Land Affairs

Are Rights the Answer to Underdevelopment?

Are human rights universal, indivisible and equally applicable everywhere or may local contexts and local decision-making matter more in some situations? This is a hotly debated topic among policy makers and development practitioners. In my country, Denmark, it is currently up for debate because the new Minister for Development Cooperation, Christian Friis Bach, wants to reform Danish development assistance, introducing Human Rights-Based Approaches. That has met resistance from some scholars and in the development community. Typically, the minister’s insistence on a set of values defined in the North is seen as neo-colonialism. Furthermore, it is argued, the approach is unlikely to work. You can read a recent example of the critique on this newly established blog, The Political Economy of the Development in Africa.

I experienced a similar discrepancy between high principles and local priorities first hand a couple of years ago when I visited remote villages, in which NGOs worked to secure women’s rights to land. The women usually appreciated the support of the NGOs. But then they raised the question: Now what? What is the use of land ownership if we have no money to buy seeds? What is the use of a title deed if roads are shoddy and we can not transport our crops to town?

Dorothy L. Hodgson, in the anthology Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights explores similar dilemmas about the potential and the limitations of the “women’s rights as human rights” framework. In her chapter, These are not our Priorities: Maasai Women, Human Rights and the Problem of Culture, she describes the dilemmas Maasai women activists in Tanzania face when they do fundraising. Western donors and Tanzanian elite groups, based in the cities, typically offer funds for the fight against female genital modification (FGM). The Maasai activists know, however, that if FGM is the main thing on their agenda when they visit Maasai villages, they are unlikely to achieve anything. Instead, they deem support for girl’s education and income generating activities more important. Things which can make women better able to make their own decisions. The activists do not defend female genital modification. But they believe they can achieve more, also in the fight against FGM, using other means.

A colleague of mine has termed the dilemma between high principles and what works on the ground ‘a conflict between the human rights people and the development practitioners’. The disagreement is over means more than over ends. Both groups see a great value in human rights. The question is how to get there. Maybe, the development practitioners suggest, when resources are scarce – and they are in most developing countries – they should be used for what works. And what works may not always be the rights based approaches. It is a dilemma, is it not?

Everybody is excluded



I heard it last year in June during a course on property and rural exclusion at Roskilde University, Denmark. It was Derek Hall, associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, who said it: Everybody is excluded. It has become my favourite quote. Now, together with Philip Hirsch and Tania Murray Li, Derek Hall has published the book, Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia. It is an excellent book!

The main message is that all land uses require some kind of exclusion. And – as indicated by the quote – that means that somebody is excluded. Even the most powerful and scrupulous rulers are to some extent excluded. They have to obey certain rules. Nobody can grab land completely at will. For instance, Kenya’s postcolonial presidents had to keep their klemptomania in check too, according to another new book, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair 1963-2011. Despite being corrupt to the bone, they usually did not touch the property of their own constituencies - in Kenya the tribes are the constituencies - because it would undermine their power bases.

Similarly even the weaker actors in debates about land distribution aim at excluding others. I have witnessed such processes in the northern part of Tanzania, where Masais try to protect their traditional rights to land, typically through the making of land use plans. When they succeed they may protect the land from being taken by the Tanzanian elite. But they also exclude the much poorer peasants who come from other parts of Tanzania to the Masai Districts for the ‘unused’ land. This is what Hall, Hirsch and Li call exclusion’s double edge:

...exclusion creates both security and insecurity. From the moment land becomes scarce, the exclusive access to land that is productive for some comes into tension with the fact that others cannot access it (p. 8).

From an academic point of view, I find the book's approach interesting. It allows you to analyse the mechanisms at play during land struggles without too many prior assumptions about victims and perpetrators. Everybody is excluded. You just have to find out how.

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.

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.

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 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?

Adopted by Maasais

I felt that I got adopted this week, when Maasais in Kimana village, Kiteto, gave me traditional jewelry, a blanket and a goat. I guess they were glad that someone was interested in their life and problems in the village. The photos below are from the ceremony. I felt honoured and chose not to think too much about whether it would be seen as me taking side in the conflicts between different segments of the population (but I hope not too many villagers will see these photos). 
 
  

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?