities have organised to oppose expropriation of land and the despoiling of the land by the corporate mining and oil-drilling sector. These attempts have resulted in much repression by the state – often at the behest of oil and mining companies – of social organisations opposing the expansion of international capital.

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NGOs and civil society have played an ambivalent role in these struggles, sometimes supporting local social movements and sometimes maligning them; sometimes opposing the expansion of mining interests and at other times promoting notions of corporate social responsibility, which legitimates the expropriation brought about by mining concessions. In Botswana, national minorities have largely organised their struggles outside of mainstream civil society based on ethnic associations. In most African states, the expansion of civil society has resulted in complex political alignments, which do not necessarily further the interests of the poor and landless. While the struggles of social movements and within civil society are complex, they clearly do not correspond to the neoliberal vision of an apolitical classless civil society, which holds the state accountable to political distortions and forces it to comply with the freedom of the market. Frequently, the political and economic elites are closely aligned within democratic structures and work to marginalise and further expropriate the poor.

From Technical Management to Social Justice There are deeply disturbing currents in the ways in which the concept of sustainable development is used in policy circles. However, there have also been positive developments in the concept, particularly in the ways in which sustainable development has increasingly been transformed from a technical management to a human-centred agenda that focuses on social justice. This has resulted in a shift in mainstream environmental concerns from narrow concerns with tree planting programmes, protecting wilderness environments from communities and limiting population growth to concerns with rights to livelihoods, natural resources and voice in natural resource management. The concept of the interdependence of social and environmental justice has arisen from social movements concerned with the inequities in natural resource management. These groups include movements in the United States which have opposed the dumping of toxic wastes around African American, Hispanic and poor working-class community neighbourhoods (Hofrichter, 1993; Bullard, 1994; Harvey, 1996; Faber, 1998). They also include social movements in developing countries opposing the expropriation of natural resources and the despoiling of environments by the corporate sector (see Gedicks, 2001; Peluso and Watts, 2001; Khagram et al., 2002; Peet and Watts, 2004; Moyo and Yeros, 2005b).

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However, growing concerns with social and environmental justice and new social movements have frequently shifted interests away from political economy, social differentiation and class towards a celebration of cultural diversity, the particularism of the locality, and forms of communitarian and decentralised governance. Communitarian approaches depict the main forms of injustice as related to contradictions between central state administration and local control over the administration of resources by communities and customary institutions. They promote forms of decentralised management to communities, without examining the impact of globalised markets and capitalist investment on these communities. They ignore issues concerned with social differentiation across communities. Frequently the weakening of the state, or more accurately the co-option of the state into forms of market liberalisation and unfettered capital accumulation, opens up communities to market exploitation and expropriation. Strengthening of communal governance and customary authorities is not particularly new or progressive, since it formed the basis of colonial indirect rule and of the apartheid system in South Africa, where the Bantustans were maintained through the co-option and creation of chiefs. Forms of decentralised customary governance allow a façade of participatory democracy to be maintained, while exploitative relations continue to exist within localities. These approaches demand ‘bottom-up’ initiatives that build upon the skills, ‘social capital’, and knowledge of communities of their social and ecological contexts. They advocate policies that do not impose ‘uniform solutions’ on communities from outside, but build upon respect for diversity. They demand political and market-based support for communities. While critical of dominant policy frameworks, these approaches often internalise neoliberal assumptions about the state, the market, community and civil society. They call for reforms of international trade and governance and market-based support for the rural poor, without examining the impact and implications of processes of capital accumulation on rural producers and workers. Harvey (1996) argues that the struggle for social and environmental justice needs to go beyond approaches based on communitarianism, moral economy and the celebration of the locality and diversity, which shape most forms of grassroots environmentalism. New approaches to sustainable development need to challenge ‘the circulations and accumulation of capital which currently dictates what environmental

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transformations occur and why’ (Harvey, 1996: 401). He argues that this requires confronting the fundamental underlying processes (and their associated power structures, social relations, institutional configurations, discourses, and belief systems) that generate environmental and social injustices . . . [T]he fundamental problem is that of an unrelenting capital accumulation and the extraordinary asymmetrics of money and political power that are embedded in that process. (Harvey, 1996: 401)

In intellectual circles, there is a general reluctance to challenge and rethink neoliberal positions, beyond assertions of communitarian positions. There is currently a disinclination to embrace political economy and critically examine the development of capitalist accumulation within the present epoch, and investigate the implications for the environment, social justice and the redistribution of resources and wealth. There is a reluctance to challenge the neoliberal assumption that free markets can produce efficient economies and social equity. Recent economic theory reduces social theory to an explanation of market and information imperfections. The rise of post-modernism in the 1980s and 1990s has done much to divert attention away from political economy, partly by deliberate design (Fine, 2001). Fernando (2003: 16) comments that the interventions of liberal scholars ‘are often limited to inventing a new language that does not present any significant challenge to the status quo they seek to transform and instead provides the social capital necessary for its popular legitimacy and political stability’. While research has tended to become more ‘policy relevant’ (or co-opted) in recent years, it has also been marked by a tendency to develop a less critical analysis of contemporary society. Researchers frequently recourse to prescriptive policy frameworks which make use of a large number of symbols, such as social justice, poverty alleviation, equity, community participation and sustainable development. They fail to configure these symbolic concepts within actual living social formations, productive bases, and processes of capital accumulation and social differentiation. This results in policy prescriptions and political ideologies of sustainable development that make little attempt to understand the processes occurring within the contemporary world, and which bear little correspondence to the lived experiences of a large number of working and poor people. Instead of developing a critical analysis of the consequences of the expansion of unfettered markets, mainstream academics desperately search for best-case local scenarios of sustainable development. They avidly search for instances

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of ‘win–win’ development, assuming that these instances can be replicated in other locations, oblivious of the larger capitalist economy in which social relations and natural resource usages and conflicts are embedded. As Peters (2004: 306) concludes in her review of land tenure in contemporary Africa: In sum, reports out of Africa show that the mounting social competition and conflict turning on land are part of processes that stretch from the most local to the most global . . . Here, I have suggested that the stories so well told about inclusionary practices of land-use and about the ability of ‘small acts’ and small people to out-manoeuvre the powerful must be complemented and modified by stories of differentiation, displacement and exclusion.

Communitarian Approaches Support for customary institutions is widely seen as a panacea for sustainable development, and communitarians advocate decentralising administration of natural resources to communities and customary authorities (Toulmin and Quan, 2000; Lavigne Delville et al., 2002). The dominant contradictions in African society are seen as between rent-seeking top-down states whose adoption of standardised bureaucratic practices, uniform policies and modernisation objectives threatens the cultural heterogeneity of communities and their social and moral codes, which are rooted in egalitarian structures and political traditions of compromise and negotiation (Berry, 1993). However, as with the concept of civil society, community representation is often externally defined (see Cooke and Kothari, 2001). It has resulted from long histories of colonial rule building customary representation into forms of indirect rule from the early part of the twentieth century and attempts at co-option. This framework has often allowed repressive policies to be implemented in rural societies, for the control of land and labour, the extraction of labour services and the imposition of taxes. This has resulted in a legacy of exploitative relations and controls over natural resources and land at the local level (Amanor, 1999; Peters, 2004), which are glossed over since they are portrayed as based on authentic custom and diverse local practice. In place of an analysis of actual social relations within customary land systems, customary land tenure is fetishised as an entity in itself, which

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is ‘dynamic’ and ‘negotiated’. However, this is essentially a tautology, since all social institutions must be subject to some level of negotiation, accommodation and change to become social. Increasing empowerment of the local level in the contemporary period and the portrayal of local inequalities as customary paves the way for further expropriation of the rural poor. Communitarian approaches also place the burdens of managing the administration of local resources on rural people. In many case situations, conflicts over land involve complex social alignments, in which the spontaneous social movements of the poor and marginalised oppose not only foreign and state expropriation of land, but also the collaboration of local chiefs in this process. This has been evident in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, where the conflicts escalated as a result of reprisals taken against the youth for their opposition to chiefly collaboration with the oil multinationals (see Chapter 5, this volume; Ikelegbe, 2006). In Sierra Leone, conflicts between chiefs, elders and youth underlined much of the political turmoil of the 1990s (Richards, 2004). In Mozambique, the decentralisation of land management to customary authorities has resulted both in the alienation of much land in the 1990s to foreign investors, joint ventures and land speculators and in growing conflicts over land (Myers, 1994; Lahiff, 2003; Suca, 2001). Without any notion of processes of social differentiation occurring in communities and localities, the strengthening of customary land tenure systems will invariably give more power to those who are able to control land, and increasingly enable them to transact this land in a world of commoditisation, land speculation and land grabbing. Invariably, strengthening customary political institutions weakens those with less power and weaker rights, in land and resources. This includes those who have user rights in land, such as women (Whitehead and Tsikata, 2003), youth (Amanor, 1999; Chauveau, 2006), the rural poor, migrants with secondary rights, and pastoralists who depend on common land resources under multiple land use (Galaty, 1999). With the rise of land markets, titling of community lands and concerns with securing formally recognised customary rights, many of these groups experience a loss of access to land and natural resources. The strengthening of customary land tenure systems frequently empowers the most powerful ethnic groups, while undermining national minorities whose customary arrangements do not conform to the institutions of the dominant groups. This is illustrated by the case

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of the Basarwa in Botswana (see Chapter 6, this volume). However, within Kenya majimboism (the promotion of rights to resources based on ethnic origins) has often been manipulated by national elites to accumulate land, by fermenting ethnic conflicts, which can be used to expropriate land and create a squatter population. Within the framework of the politics of ethnicity and ethnic lands, groups that have suffered from land hunger for generations and have been forced to migrate and survive as squatters are placed within uneasy positions (see Chapter 4, this volume). In addition to weakening the land rights of the poor and marginalised, the focus on communitarian land and natural resource administration detracts from the large inequalities in land and natural resource distribution in many countries, particularly in the southern African region, and in Kenya. These inequalities can only be solved by a process of land redistribution, which goes well beyond the remit of strengthening customary systems.

The Challenge The major challenge in creating sustainable development is to locate the problem within a political economy framework of analysis that links scarcity and the depletion of natural resources with capitalist accumulation and market expansion. This needs to examine the implications of the expansion of markets for access to resources. It also needs to relate contemporary ideologies of resource scarcity, including the concept of sustainable development, to the expansion of global markets. Twenty-five years after the introduction of structural adjustment, it is lame for researchers and neoliberal apologists to continue regurgitating rhetoric about rent-seeking African states and patronage politics, and the need to roll back state power, without placing this in the context of global economic realities. The state in Africa has largely become complicit in the implementation of the neoliberal agenda and in the expansion of unfettered markets and foreign investment. Its role in the pursuance of the neoliberal agenda needs to be better understood. This requires a much clearer analysis of the relationship between state and capital, and of the impact of the expansion of international capital on access to and control of natural resources and their depletion.

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The concept of sustainable development has often been used ideologically to justify the reorganisation of control over natural resources to support expansionary global markets, and the expropriation of resources for international investments in forestry, mining, agriculture and tourism. Concepts of community and participation have been refashioned as central institutions through which capital can capture resources. The complicity of the state in this project means that there can be no illusion of a retreat back to a pre-structural-adjustment social democratic agenda of a ‘neutral’ state that stands for social welfare and redistribution. The case studies in this volume show that the African states have always been largely complicit in the appropriation of land from the rural poor, and have failed to transform the legal frameworks, and the inequalities of land and natural resource distribution that were bequeathed to them with the attainment of independence. The modernising agenda was frequently one of supporting the accumulation of land and capital by aspiring national capitalist and estate farmers and international corporate sectors, at the expense of the peasantry and working people. However, the alternative framework of social movements creating pressures for the transformation of the state is equally problematic, since international capital and policy institutions play important roles in defining and funding civil society and social representation. Notions of the relationship between civil society and the rule of law are problematic in land reform, particularly since the rule of law gives recognition and security to large landed property, which has often benefited from the appropriation of the land of small peasant farmers. The law has institutionalised historically perpetrated injustices of land expropriation. Land is often the subject of contested claims and multiple rights in land. Securing private property rights in land frequently extinguishes the rights of the least powerful, those with user rights in land, those with historical claims on land that has been forcibly expropriated and those who have been transformed by coercion and legal processes into squatters. Civil society organisations usually work within the existing status quo and outside of the spontaneous movements of people to defend their rights to land, natural resources, livelihoods and unpolluted environments. Poorly represented within legal, political and democratic processes, the poor are often forced to defend their own interests outside the realm of the rule of law and civil society. This frequently results in violent localised conflicts, in which the security services of

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the state are brought in to discipline local populations opposing the consequences of market expansion. While these local social movements play important roles and are clearly a key to the future, their roles should not be romanticised. The task ahead must be to unite these disparate struggles with forms of social and political consciousness that transcend the limits of communitarian, local grassroots politics and civil society, while building upon the cultural, social and organisational resources and aspirations of popular movements. It is necessary to examine realistically and critically the effects of the relationships between the state, capital and civil society on relations between civil society, social movements and popular struggles over access to and control of natural resources. It is also necessary to document both the spaces that popular movements and struggles have been able to occupy in defending rights and making demands, and the serious constraints they face in articulating their demands in the present era. Alternative visions of sustainable development need to be based on new configurations of social movements, which reflect the interests of the land hungry, the landless, the aggrieved and the exploited. New agendas for sustainable development need to be concerned with notions of social redistribution of natural resources and land, and public participation in control over the appropriation and accumulation of land. They need to uphold rights to livelihoods, to environmental entitlements (including clean environments and recreational facilities for communities), and to the maintenance of public resources, which should not be appropriated by private capital and international investments in the new scramble for natural resources that characterises the globalisation of Africa.

Notes 1. 2.

Comment (2004) ‘It’s Tough for Displaced People’, East African Standard Online Edition, 12 September, rep12090406.htm George Monbiot (2002) ‘Our Racist Demonology’, 12 August, http:// www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/08/13/our-racist-demonology/ (accessed on 5 May 2007). Also published in The Guardian, 13 August 2002, as ‘War on the peasantry’.

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INDEX

Adams, M., 39 Africa: environmental crisis claims, 10; land re-colonisation, 177; natural resources scramble, 197; state neoliberal collaboration, 195 African Mutual Fund (Ghana), 143 agriculture: access to inputs, 45, 116; Botswana commercialisation, 167; colonial neglect, 103; commercial white, 24; crops, see crops; economic development centrality, 64; export marketing, 130; indigenous cultivation, 17; internal markets, 80; Malawi employment, 85; monocultural, 34; private investment promotion, 134; subsidies removal, 116, 137, 145; support services, 38; unsustainable commercial, 53; viability undermined, 37 Alexander, J., 75 allodial rights, 13-14 amakhosi (chiefs), power of, 43 Amanor, K.S., 14-15, 18, 26 Amnesty International, 153 ANC (African National Congress) government, 36-7; Growth, Employment and Redistribution programme (GEAR), 46, 51; social development goals downplayed, 52; traditional authorities co-existence, 44 Association of Rural Advancement (AFRA), South Africa, 47 Balakalanga, Botswana minority group, 165 Balopi Commission, Botswana, 164, 166 Bank, L., 43 Bantustans, chiefs’ collaboration, 191; ‘new’, 37 Baole migrant farmers, 138 Basarwa people, hunter-gatherers Botswana, 29, 166, 169, 173, 175, 178-80, 195; Kalahari (CKGR)

expropriated/removal from, 17, 23, 169-72, 174; marginalised, 181 basic foods, price increases, 38 basic social services, privatised, 87 Batawana royalty, 164 Bates, R., 113 Bayayei people, 165 Bédié, Henri K., 140 Binswanger, H.P., 4 biological resources, over-exploitation, 86 BOCCIM, Botswana NGO, 175 Boigny, Houphouët, 138-9 Boiro, I., 135 Botswana, 23, 28, 195; diamonds, 159, 172; District Councils, 162-3; ethnic minorities, 14, 29, 165, 190; land tenure policies, 160, 170; neoliberal hegemony, 176, 179-80; paramount chiefs, 164 Botswana Centre for Human Rights, 171 Botswana Congress Party (BCP), 174 Botswana High Commission, London vigil, 172 Botswana National Front, 174; Social Democratic Programme, 171 Brundtand, Gro Harlem, Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development) 1983, 2, 6-9, 34 Burkina Faso, 19; forests decentralisation, 147; migrant labour from, 138, 140; NGOs, 157 CAMPFIRE, Zimbabwe (Communal Area Management Programme), 70 Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), Botswana, 23, 29, 166, 169-71, 173-5, 179-81; diamonds discovered, 172 Centre for Applied Legal Studies, 49 Centre for Rural Legal Studies, South Africa, 47 CFAO trading company, 130

218

INDEX

chainsaw operators: Ghana criminalisation, 149–50; Ghana encouragement, 149 Chiduku communal land, Zimbabwe, 58 chiefs, 131; Botswana dikgosi, 28, 161, 163; colonial created/privileged, 13, 101, 129-35; civil society promoted, 19; Côte d’Ivoire land control, 139; collaboration, 194; customary, 31; forest resources claims, 149; land expropriation powers 19, 143-4; mining companies collaboration, 154; Ngwato, 164; SRAs negotiated, 151; West Africa, 27; -youth conflicts, 140 Chiweshe communal land, Zimbabwe, 58 Chobe National Park, 168 Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency, 168 citizenship, ethnicity undermined, 164 civil society, 96; donor support, 156; elite interests, 19; limits of, 22; South African activism decline, 47 Claassens, A., 45 clientilism, expropriated public land, 116 climate change, 185 cocoa, 132; and coffee frontier areas, 138; state marketing, 139; world price collapse, 140 colonial rule: alien land laws, 106; British, 130-4; customary rights extinguished, 26; ethnic division construction, 102; inequality, 52; initial pretext for, 131; land legacy, 186; land policies, 5, 107; legal legacy, 22; local exploitation legacy, 193; natural resources impact, 65; settler status post-independent Kenya, 108; South Africa, 35; state-led agriculture, 133; use of chiefs, 13 Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, 165-6 communal land areas/property; demographic pressures, 58-9, 64; gender discrimination, 91; labour reserves creation, 68; private interests encroachment, 23; resource starved, 66; rights confusion, 42; South African poor, 23 Communal Land Rights Act, South Africa 2004, 45 communitarian framework, 127, 146, 191, 194; ideological assumptions, 128

community(ies), 9; concept refashioned, 196; ideological assumptions, 128; lands titling, 194; ‘participation’, 146, 185; representation externally defined, 193 Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNR), Botswana, 70, 176, 178; power-sharing fiction, 179 Community Forest Committees (CFCs), Ghana, 150 concepts, symbolic, 192 Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), 49, 51 conservation: coercive, 10, 103; land expropriation rationale, 66 contract farming, 142-3 Convention People’s Party, Ghana, 138 Coordination Assembly of NGOs (CANGO), Swaziland, 49 corporate sector: agribusiness, 130; selfregulated, 185; ‘social responsibility’, 10, 30, 157, 187 Corry, Stephen, 172 Côte d'Ivoire, 14, 135, 136; frontier developments, 141; palm oil, 142; plantations, 132 cotton, 64-5, 132 crisis narrative, use of, 11 crops: cover, 35; export, 88, 130, 132, 186; monocropping, 53; peasant cash, 105, West African sectors, 130; customary, concept of, 128; construction of, 15, 31; fetishised institutions, 193 customary land, 156; Malawi privatisation, 91-2; regulated, 12; tenure security/ insecurity, 13, 86, 152, 194; transactions within, 128 customary law: ‘bastardised’ practices, 36; creation of, 131; dikgosi administration, 162; gender inequality, 97; problematic nature, 98-9 customary rights: colonial extinguished, 26; mapping, 14; redefined, 27; registration of, 127; state manipulation, 141 decentralisation, fetishised, 191 decision-making, landless poor excluded, 123 deforestation, 79; blame use, 120; claims, 10; fuel dependence, 67; Zimbabwe policy initiatives, 68

INDEX Deininger, K., 4 demography: Malawi, 92; Zimbabwe, 56 diamond mining: Botswana, 172-3; low employment, 160 Ditshwanelo, Botswana NGO, 174-5, 180 donor power, Malawi, 87, 97 Dqae Qare Game Farm, 176 droughts, 78, 167; Zimbabwe, 63, 65 dual land administration, colonial Kenya, 101 Earth Report, 8–9 East African Protectorate, 1895 creation, 101 Eastern Highlands, Zimbabwe, 75 economic growth, as priority, 95, 97 Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), Zimbabwe 1990, 60, 71; consequences, 61-2, 72 ecotourism, 17-18, 29, 73, 185; indigenous people, 176; properly conceptualised, 181 efficiency, myths of, 16 elite(s): African, 13, 22, 115; customary, 156; dominant northern, 10; ethno-political, 116; farmer, 11-12; Kenya political, 21, 27, 117, 119-20; land greed, 121–22; political, 4, 15, 127; political-economic alignment, 190; resistance to land reform, 40; rural, 6; ‘traditional’ -modern alliances, 129; use of CSOs, 31; world environment, 2; world power, 9; Zimbabwe black, 71 ‘eminent domain’, doctrine of, 108 environmentalism: audit absences, 178; global ideologies, 19; global policy institutions, 184; international NGO power, 9, 17; land expropriation rationalisation, 17 ethnic conflicts: elite encouragement, 15, 114-15, 118-20; ethno-political patronage, 124; resettlement schemes, 113 ethnicity, -land relationship, 164 Europe, agricultural subsidies, 145; Development Fund, 143 export crops, frontiers, 136-8, 141; see also crops

219

Fairhead, J., 10 Fast Track Land Reform Programme, Zimbabwe (FTLRP), 56-7, 77-9 federalism, 108 feminism, legal theories, 98 fencing: cutting of, 75; policy, 167 Fernando, J.L., 188, 192 First People of the Kalahari, NGO, 170 Food and Agriculture Organisation, UN, 6 forced labour, 132; colonial recruitment, 192 forests: community projects, 18; conservation contestation, 69; corporate buffer zones, 120; criminalised livelihoods, 18; deforestation, see deforestation; participatory management, 148; reserves, 17, 27, 142; timber, see timber; watershed, 7; West Africa resources, 130; wood fuel, see wood fuel Fortmann, L., 75 Forum for Sustainable Agriculture (FONSAG), Botswana, 49 FPK (Kgeikani Kuweni), Basarwa organisation, 171, 176 France, colonies, 130-3 French West Africa, 130-1 G8 meetings, security, 188 Gabarone Dam, construction, 161 Gambia, 146 game reserves, Botswana, 168-9 Games Reserve National Parks, 159 gender: customary laws inequality, 97; land access inequalities, 26, 45, 86; violence, 44 Ghana (Gold Coast), 131; chiefs, 135; farmland timber, 30; frontier developments, 141; gold mining, 151, 154-5, 158, 189; military repression, 155; Oil Palm Development Corporation (GOPDC), 143-5, 152; timber exports, 148-50 Gokew, Zimbabwe, wildlife habitat area, 67 gold: mining 151, 154-5, 158, 189; panning, Zimbabwe, 79 Good, Kenneth, Botswana persecution, 172 Gope, diamonds discovery, 172-3

220

INDEX

Grahamstown Rural Committee/Border Rural Committee, 47 green manure, 35 groundnut oil, export production, 130 Group for Environmental Monitoring, South Africa, 47 Guinea, radical land reform, 135 Hagberg, S., 157 Hajer, M.A., 7, 188 Hall, R., 42-3, 51-2 Haraka scheme, Kenya, 112 Harvey, D., 191 Highveld area Zimbabwe, LCSF concentration, 58 HIV/AIDS, 38, 50; women’s burden, 43 horticulture, 64, 73 housing, Malawi ‘traditional’ materials, 85 Howitt, Richard, 173 hut tax, colonial, 102 hybrid seeds, 66 Idemudia, U., 154 Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), 153 IMF (International Monetary Fund), 8, 76 indigéant, abolishment, 132-3 indigenisation: strategy of, 24; Zimbabwe agrarian reform, 73 indigenous people: commodified, 176; manipulated land rights, 15; ‘rights’, 140 individualisation, land titles, 26, 91 inflation, 63, 78 informal resistance, marginalised groups, 21 Initiative Participatory Development, South Africa, 48 Integrated Programme of Land Redistribution and Agricultural Development, South Africa, 39-40, 49 internally displaced people, Kenya, 187 International Chamber of Commerce, 145 international sanctions, Zimbabwe, 186 International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 6 irrigation: chiefs’ authority, 143; land expropriation for, 133; state development, 137 Islamic law, 102 Ismail, N., 43 Ite, U.E., 154

Jenkins, H., 155 Johannesburg: Central Prison, 1; Labour Tenants Committee, 49 Kaggia, Bildad, 109-10 Kaima Declaration (IYC), 153 Kamanakao Association, 165 Kamanakao, Kalvin, 165 Kamatsu people, KADU, 108 Kanji, N., 19 Kanyinga, K., 14-15, 26 Kanyonglo, F.E., 25 Karua Forest reserve, 117 Kaudwane settlement, Botswana, 172 Keeley, J., 10 Kenya, 22; centralised government, 111; colonial legal legacy, 100; Constitution referendum 2005, 121; ethnic coalitions, 27, 108; federal structure, 110; freehold private land, 107; indigenous agrarian capitalists, 16; land reform western funding, 112; Lancaster House Conference, 109; land expropriations, 14, 125; land violence, 189; majimboism, 195; Masai people, 175; political elites, 21; Presidency land power, 107; public lands struggles, 117; state land ownership, 107; ‘tenants of the crown’, 102; Trusts Lands, 107; white highlands re-Africanisation, 106, 109 Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), 108, 110-11, 113-14 Kenya African National Union (KANU), 108, 116, 120; radical faction, 109-10 Kenya Land Alliance, 120 Kenya Peoples Union (KPU), 110-11 Kenya Wildlife Service, 118 Kenyan Human Rights Commission, 187 Kenyatta, Jomo, 108-9, 111-14, 124; death of, 115 Khula Trust, 43 Kibaki, Mwai, government, 120-3, 125 Kikuyu people, Kenya, 110, 114; areas, 102, 104; Central Association, 103; land appropriation, 113; land closed to, 115; Rift valley eviction, 118 Klein, Naomi, 188 Klopp, J.M., 21, 116, 124 Koch, E., 48

INDEX Kruger National Park, Makuleke land claim, 42 Kuru Development Trust, 176 KwaZulu-Natal, illegal evictions, 43 labour migration, colonial limits on, 89 Lahiff, E., 38 Land: access, see land access; acquisition grants, South Africa, 38; -based export markets, 73; -buying companies, 113; claim cases, South Africa, 42; colonial types, 107; community management, 127; conflicts over, 31, 98, 101; ethnicised, 115, 118; export-oriented use, 61-2; individual property rights, 26; inequitable distribution, 3, 34, 100; international pressure against Zimbabwe expropriation, 76; Kenya political use, 100, 112, 114; laws, see land laws; markets, 5, 26, 129; occupation movement Zimbabwe, 24, 73-4; ownership concentration, 112; power centralisation, 107; neoliberal conceptions, 93; NGO acceptance of land inequality, 19; private property rights, 105; privatised, 160; purchase indebted, 40; reform, see land reform; restitution South Africa, 41; rights, see land rights; struggles, see land struggles; squatting, see squatting; tenure, see tenure; transactions framework failure, 128; titling, 11-12; Zimbabwe new inequalities, 77 land access: gender inequalities, 86; local democratic demands, 73; Malawi inequalities, 91; Movements of South Africa (LAMOSA), 49; social engineering tool, 52 Land Act 1913, South Africa, 36 Land and Agricultural Policy Centre, South Africa, 47 Land and Agrarian Reform Conference (LARC), 48 Land and Rural Development Services Network, South Africa, 48 Land Bank, South Africa, 43 Land Forfeiture Plan, Kenya 1953, 110 land laws, 97; colonial legacy, 26, 36; Malawi, 83, 94-5

221

land reforms: elite resistance, 40; marketbased, 186; neoliberal depoliticisation, 23; reform programme Zimbabwe 2000, 56, 69 land rights: ethnic contestation, 166; foreign investment promotion, 129 land struggles: NGO retreat, 21; uncoordinated, 51, 124; Zimbabwe, 55 Land Titles Ordinance, Kenya 1908, 113 Landless People’s Movement, South Africa (LPM), 1, 21, 50, 188 large scale commercial farms Zimbabwe (LSCF), 58; armed holdings control, 74; expropriation, 77; forest management, 68; irrigation use, 65; state support, 64; wildlife enterprises, 72 law courts, mining communities repression, 155 Leach, M., 10-11 Legal Resources Centre, 49 legalism: neoliberal notions, 95, 98 Lesotho Council of NGOs, 49 Lever Brothers, 130 liberation struggle veterans, Zimbabwe, 61-2 locus standi rule, Malawi courts, 95 Luhya leaders, Kenya, 114 Lumumba, Odenda, 14-15, 26 Luo ethnic group, Kenya, 110-11 Matebeleland, squatters, 74-5 Maasai Mau Forest Reserve, evictions, 117 maize, 64-5; production levels, 86 majimbo, 118; project ‘resusicating’, 114; structures dismantling, 115 Malawi, 22; Growth and Strategy Paper, 96-7; inequalities, 84; land administration deracialised, 26; land laws, 25, 91, 95; land redistribution promise, 94; localised land occupations, 21; Mozambiquan Lomwe immigrants, 89-90; multi-party democracy, 93; Nyasaland period, 88; patriarchal nature, 92; rural civil society weakness, 87; traditional botanical medicines, 85; Western development assistance, 83 Malaysia, cocoa production, 140 Mali: Collectives Territoriales Décentralisées, 147; migrant labour from, 138

222

INDEX

Mamdani, M., 101 Manumission fees, 132 marketing: parastatals, 142; state control, 134, 136 Marxism, legal theories, 98 Mashonaland, squatters, 74 Masire, Quett, 174 Masvingo, squatters, 74 Matondi, P.B., 24-5, 67, 75 Mau Forest, 123 Mau Mau resistance movement, 103-5; fighters’ land expropriation, 124 Mazowe district, Zimbabwe, soil degradation, 67 Mboya, Tom, 109, 111 Mearns, R., 11 Mid-Zambezi Valley, wildlife habitat area, 67 migrants: farmers, 139-40; forced labour creation, 36; labour, 136-7 Mijikenda people, 113 mining industry: Corporate Social Responsibility, 155; gold, 151, 154-5, 158, 189; South Africa, 89; West Africa, 130 Mogae, Festus, 172-3, 177 Moi, Daniel arap, 109, 114-15, 117-18, 124–5; political land appropriation, 116; presidency power, 115 Molefabangwe, Robert, 174 Molomo, M.G., 17, 28-9 Monbiot, George, 187 monocultural zones, high food prices, 144 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe, 62, 77 Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), 152-3 Moyo, Sam, 24-5, 74-5, 178 Mozambique: commercial land expansion, 12; land management decentralisation, 194; land reform, 19; Lomwe people, 89-90; NGOs, 20 Mtembezi, T., 175 Mugabe, Robert, 63 Municipal Commonage Projects, South Africa, 38-9 Murombedzi, J.C., 75 Ndung'u Commission (illegal allocations of public lands), Kenya, 121-2

Nakaru/Olenguruone/Kiptagisg Extension Forest, 117 Namibian NGO Forum, 49 Nandi, Kenyan sub-ethnic group, 110 Nasrec, civil society forum 2003, 1 National Committee Against Removals, South Africa, 47 National Constitutional (Bomas) Conference, Kenya, 120 National Gender Policy, Malwai, 96 National Land Summit, South Africa, 51 National Land Commission, Kenya, 121 National Land Council, South Africa, 21, 188 National Land Policy, Malawi, 97 National Master Plan for Arable Agriculture and Dairy Development (NAMPAAD), Botswana, 167 national park concept, land expropriation requirement, 70 National Parks Act 1968, Botswana, 169 National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), Kenya, 120; conflicts within, 122 Native Reserves, colonial Kenya, 102 Native Tenants (Private Estates) Ordinance, Nyasaland, 89 natural resources: ‘community-based management’, 9; communal area pressure on, 58; economic development ideology, 127; growing inequality, 178; poaching, 75; protection, 2; tourism, 23 neoliberalism, 3-5, 8, 95-6, 124; African land interest, 11; land law, 83; land reform, 15; theorists, 12 New International Economic Order, 8 New Kenya Party, 109; settlers, 108 New Xadi settlement, Botswana, 172 Ngala, Ronald, 109 Ngong Road Forest, 117 NGOs (non-governmental organisations): Africa civil society dominance, 19; ambivalent role, 190; anti-migrant, 140; chieftancy strengthening, 157; conflicting demands on, 48; dominant policy collaboration, 188; donorimposed compromises, 31; land issues retreat, 50; middle-class elite, 156; professional advocacy, 20 Nhondoro, communal lands, 75

INDEX Niger Delta, Nigeria, 154, 189, 194; oil, 151, 158; People’s Voluntary Force, 153; poverty, 152; state violence, 187 Niger, migrant labour from, 138 Nigeria, 131, 156 Njonjo, Charles, Commission (Kenya Land Law Systems), 112, 121; dissolution, 119 NLC, South Africa, 48-50 Non-Aligned Movement, 8 Ntsebeza, L., 43-5 Nyamweya, O., 125 Nyasland: colonial legal regime, 88; European settlement encouragement, 89; Land Commission 1946, 90 Nyathi-Ramohobo, Lydia, 165 Obara, L.J., 155 Odinga, Oginga, 109, 111 Ogiek forest dwellers, Kenya, 117, 123 Ogoni people, military repression of, 153 oil, Niger Delta, 151-2; community co-opting attempts, 153-4 Okavango Delta, 168 Old Naledi, Botswana, squatter settlement, 161 Operation Climate Change, 153 Organização Rural de Ajuda Mútua, Mozambique, 49 Our Common Future, 6 palm oil industry, 133, 145; exports, 130; state plantations, 142; ‘sustainable’ agribusiness, 158 parallel exchange rates, Zimbabwe, 63 Parks and Wildlife Authority, Zimbabwe, 79 Parti Démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire, 138-9 ‘participation’, concept refashioned, 196 pastoral people, 17; Kenya, 118 patronage politics: land use, 115, 119, 121-2, 125; SAP affected, 116 Pearce, B., 48 Pearson, Lord, 173 peasants: anti-development portrayal, 74; farm land size, 84, 119; marginal soils farms, 65 Peters, P.E., 159, 193 Pitso ya Batsana, neoconservative, 165

223

plantations: modern export, 35; private sector, 143; villagoises, 142 Port Elizabeth Land and Community Restoration Society, 42 post-modernism, 192 poverty, 3, 46, 123; burden on women, 44; Malawi, 84-7; rural, 61; Zimbabwe, 59 primacy of labour, PDCI recognition, 139 Pro Forest, 145 public lands, Kenya privatisation, 27, 101 racism, environmental, 53 Ramsar Convention, 160 Rantao, Paul, 171 ‘Re-Africanisation’, 106 Reconstruction and Development Programme, South Africa, 37 Registered Land Act, Malawi, 91-2 Remote Area Development Programme (RADP), 169 Report of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, 3 resettlement schemes, Kenya, 114 Reteng, Botswana, 165 Rift Valley, Kenya, 116; eviction violence, 118-19; frontiers closure, 115; unofficial migrations to, 102; water catchments, elite grabbed, 123 Rogers, W., 169 Ross, Mariam, 172 Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, 145 rule of law, 146, 196; colonial-rooted, 22; concepts of, 185; market dominated, 16; notions of, 6 Rural Development Initiative, South Africa, 21, 48; Rural People’s Charter, 49 rural governance, informal power, 43 rural poor, 158; displaced, 129; criminalised youth, 151; enabling environments failure, 22; Malawi, 84; migration to cities, 38; representation exclusion, 19-21; spontaneous organisations, 32, 48 Rusape, land occupations, 75 Safari companies, trust in, 178 Sahel region, comprehensive forest reform, 174 Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, 1-2

224

INDEX

Saro-Wiwa, Ken, 152-3 Sarwa dialects, 176 ‘scheduled areas’, Kenya, 111 Scoones, I., 10 Scott, J., 76 Selepeng, Molosiwa, 174 Selibe-Phikwe Township, 161 Senegal, 147; Mourides, 131; radical land reform, 135 Sesana, Roy, 170 Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant(SLAG), South Africa, 38-9 Shareworlds, LPM event, 1 Shamva communal land, Zimbabwe, 58 Shell oil company, 152 Shiku, M., 75 Shirika scheme, Kenya, 112 Shiva, Vandana, 10 Shiyeyi language, 165 Siat nv of Belguim, SIAT Ghanas, 143 Sierra Leone, 131, 194 slavery, emancipation, 133 social movements, criminalised, 156 Social Responsibility Agreements (SRAs), Ghana, 150-1 Social Security and National Investment Trust of Ghana, 143 Social stratification, community level, 128 Society for the Promotion of Ikalanga Language, 165 soil erosion, 66 songa songa, people displacement, 105 South Africa, 22, 169; colonialism, 35; communal land regulations, 17; CSOs, 20; Department of Land Affairs, 49; former homelands, 37, 43-4, 53; land claims court, 41; land ownership, 13, 23, 33; land policy, 46; land redistribution struggles, 13, 23, 33, 36, 46, 187; marginalised land reform NGOs, 188, 189; violence, 187; White Paper on Land Policy, 38 South African Communist Party, 51 South African Council of Churches (SACC), 49 South African Development Trust areas, 45 South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO), 48 South African Network on Land (SANL), 49-50

Southall, R., 44 Spatial Development Initiatives, South Africa, 39 squatters, 74, 119; coast land, 122; communities, 75; Kenyan evictions, 117, 120; Kikuyu, 109; settler farms evictions, 103; Zimbabwe state squatter policy, 74, 159 State, the: African, 195-6; agricultural subsidies Zimbabwe, 78; -customary relations harmonising, 157; economic management role, Zimbabwe, 63; enterprises decentralised, 142, 146; farms privatised, 142; intervention demonised, 5; land acquisition, 77; land allocation, 159; private investors support, 181; repression, 28, 32; smallholders control, 134 structural adjustment programmes, 137, 146, 148, 195; failure, 27 Surplus People’s Project, Western Cape, 47 Survival International (SI), 29, 171-7 sustainable development: African dilemma, 80; alternative visions, 197; Botswana agendas, 159; Brundtland concept, 8; centrality of land, 33; concept origins, 6; contradictions, 2; distinct paradigms, 3; externally defined, 184; land access, 85; legal role, 83; narrow technical terms, 101; neoliberal version/ ideological use, 18, 22, 94, n184, 196; people-centred initiative, 34; refashioned, 28; requirements, 87; rural poor influence lack, 56; Zimbabwe prospects, 55 Sustainable Development Partnerships, World Summit, 145 sustainable yield, 2 Swynnerton Plan, Kenya, 104-6, 110, 113 taxation, colonial use, 132 tea: estates, 27; Kenya zones, 117 tenure, land, 160; Botswana policy, 161, 170; colonial legacy, 25, 88, 90; customary, 101; freehold, 161; reform, 39, 45; racialised, 89; security/ insecurity, 33, 44, 86-7, 99, 105; Southern African law inadequacy, 42-3; Swynnerton proposals, see Swynnerton Tevera, D., 178

INDEX timber industry: chiefs’ royalties, 151; ‘traditional arrangement’, 149; see also forests tindvuna (headmen), power of, 43 tobacco, 73, 91; large scale sector, 64; Malawi, 26 Tolba, M., 34 tourism industry, 71; Botswana, 30, 168; Botswana exclusive, 178; capitalist development, 171; eco-, see ecotourism; foreign investment, 177; globalised, 176; land allocation to, 72; nature, 159; private companies infrastructure, 71; promotion, 17; wildlife, see wildlife; Zimbabwe, 70 traditional authority(ies) use of, 19; political lobby, 43-4; unelected power, 45; Zimbabwe, 73 Tribal Lands: Botswana, 161; Boards, Botswana, 28, 162, 163, 167; individualisation, 114; Tribal Territories Act, Botswana, 164; Tribal Trust Lands, Zimbabwe, 59 Trust for Community Outreach and Education, South Africa, 48 Tswana people, Botswana: cultural constructs, 28; customary tenure, 14; dominant culture, 164-5, 170 Tugen Kalenjin, sub-ethnic group, 110 Turner, S., 52, 175 Tutu, Desmond, 173 Transvaal Rural Action Committee, 47 UK (United Kingdom), Kenya funding, 112 UN (United Nations): Commission for Environment and Development, 7; Development Report Zimbabwe, 77; Environmental Programme, 6, 145; International Year of Ecotourism 2002, 177; UNESCO, 6; World Conference Against Racism, Durban 2001, 50 unemployment, 30 unequal trade relations, 80 University of the Western Cape, Programme for Land and Agrarian Sudies (PLAAS), 47-8 University of Witwatersrand, Centre for Legal Studies, 47 USA (United States of America): agricultural subsidies, 145–6; hegemony,

225 8; small farms, 35; toxic waste campaigns, 190; USAID Central America practice, 40

Vaughan, M., 89 violence: evictions, 103, 117; land rights repression, 24; South Africa, 187; Zimbabwe elections 2000 and 2002, 76 Wanjohi, G., 112 Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining, 155 water, contamination, 154 watersheds, critical, 7, 35 West Africa, 23, 127; chiefs, 27; colonial agriculture absence, 130; community forestry, 18, 146; contradictory land policy, 136; customary rights, 14; different colonial land regimes, 132; early-post-colonial period, 135; localised resistance 21; minerals, 151; mining and timber concessions, 28; oil palm production, 133; ‘traditional’ authorities, 156; underclass, 144 Western Cape, legal evictions, 43 White farmers: rights assertion, 16; South Africa, 13, 33; Zimbabwe litigation, 78 wildlife: conservation land expropriation rationale, 118; Conservation Policy 1986 Botswana, 169; land use, 61; large farmer sector, 64, 72; management, 24; Management Areas, 159; parks, 17; poaching, 79; ranching, 67; Zimbabwe policy, 70-1 ‘willing buyer-willing seller’ land market model, 40, 51 Wilmsen, E., 170 women; land access inequality, 91; needs marginalised, 54; Niger Delta resistance, 153; poverty, 84; secure land right obstacles, 43-4 wood fuel; harvesting, 68–9; merchants power, 148; state price setting, 147 World Bank, 8, 16, 143, 159, 187; commercial agriculture promotion, 46; Kenya funding, 112; market-based land reform, 34, 38, 40, 50 World Conservation Strategy,1980, 6-7 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Johannesburg

226

INDEX

2002, 1-2, 5, 9, 50, 63, 145; Sandton Centre security, 188 World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 6, 145 yeomen class, Kenyan creation plan, 106 Zambezi valley frontier zones, land occupations, 75; Zimbabwe, 22, 51, 169; agrarian reform, 81; agro-ecological regions, 59-60; colonial/post-colonial land policy, 56; communal land regulations, 17;

corruption, 78; demography, 58; Environmental Regional Organisation (ZERO), 49; environmental technocrats, 71; ESAP, see ESAP; external debt, 62-3; fast-track land redistribution, 25; international pressure on, 62, 77; land distribution/ redistribution, 24, 187, 189; land occupations, 76; liberation struggle veterans, 61-2, 76; NGOs, 20; smallholder peasants, 55; Zanu-PF party, 62, 72