Land Affairs

Traditional Authorities: Do they Deliver Justice in Land Disputes?

The District Land and Housing Tribunal in Tanga.

Policy makers in developing countries face difficult choices when it comes to designing court institutions for settling land disputes. On the one hand, the state court systems are often overburdened with cases. They are often also too expensive to access for most citizens, in particular for women. In other words, to increase the number of courts and reducing the fees may not be a real option in cash-strapped countries with poor populations. Different approaches are required. However, the alternatives may be easier to access, but they often have other unintended consequences.

I was reminded about the dilemma when I read the article Government must consult rural women on the Traditional Court Bill, which criticises the South African government’s decision to vest responsibility over land disputes in customary authorities. A similar critique is raised in the book Land, Power and Custom: Controversies Generated by South Africa's Communal Land Rights Act by Aninka Claassens and Ben Cousins. It describes the customary authorities as being patriarchal and criticizes them for drawing on a repertoire of practices that discriminate against women. Another scholar, Richard Crook, based on his research in Ghana, also warns us against the romanticisation of traditional or customary institutions in his conference paper The state and local justice in Ghana: hybridity, legitimacy and popular values.

In Tanzania, the government in the 1999 Village Land Act and the 2002 Courts (Land Disputes Settlements) Act chose a middle way, prescribing the establishment of village land councils made up, not of professionals, but of appointed laymen and women. The acts also recognized the role of traditional authorities in settling land disputes, but prohibited all gender-discriminatory practices. In theory, these laws and regulations are sound and pragmatic. What the authorities do in practice, however, may be a different matter.

Property Rights and the Rule of Law

In the last couple of weeks the international media have brought a much hyped story of a rebelling village in China. The villagers, according to the article Tense stand-of in China protest village on BBC World, are rebelling against the abuse of power and the grabbing of large chunks of land by local government officials. As a consequence, they have thrown out the corrupt officials.

It is always a good news story when people rebel against the system in authoritarian societies like the Chinese. It is, after all, a sign that states, though extremely powerful, can not, in the long run, control everything. I find the story interesting out of a different reason, though. I find it interesting because of the reason why these villagers took to the streets: to protest against land grabbing and insecure property rights.

In his most recent book, The Origin of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama describes the crucial role property rights seem to have played in the establishment of the rule of law in the northern part of Europe in the middle ages. In England, for instance, the Common Law and a decentralised court system were developed partly to protect the property rights of non-elites against the local lords. Later on, the law could even be used against kings who violated it, as happened with the revolutions in the 17th century: The success of the Glorious Revolution was therefore more a consequence of the existence of strong, credible property rights than a cause of them. Englishmen with property felt they had something important to defend (p. 419).

China, according to Fukuyama, never saw the same development. The country experienced periods with rule of law, but the principle was never properly enshrined and rulers could manipulate rights at will: Property rights existed, but they were not configured to support development of a modern market economy (...). Instead of creating incentives for private individuals to work their land more productively, the (Qin, ed.) state set output quotas (as the communist would do two millennia later) and punished peasants for failing to meet them. While the initial Qin land reform broke up entailed estates and created a market in land, no class of smallholders emerged, the land instead being absorbed by a new class of wealthy families. And there was ultimately no rule of law to limit the sovereign’s ability to confiscate property further (p. 127).

The rebellion of the Chinese villagers, thus, can also be analysed from this perspective. Sometimes, people feel that they have something important to defend, something worth fighting for. And sometimes the fight in itself has greater consequences than what the antagonists imagine. One day, the Chinese, too, may experience rule of law.

Happy New Year!

Photo from fukuyama.stanford.edu/photos

Land of Desperation

I recognise desperate people when I meet them. I have encountered quite a few during my research into land affairs in rural areas in Tanzania. Actually, I have come to see desperation as a very Tanzanian thing, on a par with Tingatinga paintings and Daladala taxis. Where I come from, people may get frustrated, but rarely are they desperate. But here...hui...!

I was reminded of the Tanzanian kind of desperation the other day, when I read the article District Officials Accused of Harassing Villagers in the Guardian (9 July). District officials and the district commissioner in Kilombero District, so the story goes, have given almost 10,000 hectares of land to an investor for sugar cane production. At least 10,000 people have been evicted. Now, the villagers who dare to protest are getting arrested on fabricated charges. Desperation sounds like this villager’s statement: We have got families, where should we go? The government should protect us, not alienate us.

For an outsider it is always difficult to know who is right and who is wrong in this kind of conflicts. It is, however, quite likely that there is something rotten going on in Kilombero. The land offices are generally seen as among the poorest performers when it comes to public sector service delivery in Tanzania. Corruption is rife. These are the conclusions in the report, National Governance and Corruption Survey, published by the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) earlier this year.

So what do ordinary Tanzanians do when the ones who were supposed to protect them betray them? They do not have many options. The judiciary is also corrupt, according to an article in the Citizen in the weekend. The Tanzanian Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance is not really functioning if you listen to the rumours here in Dar es Salaam. And it is hardly accessible for people in the rural areas anyway. To elect new local representatives for the district councils is also unlikely to make any difference because the heads of administration in the districts, the district commissioners and the district executive directors, are still, despite decades of decentralisation reforms, appointed by the central government.

So where do ordinary people go when the bureaucrats abuse power? They may go to the NGOs and they may try to attract to the attention of the media, as did the people in Kilombero District. But to be heard is not the same thing as getting justice. More local control over local affairs, including over the district bureaucrats, would probably help.

Land Policies – do they Matter?

The fuss about land grabbing in Sub-Saharan Africa is understandable. A comparison has shown that the amount of land being transferred is often smaller than reported in the media. Still, the scale of large-scale land acquisitions is breathtaking. Even the liberal magazine the Economist indicates that the time may be up for more regulation. In the article When others are grabbing your land it describes how land deals rarely deliver the benefits they promised.

But whereas activists are right in ringing the alarm bell, the solutions they suggest may not solve the problem. It became clear to me during the conference Africa’s resources – Lions on the move in Copenhagen, earlier this month. There, during his presentation, Lorenzo Cotula, author of the report Land Deals in Africa: What is in the Contracts?, made it clear, that despite the land policy reforms which have been carried out in Sub-Saharan Africa the last couple of decades, the issue of compensation has not been seriously addressed: '…even in those countries where legislation is perceived to be particularly progressive, safeguards within the context of land takings may be weak. And not just because land deals are new – takings have been going on for many years for mining, petroleum, roads, etc.'

Lorenzo Cotula points to a more general problem of loopholes in the legal frameworks in many countries. Therefore, an outright ban on large-scale land transactions, as has been proposed by some activists, is unlikely to solve the problem. It would not address the other types of expropriations which are taking place and it would probably be difficult to enforce.

Policies which ensure compensation in case of expropriation, on the other hand, would be a step forward in protecting people’s rights to land. Ceilings on land purchases and land ownership may also be effective measures. In Brasil, large-scale foreign land acquisitions stalled once such a measure was implemented, according to a recent investment report. I would argue that the ceiling should be for foreign and domestic investors alike. To the locals it does not matter whether land is being bought by a foreign or a domestic investor. The damage they do is the same.

Better land policies may not in themselves solve the problem. As pointed out in a comment to a previous blog post, the question of access to justice and the enforcement of decisions remain crucial. But better land policies would provide a good point of departure.

Through Investors' Eyes. Land Acquisitions Revisited

A good investment?

A change of perspective on land acquisitions in developing countries can be healthy. I was exposed to the views of a potential investor recently, which made me adjust my way of thinking. Maybe the interests of investors may not be that different from the populations in developing countries? Investors – the serious ones – are also interested in strong, accountable institutions which can provide secure and stable access to land.

The one making me think about land acquisitions anew was the fiancé of a female friend of mine; a professional investor. A couple of weeks ago I had shared a newspaper article on my Facebook wall about an African continent on its way to becoming an economic super power with high economic growth rates.

The fiancé-cum-investor let me know, through his girlfriend, that I should not invest in Africa. The risk of loosing money there was too high. But I was also told that if I really wanted to pursue the idea of investing in Africa he knew of a company in Congo, a palm oil producer, with an option on 100,000 ha of arable land, which was worth considering. The company promised high average returns. High returns, if I understand investors correctly, can compensate for running big risks.

I was a bit baffled by his suggestion. First of all, I do not have the money to invest. And even if I had had the money, I would not invest in a palm oil producer in Congo. I am not really the gambling type of guy. Still, I got inspired by the suggestion. It made me wonder how investors think.

If I were an investor, I would find an investment in a company in Congo with an option on 100,000 ha of arable land extremely risky. Maybe the number of land acquisitions in Sub-Saharan Africa is on the increase. But so is the number of deals being cancelled. In Tanzania, a story about South Koreans investing in large-scale rice farming keeps circulating. But if there ever was a deal, it has also been cancelled several times (read about it here). In 2009, a sale of land in Madagascar fuelled a rebellion against the incumbent government. That deal was also cancelled (read about it here). Vast tracts of land in Sub-Saharan Africa are transferred to investors without ever being utilized, often because the projects stall after encountering local resistance.

Add to that the potential ethical aspect, which also plays a role for modern investors. What will happen to the ones living on those thousands of ha, once the palm oil producer decides to expand its production? A report by the World Bank from 2010 showed that investments in countries with weak laws and weak institutions – and I imagine civil war-torn Congo is such a country – are unlikely to benefit people at the local level.

A solution to the ethical problem could be to prohibit foreign land acquisitions completely. Some civil-society groups have suggested this recently (read about it here). I do not believe, however, that it will solve the problem for the local poor since it does not address the problem of large-scale domestic land acquisitions, which can be equally damaging. It could also make it more difficult to set up industries, businesses, etc. in these countries in general, which would be damaging to the economy.

I find the investor perspective intriguing. Because it makes it clear how difficult it is for businesses, foreign and domestic businesses alike, to operate in many African countries. Last week, Tanzania’s President Kikwete tried to address the problem by assuring investors that the country would maintain its investor-friendly policies (read the article in the Citizen here). But in the case of Tanzania, I believe that the president may be part of the problem. The large-scale land acquisitions in Tanzania have often been made possible by the government’s expropriations of land. An investor would wonder whether a future Tanzanian president could expropriate his land holdings as easily as land has been expropriated in the past. Stephen Johnston from the Canadian fund manager Agcapita, in an article in the Wealth Report 2011, produced by Knight Frank and Citi Bank, recently stated that 'I don’t think you can make a long-term case for investing in developing countries. Poor people vote and politicians listen. At some point, somebody will get elected who will nationalize farmland’. According to the same article, investors see most African countries as ‘a potential Zimbabwe’. The lack of stable institutions and checks and balances, in other words, reduces tenure security, not only for the poor, but for all.

A different way of addressing insecure land rights would be to strengthen the capacity of the local authorities and citizens and increase their role when land deals are made. Maybe the parliaments should also be given a larger role in controlling the deals. The power of the executive should be diminished correspondingly, and the huge, surreal, transfers of land should be stopped (maybe ceilings on land purchases would work?). Interestingly, the interests of serious investors, in strong institutions and in a system with more checks and balances, may not be very different from the interests of ordinary Africans.

Land Conflicts in developing and developed countries. What is the difference?

I was in Iceland to celebrate New Year’s Eve with some friends. Up there, I was reminded of the fact that conflicts over land use and land ownership are not only a developing country phenomenon. Nor are various kinds of communal land ownership unknown in Europe, though we tend to forget it.

My host, an Icelandic farmer, told me about his grievances with Icelandic state authorities over grazing land. A government committee is currently attempting to clarify land ownership in Iceland, especially in the highlands, following the adoption of a law (see page 17 on this link) which states that the Icelandic state owns all land that individuals can not legally uphold their claim for.

The aim of the law is to twofold: to protect the environment and to secure that natural resources found in those areas will benefit the public. I do not think that a change in ownership status will make any difference to the farmers’ use of land. They will probably still have the right to graze it. Still, everybody is searching for all kinds of old documents which can somehow proof that they or their forefathers somehow have had earned a right to the land. My friend and his fellow farmers have the feeling that the state is taking something away from them.

His story reminded me of something which I tend to forget: that conflicts over land use and land ownership is not a developing country phenomenon only. We have conflicts over land in Europe too. We also have common pool resources; pastures, oceans, etc. Actually, one of the reasons why I find the study of land management systems in Tanzania fascinating is because it makes me look at my own society with fresh eyes.

It occurs to me, though, that European conflicts often differ from the ones I have met in African countries. In Europe, we may no to the same extent have elements of personal gains and losses which decisively influence individuals’ and communities’ incomes and livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa. In north-western Europe land use conflicts usually involve the state and evolve around issues other than ownership.

An example of this type of land use conflicts, can be found in a marsh area, Tøndermarsken, in the south-western part of Denmark. In that area farmers and public authorities have been fighting for more than thirty years over how to use the land. The traditional farming system, with farmers associations regulating grazing and the water levels in the canals, has created an ecosystem which provides the basis for a fantastic bird life. But modern farming techniques, with intensive cultivation, now threaten that ecosystem. In order to protect the birds, the Danish Ministry of the Environment has increasingly sought to regulate how the area should be farmed; the water level in the channels; the type of crops grown in the fields; the density of animals, etc. The Marsh farmers, on the other hand, feel that they are loosing the control over their land, which farmers won some 200 years ago when farming and land ownership got more individualised in Denmark.

The conflict in Tøndermarsken is not about ownership ‘classic’. Still, the new environmental regulation completely changes the meaning of ownership. In a condensed form the conflict in Tøndermarsken shows us what has happened with governance of agricultural land in Denmark during the last thirty to forty years.

Sometimes I have this feeling that our categories of land and land rights deceive us. We often focus on one category, private property rights for instance and tend to forget all the other types of ownership and use rights. You may see that when you learn about systems in other countries. Are they not all equally fascinating and worth studying?

Iceland photo by Ragnar Th. Sigurðsson, with permission from www.visiticeland.com
Tøndermarsken photo by Jon Detlefsen, www.marsken.dk

Tanzania’s Land Law Reform - Slow and uneven Progress

NGOs and the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development are involved in a significant number of projects to implement Tanzania’s land law reform from 1999. Still, implementation in rural areas is slow and uneven. That is my conclusion in the working paper I published this month. You can download the working paper free of charge here.

If you have comments to the working paper, please, feel free to write to me here or on my E-mail address, which you find here.

Are they crooks? (2)

Changes may be underway in the way land is managed in Tanzania. The new Minister of Lands, Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, who comes from a position as Executive Director in UN-HABITAT, has made some tough statements on illegally acquired land less than a month after her appointment:

30 November, according to an article in the Citizen, she warned that land which had been grabbed illegally, but which rightfully belonged to the public, would be repossessed.

13 December, also in an article in the Citizen, she claimed that the government would repossess property, like beach hotels, which had been built on illegally acquired land.

14 December, in a third story in the Citizen, she specifically addressed those people who had built houses in the posh areas along the beaches in Dar es Salaam. Public land should be used for public purposes like playgrounds or car parks, she said, not for private settlements.

Now, there is an important task for citizens and Tanzanian media in monitoring what happens to the land after it has been repossessed by the government. Will the minister and the Ministry of Lands start constructing playgrounds and car parks on those areas? I look forward to learning about it.

Personally I believe there is another, even more important task ahead of Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, namely to change the culture of impunity within the land sector. The Ministry of Lands is reportedly among the most corrupt institutions in the country. In rural areas, local district land offices are rumored to be involved in illegal land transactions. Still, you rarely hear stories of land officials being prosecuted and punished. In Tanzanian villages, I have heard numerous stories of local leaders who sell village land without following the proper procedures. Village chairmen and village executive officers as well as traditional leaders may be involved, and their names may be known. Still, no one gets punished. Why?

It would have a tremendous effect if the Tanzanian government started punishing those corrupt official or semi-official representatives who are involved in illegal land transactions.

Photo from UN-HABITAT.

An unhappy Mariage? Women and formalised land ownership

This Tanzanian woman once lost her land in a divorce. Now she is happy that she has a title on her land.

The debate about how to protect vulnerable groups in land reform processes is continuing. In a previous blog post I described the effect of putting the names of women on title deeds in Tanzania. It was my impression that it made a big difference for women to know that they, in a written document, figured as the owners of the plots they use.

Now, from a friend, I have received an example of what happens when women’s names are not written. It does not look good. The findings in The Impact of National Land Policy and Land Reform on Women in Uganda are based on a small survey conducted by Uganda Land Alliance and the international NGO COHRE.

Uganda got its land law reform with the 1998 Land Act. Though women activists had campaigned for spouses’ automatic co-ownership of land the final law did not open up for this option. In the book No Shortcuts to Power Sheila Kawamara-Mishambi and Irene Ovonji-Odida describe how the president deleted the article empowering women, after it had been passed by parliament, because he was afraid that women would accumulate land through serial monogamy. Today, according to the survey from Uganda Land Alliance and COHRE, only 8% of married women in Uganda report that they own land.

Instead, lawmakers have sought to secure women’s rights to land by emphasising their rights according to other laws. The problem with this approach is that it presumes that women know their rights, and know how to enforce them. However, the study shows that women, especially in rural areas, do not know about their rights. Subsequently, discriminatory customary practices persist.

Habari Nzuri ! Progress in the Fight against Corruption in Kenya

It is difficult to understand a country from the outside. This is not least true in African countries (I apologise for this generalisation) where political life is usually so rife with rumours, speculations, and conspiracy theories, that it may even be difficult to know what is going on when you are in the country.

Still, it appears to me that there is something encouraging going on in Kenya at the moment. The last couple of weeks I have read a number of stories in the press about corruption cases against high-ranking politicians. All are being investigated and many are related to land:

28 October the Daily Nation wrote that Nairobi Mayor Leaves Office Over Corruption Charges, related to the public purchase of cemetery land.

27 October you could read an article, also in the Daily Nation, announcing that Foreign Affairs minister Moses Wetang'ula had been forced to step aside because of involvement in irregular purchases or sales of embassies in Japan, Nigeria, Belgium, and Pakistan.

20 October Business Daily announced that Higher Education Minister William Ruto had been suspended by President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga. The minister, allegedly, has received money to facilitate the sale of ungazetted forest land to Kenya Pipeline Company.

According to the Director of Kenya's Anti-Corruption Commission, Prof Lumumba, more ministers are under scrutiny. There seems to be a pattern. The question is, of course, which kind of pattern. I do not know much about Kenyan politics. I do know, however, that the latter accused, William Ruto, made himself deeply unpopular among his government colleagues by campaigning for a no to the new constitution earlier this year. Could charges be politically motivated and not raised as a consequence of the fight against corruption? I do not know.

Still, I find any prosecution better than no persecution. Kenya, after all, slid further down in this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International http://www.transparency.org/, from number 146 in 2009 to number 159 in the world in 2010.

Ujamaa wrongs; can they be corrected?

I often wonder how this country, Tanzania, would have developed, had it not embarked on the Ujamaa policies in the 1960ies and 1970ies. Today, during a research visit at the District Land and Housing Tribunal in Tanga, it struck me again. When going through land conflict files I came across a land conflict case, which I had heard about the first time in the village in which I am currently working.

One of the parties in the case, a man in his sixties, had lost the family land because of villagisation in the mid-1970ies. Like millions of other Tanzanians he and his family had been ordered to move to the nearest village where schooling and other social services would be available. In that area of Handeni people were forced to move. New land, so they were told, would be provided by the nearby state ranch.

Then came the privatisation policies of the 1980ies and the ranch was sold to investors. Since then our man, whom I interviewed last week, has borrowed land from neighbours and relatives and thereby managed to feed his family. But now competition for land is getting stronger and the time of borrowing seems to be over. He therefore decided, when hearing about a land registration project in the area a couple of years ago, to try to get his family land back. It was still, he told me, unoccupied. But a man cultivating land in the same area had decided to expand his farm and had registered the land in his name a couple of months before.

Now they have taken the dispute to the District Land and Housing Tribunal here in Tanga. Soon the tribunal will decide who owns the land. But it will not be able to correct the wrongs done during Ujamaa.

Law and justice; the Tanzanian Land Court System

 
A Tanzanian Primary Court.

Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with a judge in Handeni, where I am currently doing my fieldwork. We talked about the special Tanzanian court system which has been set up to settle land conflicts. The conflicts over land here are aplenty. Before the land reform and the passing of the Land Courts Act in 2002 the judiciary was incapable of dealing with the large number of cases and therefore courts were slow and hardly accessible to people.

I told him about a discussion I had had with another judge recently, who had complained about the land courts; he found that the lower level institutions (on village, ward and district level), with their lay judges, were unable to deliver real justice. The Handeni judge did not agree. He said that justice can be brought by law, but that law does not always bring justice.

And maybe he is right. I have been researching on these land court institutions and I found that they are being used and that they are respected in the villages. The village land councils are busy and there are also plenty of appeals to the next levels. When I look into court files from before the 2002 reform, on the other hand, I hardly find any land cases. Villagers back then could not or would not use the formal system.

From a legal point of view the rulings of these village councils and ward tribunals are far from perfect. But at least they are accessible to people. Furthermore, according to the Handeni judge, they often make decisions which are more just than are the verdicts passed by ordinary courts. In ordinary courts the one with the biggest wallet and the best lawyer often wins the case. The village land councils, for all their faults, usually do their best to make the right decisions. Maybe that is not that bad after all.

When Maasai women get angry they get arrested...

The day before yesterday I wrote about Maasai women in Loliondo handing in their CCM membership cards in a protest against Maasai being evicted from their land.

Termitemoundview.blogspot.com,in her comment below, provided a much more precise description of what had happened in Loliondo than what I was able to deliver. Supposedly women were arrested and interrogated on the day of the demonstration.

Today the story reached the big English language newspapers, this time with a new turn of events. According to the front page of the Guardian 3 NGO representatives were arrested Monday, accused of having organised the women’s demonstration.

I am not familiar with the finer details of Tanzanian law. A Tanzanian friend, when having heard the story, asked me if I still believed Tanzania was a democracy. Actually I do believe that Tanzania is a democracy. But could someone please explain to me why it is a crime to hand in membership cards to a political party?

When Maasai Women get angry they rebel

I just learned from a friend that several hundred Maasai women yesterday went to Loliondo town in Ngorongoro District to hand back their CCM membership cards, 1500 cards in total according to the paper edition of today’s Mwananchi. The women are angry, very angry actually. Last year hundreds of Maasai in Loliondo were evicted, their houses burnt and several were arrested.

In 1992, so the story goes according to the Citizen, the Government of Tanzania secretly leased over 4,000 square kilometres of the Loliondo Game Reserve to an Arab Sheikh, Brigadier Mohammed Adulrahim Al-Ally of United Arab Emirates for hunting purposes. Reportedly the boundaries are continuously being redrawn to the advantage of the Sheikh. It is from this land the Maasai are being evicted. That is the reason why the Maasai women are angry.

To protest and hand in CCM membership cards is serious business in Tanzania where the party has ruled continuously since 1977.

I realised that in March I heard a similar story from Kiteto where I have been doing my research. The Kiteto women were protesting against the loss of land in an area reserved for game and grazing land, the Murtangos. The case has been in High Court and is now in the Court of Appeal. I was not there when it happened, but I have been told that the women were stopped by concerted efforts by district authorities and the police before they could stage their protest and hand in their CCM cards in Kibaya Town.

I find these conflicts about land extremely complex and difficult to understand. It does not make it easier that the authorities treat them like state secrets. When I asked for information about the Murtangos case in Kiteto I always met suspicion. To get the verdict from the High Court proved to be impossible. Instead of reliable information I got a confusing mix of conspiracy theories and half told stories. But it seems like these Maasai women are sure about their case. They have started to rebel.

When Maasai women get angry they take the law into their own hands

They look peaceful, but...

It is hard to imagine when you meet Maasai women; usually they are shy and obedient, especially when together with their husbands. But they can get violently angry. If a man becomes the target for their anger it may be lethal...

Traditionally Maasai women’s revenge is reserved for men who have broken major taboos; men forcing their daughters to have sex or politicians challenging Maasai traditions, for instance female circumcision. When hearing about such cases Maasai women get together, search the man in his boma, and beat him with their belts. Reportedly men have died from their punishment. Not because of physical injuries, but because of the curse thereby cast upon them.

I just learned that women have started targeting men who are selling Maasai land also. That, I believe, is an important change. For decades Maasai moved when their land had been taken. They gathered their cattle and went somewhere else. Therefore, some men among the Maasai have been very generous towards people from other tribes looking for land to cultivate; the land did not really belong to anyone anyway. But now the Maasai are realising that they cannot keep on moving. There is no free land anymore. And they need the land themselves to grow crops and generate income. Especially the women are getting aware of this because they are often the ones responsible for feeding the kids and getting them to school.

Selling land has been a taboo for a while. But the Maasai are struggling to find out how to enforce it. They prefer to use their traditional councils of elders. But it is my impression that the respect for these institutions is decreasing. An inherent distrust of state institutions – and the inability of these institutions to deal with illegal land sales – renders the option of prosecuting perpetrators through state courts unviable. Now, it seems, some Maasai women have decided to take action.

I am not sure that taking the law into one’s own hands is the right solution. But maybe it is necessary until the services for registering rights to land and for enforcing land use planning are made available in rural areas?

The potency of courts

Best news of the week came from Tanzania’s Court of Appeal which ruled that the Tanzanian state had to pay a hefty 9 billion Shillings in compensation for expropriation of their land.

According to the Citizen, the case dates back from 1986 when villagers from Tondoroni Village, Kisarawe, were evicted from their land to give place to an army base. Initially the villagers were promised compensation, but never received any. They took the case to High Court in 1996 and won, but still they did not receive their money. The 9 billion which they now have won includes interest from the years which have passed since the case started.

One could choose to focus on the horrific 24 years which passed from the case started until the villagers reached the final verdict and, hopefully, their compensation. It simply is far too slow. But one could also focus on the positive fact that courts in Tanzania can contribute to enforce people’s rights to land and that they do it.

It may seem obvious, but I have come to realise that unless courts exist at which people can defend their rights, registration, titling, and other proofs of rights to land, are not worth much, because people have no way to enforce their rights. I do not expect that the verdict from the Court of Appeal will stop the Tanzanian state’s extensive use of its right to expropriate land. But I do hope that it may secure people a fair compensation when it happens.