Land Affairs

Encouraging Land Reform News from Rwanda

Sub-Saharan African countries have introduced a ‘new wave’ of land reforms in the last couple of decades (read about the reforms in this review). Unlike previous, more state-centric reforms, these new reforms decentralise responsibility for the administration of land to the local level and streamline disparate land law regimes. For instance, customary tenure and fully individualised freehold tenure may get converged into a single, more formal tenure system. Typically, reforms also aim at protecting the land rights of women and vulnerable groups.

So far, evidence has been scarce and land reform debates have largely been based on findings from past reforms. Slowly, however, results start appearing. And they are more positive than what many scholars expected. Recently, I received a Working Paper, Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularisation in Africa, which presents evidence from pilot implementation projects in Rwanda, which is to carry out a nation-wide land tenure regularisation program. Its outcomes were positive, though I do not think they herald a revolution.

The paper concludes that Legally married women were significantly more likely to have their informal ownership rights documented and secured after registration. But women who were not legally married saw diminished property rights, in accordance with the law (p. 14). It is important that the pilot project has improved most women’s access to land. Titling programmes effect on gender equality was an important criticism in the past. Old-fashioned land reforms typically registered land in the name of the household head – the husband – and reduced women’s control over land (read, for instance, this working paper p. 19).

A joint title or seperate property?

The Rwandan findings are largely in line with my findings from implementation projects in Tanzania. But based on my research I would also emphasise that there are significant differences within the groups of married and unmarried women. Single women, I would say, may even be in better off than married women if they get registered as household heads. Women who get single due to divorce, on the other hand, may be worse off. Reform, in other words, polarises women’s positions.

Bottom-line is that new wave land reforms seem to improve most women’s access to land. It does not happen automatically, however. The authors of the working paper warn that ‘careful design based on local conditions, and continued monitoring during implementation’ are required. It is also my impression that the approach of implementers – whether they emphasise women’s rights to land during training sessions and implementation – is important.

Despite these significant findings, the working paper has a serious methodological weakness. It seems to me that the conclusion is based on changes in perceptions only. In other words, the researchers have been looking at whether more women are ‘entitled’ to equal ownership rights (p. 13). It does not tell us whether their actual ability to defend their rights if they have to, for instance in case of divorce. If you have more information about the Rwandan land reform and whether it has actually improved women’s tenure security it is most welcome.

Property Hierarchies

My feminist friends talk about ‘white heterosexual men’ when they want to point out how certain traits in society favours some groups and disadvantages others (read examples of it here and here). I have come to realise that the perspective is also applicable to land affairs. Here, too, hierarchies are at play which structure access to land and property, though things, of course, are a bit more complex than the slogan indicates.

I realised that the ‘white heterosexual men’ perspective was applicable within land and property studies, when I read a press release from European gay activists welcoming a communiqué by the European Commission on property rights of married couples and registered partners. The communiqué, so they argue, is breaking new ground because it treats homosexual couples and heterosexual couples equally when it comes to property rights. That has been a normal practice in countries in the northern part of the European Union for well over a decade now, but in some of the member countries in the eastern part of Europe, homosexuals still face discrimination when it comes to inheritance. There, a person may not inherit the partner’s property despite having shared a life together with him or her. A communiqué at the European level puts these people in a better position.

The situation of these homosexuals, in some ways, reminds me of the situation of women in some rural areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. They, too, face eviction or loss of property when their husbands die. Most of the new wave of land reforms, which have been carried out in many countries the last couple of decades, prohibit gender discrimination. But the traditional practices are often too strong and the laws are not implemented.

Pastoralists are also disfavoured in many African countries. The new book Being Maasai, Becoming Indigenous, by Dorothy Hodgson, describes Tanzanian Maasai’s political struggles over the last couple of decades. One of the Maasias main aims has been to get recognised as a group with a specific culture and lifestyle. Another aim has been to find ways to protect their rights to land. The long history of land expropriations that pastoralist groups in Tanzania have experienced did not stop with independence. Post-colonial authorities continued the practice. At the same time, people from other parts of Tanzania now settle where the pastoralists used to graze their cattle. Land which is not under the plough is considered vacant and, thus, a potential object for farming and investment. In 2007, according to a memo quoted in the book, President Kikwete stated that the livestock keeping, using mobility as its key strategy, has no future for pastoralists in the country (Hodgson 2011, 172).

Tanzanian decision makers may be right that the pastoralist lifestyle is under threat. The competition for land is fierce. And pastoralists are, after all, also modernising. What makes their statements slightly problematic, however, is that they put the blame on the pastoralist instead of seeking to protect their rights to land. Most other groups in Tanzania, I believe, would get treated differently if their land was being taken.

That brings me back to the reason why I find the ‘white heterosexual men’ perspective too simplistic. The people accumulating land in Tanzania are not all white. On the opposite. The investors I heard about during my research in Tanzania's rural areas were all elite Tanzanians from the major cities. And the Tanzanian decision makers, who are responsible for the policies which make the land alienations possible, are certainly not white. That was, indeed, also pointed out by two Ministers in the article Investment debate grows more fierce in the Guardian, on July 3rd, in which they made it clear that the formulation of the right policies is a Tanzanian responsibility. Finally, the ones benefitting from the current state of affairs may not even be male.

To focus on the privileges of ‘white heterosexual men’ is, in other words, misleading when it comes to land affairs. But, the perspective - that there is a hierarchy among groups, whose rights are not equally well protected – is still worth pursuing.

Property Hierarchies

My feminist friends talk about ‘white heterosexual men’ when they want to point out how certain traits in society favours some groups and disadvantages others (read examples of it here and here). I have come to realise that the perspective is also applicable to land affairs. Here, too, hierarchies are at play which structure access to land and property, though things, of course, are a bit more complex than the slogan indicates.

I realised that the ‘white heterosexual men’ perspective was applicable within land and property studies, when I read a press release from European gay activists welcoming a communiqué by the European Commission on property rights of married couples and registered partners. The communiqué, so they argue, is breaking new ground because it treats homosexual couples and heterosexual couples equally when it comes to property rights. That has been a normal practice in countries in the northern part of the European Union for well over a decade now, but in some of the member countries in the eastern part of Europe, homosexuals still face discrimination when it comes to inheritance. There, a person may not inherit the partner’s property despite having shared a life together with him or her. A communiqué at the European level puts these people in a better position.

The situation of these homosexuals, in some ways, reminds me of the situation of women in some rural areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. They, too, face eviction or loss of property when their husbands die. Most of the new wave of land reforms, which have been carried out in many countries the last couple of decades, prohibit gender discrimination. But the traditional practices are often too strong and the laws are not implemented.

Pastoralists are also disfavoured in many African countries. The new book Being Maasai, Becoming Indigenous, by Dorothy Hodgson, describes Tanzanian Maasai’s political struggles over the last couple of decades. One of the Maasias main aims has been to get recognised as a group with a specific culture and lifestyle. Another aim has been to find ways to protect their rights to land. The long history of land expropriations that pastoralist groups in Tanzania have experienced did not stop with independence. Post-colonial authorities continued the practice. At the same time, people from other parts of Tanzania now settle where the pastoralists used to graze their cattle. Land which is not under the plough is considered vacant and, thus, a potential object for farming and investment. In 2007, according to a memo quoted in the book, President Kikwete stated that the livestock keeping, using mobility as its key strategy, has no future for pastoralists in the country (Hodgson 2011, 172).

Tanzanian decision makers may be right that the pastoralist lifestyle is under threat. The competition for land is fierce. And pastoralists are, after all, also modernising. What makes their statements slightly problematic, however, is that they put the blame on the pastoralist instead of seeking to protect their rights to land. Most other groups in Tanzania, I believe, would get treated differently if their land was being taken.

That brings me back to the reason why I find the ‘white heterosexual men’ perspective too simplistic. The people accumulating land in Tanzania are not all white. On the opposite. The investors I heard about during my research in Tanzania's rural areas were all elite Tanzanians from the major cities. And the Tanzanian decision makers, who are responsible for the policies which make the land alienations possible, are certainly not white. That was, indeed, also pointed out by two Ministers in the article Investment debate grows more fierce in the Guardian, on July 3rd, in which they made it clear that the formulation of the right policies is a Tanzanian responsibility. Finally, the ones benefitting from the current state of affairs may not even be male.

To focus on the privileges of ‘white heterosexual men’ is, in other words, misleading when it comes to land affairs. But, the perspective - that there is a hierarchy among groups, whose rights are not equally well protected – is still worth pursuing.

Land and Sexual Violence (4). A Report from Cote d’Ivoire...

People on the run from the severe post-election fighting. March 2011. © Alexis Adélé/IRIN.

This week, a report appeared about the use of sexual violence as part of the post-election conflict in Cote d’Ivoire. Again, there seems to be some kind of relationship between political conflict, land, and rape as a weapon of war.

In Cote d’Ivoire, the atrocities started in November 2010 when the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after having lost the national elections (read about the conflict here). Soon, what started off as a dispute over the election outcome activated ethnic and religious cleavages.

According to the report from the UN news agency, IRIN, there is a link between ethnicity, land and sexual violence:
Most refugees are reporting that the violence is ethnically and politically driven, say NGOs and rights groups. The political fault-lines in this region are largely along ethnic and religious grounds. Violence in the west has also been linked to longstanding clashes over land that have pitted local communities against outsiders. Waines, just back from talking to refugees in Nimba Country, said: “There is a large ethnic dynamic to this violence - targeted ethnic killings and attacks are driving the dynamic.”

The article only reports that these crimes have taken place. Unfortunately, it does not provide much insight into the behind lying ethnic conflicts and exactly how they relate to land issues.

Agricultural Productivity a Threat to Women’s Land Rights

A threat to productivity?

Recently, I realized that there may be a contradiction between governments’ emphasis on the productive use of land and most people’s secure rights to land in developing countries. In particular women’s access to land is at risk. Again, it was the experiences from the Zimbabwean land reform, which made things clear to me.

It is an established truth that the focus on productivity is a threat to the tenure security of pastoralists. Read Once Intrepid Warriors by Dorothy L. Hodgson and you’ll come across several stories, both from before and after independence, about Tanzanian authorities alienating Maasai land in order to give it to more productive farmers. Ironically, the expected improved productivity did often not materialize. If you read the final version of the Tanzanian governments plan for the implementation of the 1999 land laws, SPILL, from 2005, you will find a similar disregard of pastoralist productivity.

In her book, Gender and Land Reform, Allison Goebel concludes that the same focus on productivity may threaten women’s land rights. In her analysis of the experiences from Zimbabwe’s land reforms she starts off with a very positive story from the early 1980s. Back then, the Zimbabwean government’s land reform policies were still aiming at redistributing land to the landless and thus promoting social justice. Women were also eligible for resettlement land, in particular if they were single women. Over the years, however, the government increasingly shifted its focus. Increasingly, it emphasized that settlers should be able to make productive use of the land. First, training courses were made a prerequisite for being resettled on vacant land. Later, criteria became even stricter and applicants should own a schotchcart (a wooden, wheeled cart) and a plough (p. 24). Obviously, it was much harder for women to meet these requirements. Simultaneously, large tracts of land were given to the new black elite for large-scale farming.

I do understand politicians’ focus on economic growth. It is, after all, the only way for their countries to escape aid-dependency. Still, it triggers me that there is so much talk about productivity and so little debate about how to distribute land and resources. Goebel’s analysis makes it clear that the increased focus on productivity may threaten women’s access to land. Just as it may threaten a lot of other groups’ rights to land.

Land and sexual violence (3)

In previous blog posts, I have written about rapes related to major conflicts over land and in land conflicts at the local, everyday level. I was reminded about the link between land and sexual violence again this week when reading about Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform.

According to the book Gender and Land Reform - the Zimbabwe Experience by Allison Goebel, election campaigns and the land seizures were accompanied by state-sanctioned rape:

...state-sanctioned violence that accompanied the 2003 pre-election campaign, the presidential elections, and the seizure of white-owned farms has taken an especially heavy toll on women and children. It is alleged that wives and daughters who sympathized with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) or who were connected to MDC supporters, as well as women farm workers were victimized by ZANU youth brigades. Although the youth brigades were particularly intent on silencing vocal opposition to the ruling party, who were disproportionately male, there was a clear gendered dimension to their violence. Women believed to be associated with the opposition were not beaten, but were instead often raped or gang raped by members of the youth brigades and state functionaries (Mary J. Osirim according to Goebel).

Though she mentions it, the author does not elaborate much on the relationship between land and the use of sexual violence in Zimbabwe. This, again, brings me back to the curious fact that so little research has been carried out into the topic…

Land and sexual violence (2)

My last blog post was about the use of rape and sexual violence in major conflicts. During a meeting with some colleagues a couple of days ago, I realised that sexual violence may also be part of small-scale, everyday conflicts with neighbours, kins and family members. At the meeting I was asked if we know anything about it. I did not. So far, I have not come across any literature which deals with the topic.

I do know that violent marriages can be quite common in rural areas. In the book ‘Women Forget that Men are the Masters’ Margrete Silberschmidt describes how social change in a district in Kenya challenges men’s traditional identities. Often, women are better at small-scale business and managing the fields. Still many men, though they are loosing their traditional role as breadwinners, cling on to the traditional gender relations: ‘Regardless of the socio-economic circumstances in which they find themselves, men are constantly preoccupied with the fact that they are men, and that this condition differentiates them radically from women’ (Silberschmidt p. 17).  Sex and violence, then, may become parts of some men’s strategies to assert themselves and their masculinity.

Thinking back to my fieldwork, I remember the story of a woman, whose husband had died. Soon, the husband’s brother moved in and took over the role as the head of the family. But the two did not get on well, and the woman asked him to leave. The man turned violent, however, and, in the end, she was the one who had to flee the house and the land with her kids. I do not know whether sexual violence was a part of it. It was not my research topic and I did not inquire into it. I wish I had.

This brings me back to the fact, that I do not think that land and sexual violence at the local, everyday level has been thoroughly researched. Anybody out there who knows more about it?

Land and sexual violence

Survivors of sexual violence at the Hospital of Panzi, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo from UN Multimedia.

An article in this week’s Economist, War’s overlooked victims, is about the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Most often women are targeted.

From newspaper reports I had noticed current conflicts’ large numbers of rapes during conflicts. Repeatedly, we read stories about rapes in the ongoing civil war in Congo. There were reports about sexual violence during the 2007-2008 political crisis in Kenya (read here). In Bosnia in the 1990s, rape was also widespread. I thought it was a new trend. It turns out, however, that it is not.

What is new is the realisation that rape is often used systematically as a weapon of war. Only in 2008 was it officially acknowledged as such by the UN Security Council.

Often, so it seems, the use of sexual violence during conflicts is related to land. The logic behind is abhorrent. Men are mobile. Sometimes they are engaged in militia activities themselves, sometimes they work in the cities. When conflicts break out, which involve different ethnic groups and control over land, women are easy targets. By raping women, militias can force them and their families to flee an area. According to a research paper by Elisabeth Wood, an American professor at Yale University, a UN Commission noticed the connection between land and sexual violence after the wars in the former Yugoslavia:

In both custodial and non-custodial settings, many victims report that the alleged perpetrators state that they were ordered to rape and sexually assault the victims, or that they were doing it so that the victims and their families would never want to return to the area. Also, every reported case occurred in conjunction with an effort to displace the civilian population of a targeted ethnic group from a given region…

Subsequently, the perpetrators can distribute the land among to members of their own ethnic grouping. Shocking.

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.

Women and land

Geneva is getting divorced and she is fighting local traditions in order to secure her rights to land.

In a blog post some months ago I wrote about how much women value formal procedures for registration of rights to land and proofs of ownership such as documents and titles. It makes a big difference to them that their name is written. This week I found an interesting article, Customary Law still bars Women’s Access to Land, on Allafrica.com which touches upon a related discussion, namely women’s position under customary law in case of inheritance.

According to the article women in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to safeguard their interests in land when their closest adult male relative – the husband or the father – dies. Often, the family takes the land leaves the woman with nothing. I heard similar stories during my fieldwork in rural Tanzania. Women who are getting divorced experience similar problems with loosing their land. Often they are simply told to go back to their parents.

Therefore, I have always been intrigued by those land rights scholars who recommend strengthening customary systems, for instance council of elders, for handling land, as a better alternative to establishing a formal state backed system for registration of rights and issuance of titles. A formal system requires substantial investments in training, registries, and mapping – i.e. scarce resources in developing countries which are struggling to provide even basic social services to their citizens. Therefore it is more realistic, so the scholars argue, to strengthen the customary systems for managing land and strengthen women’s rights to land simultaneously. You can read an example of this approach here.

I guess these scholars have a point. Still I wonder what is more realistic: To reform local customs and change male attitudes towards women, or to create a proper formal land administration system?

Land perspectives

Is the glass half empty or half full? I often get to think of the importance of perspective when I discuss development, in particular land rights, in African countries. I did it again the other day when I met with a group of American students who were in Tanzania to examine women’s challenges in informal settlements in urban Tanzania.

Their impression was that women still face severe discrimination in terms of access to land. And they are right. For instance, far fever women than men get their names on the certificates certifying ownership or use rights. According to the latest number I got from the Ministry of Lands, the number of women in rural areas who had got their names on certificates alone was slightly more than 10%. The number of joint certificates (on which both husband and wife’s names are written) was around 20%. The rest, between 65-70%, only indicated the man’s name as the owner of the land.

As I have described elsewhere it makes a big difference for a woman, in case of divorce or in case of the death of her husband, that her name is written on a certificate. Therefore, it is of course not good enough when only around 30% of women get their names on the certificates. On the other hand, if you go 10-15 years back, only a small minority of women, would know that they could own land. In that perspective 30% may actually be a big step forward. It all depends on the perspective you choose; do you focus on the progress made or do you focus on what still remains to be done?

I tend to think that in a historical perspective the situation of women is improving rather fast, also when it comes to securing their rights to land. On the other hand it is hard not to get underwhelmed when learning that the certification exercise, which potentially constitutes to biggest leap forward for women’s right, is only being implemented very slowly. In March 2010, more than 10 years after the Tanzanian parliament passed the land acts which enable registration of land in rural areas, less than 100.000 certificates in rural areas had been issued. There is still a lot of room for improvement.

My name is written... Women, land and certificates

I just came across a press release from the World Bank about a successful project for registration of land rights in Ethiopia, which the Bank has supported. It states that the women, because they have learned that they have the same rights to land as men and because they have received land title certificates, have become stronger and more self-confident.

Usually I am sceptical about press releases from NGOs and other organisations about their successes. I always find it too difficult to establish the difference between what has actually been achieved and what potentially could be achieved if they had more money, if the world was decent, and if people were honest and nice to each other. But actually I find the World Bank statement about these Ethiopian women quite credible.

I have experienced the same phenomenon with Maasai women here in Tanzania who, according to Maasai tradition, cannot own land. But after having received information about their rights and after having applied for land, either for themselves or together with their family, they change. When I ask them how they can own land like that, they usually answer; Because my name has been written - no one can take that land away from me.

I am always amazed when I hear those statements. Just a few years ago those women would loose everything if they got divorced or if their husbands died. Back then they knew they could only access land through their husbands, never on their own.

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?

Always ask twice

Happy faces.

Yesterday I was reminded that if you want to get real insight into village life you may have to ask the same question several times. Beneath the surface of a harmonious community, conflicts are simmering.

At a meeting in the village in which I am currently working I had been allowed to pose a few questions to villagers about land issues. I realised, however, that only men had the courage to stand up in public and answer my questions. Therefore I asked for a separate meeting with the women.

I told the women that it was my impression that they did not have any problems with land because I had found out that women rarely appear in cases at the local land tribunals which have been set up to handle conflicts. A woman stood up and agreed; since women do not own land they do not have land conflicts. The logic was impeccable; since men are the owners of land, they are also the ones who have to deal with land conflicts. More so, because outsiders who come and grab the land, have been identified as the major land problem in this village. Therefore men go to court to defend their rights, also on behalf of the family. I almost accepted her explanation.

But to be sure that I had got it right I asked whether the fact that women do not own land could cause problems. It could be a problem, they agreed, but then it became “a question of the relationship between a wife and her husband”. 

By then I realised that the women, in case of divorce, saw disagreements over division of land as a conflict within the family rather than as a land conflict. When I asked how those family conflicts affected access to land, the stories were aplenty; women losing access to family land after a divorce; women losing land when the husbands die; etc. And the reason why women do not appear in the land tribunals is quite simple. Many women do not have the means to pay the fee (5000 shillings or less than 3 euro), to open a case. Especially Maasai women are in a bad situation because they, according to Maasai tradition, do not own cattle which they can sell to get money.

Not all women had these problems. I was also told that some men could be fair in case of a family breakup. But surprisingly many women had had to accept that they had lost access to their land. Pole sana, as they say in Kiswahili. I, for my part, was reminded that in order to understand land conflicts in the villages I should see them, not only as a question of conflicts and rights, but also as a question of social relations. Sometimes you have to know a part of the answer in order to pose the right question.
 

The Gendered Economy of Change

Masaais often complain that they are paying a high price for Tanzania’s modernisation policies; they loose land to foreign investors and to the national parks which are expanded to attract more tourists. On top of that large areas of Masaai land are taken by farmers from outside, either large-scale land grabbers or small-scale farmers who have nowhere else to go.

The story got another dimension yesterday when I had an old Masaai woman in my car on a long drive through Masaai land. She was heading to Arusha to visit the family of her niece, whom I know and who was also in the car. They had accidentally found out that they were related when the niece, who works for an NGO, had visited the old woman’s village. The old woman had got married when she was very young, had moved with her husband’s family southwards, and had not been in contact with her old family since then.

I found the thought of removing a young girl from the people she knew and placing her in a family of strangers frightening. When I asked her how she had experienced it she started explaining about the journey southwards, which, in some ways, probably resembled the traditional Masaai lifestyle in many ways; First they walked for a day and then the women were requested to build temporary shelters where the family could stay for one or two days before moving on to the next stop. And so they went on day after day. It was a very hard life for the women, she said.

I was a bit intrigued by that conclusion because I always get the impression, when Masaais complain about development, that they decry the loss of mobility and their traditional lifestyle. So I suggested that for Masaai women, maybe, the permanent settlements in which many Masaais now are living are not that bad after all. Surprisingly she agreed.

I am not suggesting that the loss of land and identity which the Masaai are experiencing is not traumatic. To be fair the old woman also stated that women now have other worries like growing maize and getting money for their kids’ school uniforms. Still the old woman’s story does not really fit into the usual Masaai story of loss. Is it conceivable that for Masaai women, as for women in the rest of the world, there is a trade-off between the loss of tradition and their own emancipation?