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.

Why quoting dictators and genociders is a bad idea

I do not consider myself a right-winger. Still, I am appalled when I see Lenin’s work on agriculture and land quoted as just another scientific theory, as the authors of the introduction to the new special issue of Journal of Peasant Studies, Nancy Lee Peluso and Christian Lund, do. I have encountered similar references to Lenin in for instance Sara Berry’s No Condition is Permanent (page 139) and in Susie Jacobs’ Gender and Agrarian Reforms. Jacobs even highlight the Soviet-type collectivisation in the 1930s for ‘equalising women’s position within the economic sphere’ (page 57). I find the practice inappropriate.

Lenin died in 1924 and he can, therefore, not be blamed directly for the collectivisation of agriculture in the Soviet Union in 1929-30, which caused starvation and millions of deaths. But his justification of the excessive use of force, his contempt for democracy, his identification of groups among the peasants who were threats to the desired socialist development and the nationalisations and the forced modernisation under his rule paved the way.

Hitler probably also had interesting thoughts about land in Eastern Europe, which he used to legitimise the German quest for Lebensraum there, as did genociders in Rwanda in the 1994 and the people behind the ethnic violence in Kenya in 2007-8. But the consequences of their ideas, the killings, disqualify their ‘theories’ about land. In my eyes, Lenin is no different. I do not think it is a good idea to quote dictators and genociders as if they were theoreticians. Really.

Poster from Seventeen Moments in Soviet History.

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.

Christiania - The Anthropologist’s Dream

Sitting in my office every day, reading and writing, I tend to forget that my own town, Copenhagen, can be as exotic and fascinating as can the Tanzanian countryside. Almost. Big was my surprise the other day when I arrived at work, opened my computer, and found an email from a colleague in my inbox asking me for the names and contact addresses of anthropologists researching Copenhagen land affairs. Not being an anthropologist myself, I do not know that many anthropologists. And I am not sure that I would refer to an anthropologist, if I knew one. Anthropologists, as I see them, make the world larger, but they rarely make things clearer. But I am digressing...

I do not know of anyone researching land issues in Copenhagen. I did not even think of land issues as a research topic in this orderly capital of Denmark. Land affairs here got institutionalised centuries ago. Actually, I just read an old book which describes how the king gradually got more and more control over land back in the 16th century. He made sure that all land in the realm got registered in jordebøger (land books) in order to collect his land rents from the nobility. Anthropologists back then, had they existed, would probably have engaged in lengthy academic discussions about the pros and cons of registering land in that particular way. Most anthropologists, had they existed, would spend years on the Danish countryside doing fieldwork, describing the traditional, and therefore superior, systems for handling land (these systems, by the way, had been invented by the nobility not that long before to make sure that they got their taxes from the farmers. But I am digressing....).

I did not, in other words, understand why my colleague asked for anthropologists. But now, after having read some newspaper articles about the latest developments in the ongoing conflict between Christiania and the Danish government, I understand why. Christiania is a semiautonomous part of Copenhagen, a former military area, which was occupied by the hippies when the military left in 1971. They founded a ‘fristad’ – a freetown – beyond the control of the Danish state.

The centre-left parties, which made up the majority in the Danish parliament in most of the 1970s, accepted Christiania as a social experiment. But the right wing parties never really liked the phenomenon. First, the right-wingers found, one should not accept that the Christianits never paid for the property they occupied. Second, the right-wingers never came to appreciate the alternative lifestyle in this liberated zone. The direct democracy, the lack of formal decision making structures, and the common ownership were appalling features, they thought, in the middle of the country’s capital (not to speak of cannabis, free love, and the breakdown of respect for authorities...actually I sometimes wonder if the right-wingers ever came to like the 1970s? But I am digressing…).

In fact, no right wing party in this part of the world can encounter a common pool resource (as this kind of communal property is termed academically) without wanting to privatise it. And that is, exactly what Denmark’s current right wing government has been trying to do the last decade. First it aimed at normalising Christiania by making it obey to the same rules and regulations for land use plans, buildings, roads, etc., which apply for the rest of the country. Then, the government suggested selling the area. Now, according to an article in the Danish daily, Politiken, the people living in this green oasis, around a thousand persons in total, have decided to buy the area, which they have occupied for free during the last 40 years, from the state.

According to another Politiken article, however, the Christianits set certain conditions for buying the place. One contentious issue, of course, is the price. Another even more contentious issue is whether Christiania should be able to deny people from outside Christiania the right to move in. The Christianits, seemingly, aim at keeping some kind of communal ownership of the area. But they wish to have a word to say over who can move in. It would not make sense, their lawyer says, that some political hothead, who is against the existence of Christiania, can move in and thereby work against the social, cultural and economical structures we all care about.

The conflict about the ability to exclude outsiders reflects a classic debate within natural resource management studies. In 1968 Garrett Hardin published an article, The Tragedy of the Common, in which he argued that open access to resources, for instance a grazing area in Africa, would inevitably lead to depletion of resources. The solution to the problem, he argued, was either privatisation or state control. The American political economist and Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom has subsequently spent most of her academic life pointing out that Hardin and consorts are wrong. There is a third option, she argues, namely that of common property. It is far more common than we tend to believe. And for some resources, for instance the oceans, forests, and inhospitable desert areas, some kind of common property regime may be more effective in managing resources than the market or the state.

Anthropologists really like Ostrom. Inspired by her, anthropologists have identified numerous tribes in developing countries who manage natural resources through a common property regime. These traditional, common property regimes, they claim, are much more effective than other types of regimes (irrespective of the fact that the native communities appear to be gradually loosing their access to resources most places. But I am digressing...).

I am certain that the anthropologists will also like Christiania. The Christianits, however, should see that as a warning sign. Anthropologists typically prefer tribes, whose traditional lifestyles are threatened by the development. Christiania, for sure, is much more exotic now, in all its anarchy, than it will be if the community gets a title deed and the right to fence off the entire area.

(Photo1: Bent Næsby. Photo2: Nicolai Perjesi. With permission from VisitDenmark)

Land, Power and Party Politics

Researching a highly politicised topic – land in Tanzania - I regularly have to remind myself of a proverb I learned during my first years of studies, when I struggled to understand French post-structuralist thinkers: Though everything in society, from a certain perspective, may involve power, it does not imply that everything is about power.

Translated into the language of land affairs the proverb means that whereas theories about the abuse of power - corruption, elite or donor capture – may apply for parts of the administration of land in Tanzania, they are not likely to apply for all of it. Some of the people working with land actually spend a great deal of their time taking care of their regular work tasks. Such regular day-to-day workings can not be explained by conspiracy theories about the use and abuse of power.

But then, sometimes, I come across stories which make me doubt the wisdom of the proverb. It happened to me last week when I found an article in the Citizen about a dispute over land in Moshi, a major town and an opposition stronghold in the northern part of in Tanzania.

According to one story, councillors from Chadema, the main opposition party in Tanzania, try to ensure that all public property in Moshi stays public. That also includes two plots used by the ruling party, CCM, one plot for its headquarters and another for its youth wing.

CCM, on the other hand, has threatened to take legal actions to get the title deeds it feels it is entitled to. According to the second news story, CCM claims that it has acquired the plots legally.

From the outside it is extremely difficult to find out what is up and what is down in this story. It is definitely about power. But is it also about abuse of power? Personally, I would like to know how and when these plots were acquired. According to the excellent book, Why Planning does not Work?, by Tumsifu Jonas Nnkya, the administration of land in Moshi has previously been marred by irregularities, top-down management, and misuse of power.

Land and microcredit as vehicles for poverty reduction?

A title deed or a microcredit loan?

A heated debate about the merits of microcredit in developing countries has been going on for a couple of months now. For long, microfinance was hailed as the ultimate answer to poverty and underdevelopment. New findings question the positive effects of providing loans to the poor. The debate reminds me of the equally politicised debates about land titling. I find both debates relevant. But I usually disagree with the alternatives presented by the critics.

The microcredit controversy started towards the end of 2010, when evidence about the microcredit sector in India came out and a critical documentary about microcredit in Bangladesh was broadcast simultaneously. The latter was aired in Norway, but soon caused uproar in Bangladesh. It shows how some borrowers got caught in indebtedness. New loans were taken out to repay old ones, often at sky-high interest rates. Thus, those meant to benefit from microcredit could end up in a worse situation than the one they were in from the outset.

Should the microcredit system be abandoned from the development agenda, then? Yes, say some scholars, who see microcredit as a part of a global neoliberal conspiracy.

Similar controversies can be found in debates about land titling in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the 1970s and 1980s titling was encouraged by the World Bank as a means to enhance economic growth. But empirical research showed that titling did not necessarily generate growth. On the opposite, it turned out, that titling was potentially damaging to the livelihoods of poor and vulnerably groups. Research from Kenya, where titling was carried out in the 1970s and 1980s, showed that titling did not necessarily give access to credit. On the opposite, titling could have negative distributional consequences, especially for women, whose rights were often not registered. Among some researchers, in particular among left-leaning anthropologists, a new orthodoxy evolved, which consistently claimed that titling was a threat to poor and vulnerable groups.

I find the critique highly relevant, though I disagree with the conclusions drawn by some of the critics. Hopes about the poverty alleviating effects of microcredit and land titling have been raised too high. But rather than outright abolishing these approaches, expectations should be adjusted to more realistic levels. The interventions should not be seen as quick shortcuts to poverty reduction. Still, significant benefits could be reaped. Recent empirical findings support this.

A new systematic review of the available evidence of microfinance shows, that microcredit has a positive impact on poor people’s savings and on health and food security. But it also shows that microcredit has the potential to do harm. Setbacks are found on education (to repay loans quickly children are taken out of school, thus saving school fees). Indebtedness, for those unable to repay their loans, was also a reported consequence. A mixed picture, in other words.

A similar mixed picture appears from recent evidence from land titling. In the article Property Rights for the Poor: Effects of Land Titling it is acknowledged, that titles may not give access to credit (as claimed by many). But it also shows that people are more likely to invest in their land, their houses, and their children’s education, if they have a title deed. The findings are based on comparative case studies conducted in a squatter area in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where some people had received titles in the early 1980s, and other’s had not. Furthermore, I find that titles may provide people with at least a little bit of security against the endemic land grabbing observed in many countries.

Microcredit and land titling are complicated issues. Outcomes vary from one place to another.In some contexts programmes should be avoided. We may experience outright failures. Still, to abolish these approaches totally would be a mistake. We may not be able to eradicate poverty using them, but we can improve many people’s livelihoods and quality of life. The key question is how to achieve the benefits without putting too many people’s livelihoods at risk because of the dynamics they set free. There is a balance to strike there.

A title deed or a microcredit loan?

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? Reflections on African politicians

Some months ago Chambi Chachage and Swahili Street started a debate on this blog about how to understand the lack of implementation of the Tanzanian land law reform. It started off as comments on one of my blog posts about land investments, but evolved into a debate about conspiracy theories.

The question of how to interpret the lack of implementation of land reforms is not only an issue here on this blog. It is a recurrent theme in much literature about land in Sub-Saharan African countries. A large group of scholars tends to see everything related to land in the light of informality, corruption, and politicians’ illegal practices. I have met quite a few NGO representatives who adhere to the same views. Take a look at this website about land grabbing, and you will find plenty of it.

The reason why I touch upon the issue again is because I have just read the book The Politics of Property Rights Institutions in Africa by Ato Kwamena Onoma who addresses the question directly. He sets out to investigate the truth behind some of these conspiracy theories. He does not decide whether the theories are right or wrong. As a true academic he states that things are more complex. He does make us wiser, though.

In a series of case studies from Botswana, Kenya and Ghana, Onoma investigates the role of politicians in strengthening or undermining land administration institutions in those countries. He does identify incentives for politicians to undermine institutions. Leaders whose power positions are insecure, for instance, often prefer weak institutions because poorly secured property rights allow them to redistribute land and resources to their followers. Thus, they can strengthen their own positions. Conversely, politicians, whose positions rely on a strong business sector which makes productive use of land, for instance through agriculture, tourism or mining, have incentives to strengthen land administration systems which secure businesses’ rights to land.

The most interesting about Onoma’s book, however, is his conclusion. He states that incentives to be corrupt do not automatically lead to corruption. Politicians are not necessarily crooks, even if we can identify incentives which indicate that they could make gains by being crooks. We can only establish whether they are crooks by studying their actions.

Personally I think that non-implementation of land reforms often has more to do with a lack of capacity than with bad intentions. It may merely be bad planning when politicians pass a law without having made any plans for how to implement it. It may be outright stupid when they, like politicians did in Tanzania in 1999-2001, pass an ambitious land reform without a plan for how to implement it. And then, when they make the plan, only allocate 3 billion out of the 300 billion shilling which are required for its implementation. But it does not make them crooks.

Only if they or their followers take advantage of non-implemented laws, for instance by grabbing land which should have been protected by the law but is not, should they be looked upon as crooks.

I am convinced that some politicians are crooks. But I do not think that all politicians are. This conclusion, by the way, is so self-evident that it would not be interesting if it was not for all the conspiracy theories about land and politics in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Land Pressure

March 2010

August 2010

When I visited Kiteto District in March this year, along the road I passed a group of people who had started clearing the forest and building houses to settle down.

When I passed by the same settlement in August, less than 6 months later, quite a few other newcomers had arrived. They had started building houses behind the first line of houses, in the second and third row from the road. A similar picture can be seen on opposite the side of the road from where the photos were taken.

The land question in Sub-Saharan Africa

There is not one land question in Sub-Saharan Africa! That is an established truth among land rights scholars. They regularly state it to challenge one-size-fits-all solutions within the land sector; universal titling, nationalisations, privatisations, collectivisations, etc. Problems related to land, they argue, are diverse and context specific. What is the right solution in one country at a certain time may be fatal in another.

Similarly, I have regularly been told that, when it comes to land, Tanzania is not Kenya. The ones telling me so are Tanzanians, who wish to underline the difference between the two countries when it comes to inequality. In Kenya there is a conspicuous correlation between possession of political power and land ownership. The leading politicians are also among the biggest land owners in the country.

Tanzania is different, I am told. Primarily because the first President, Julius Nyerere, restricted politicians’ and ministers’ involvement in business. But the more I learn about recent developments in the Tanzania, the more I am convinced that the story of Tanzanian equality has become a myth. This week the Citizen brought an article about villagers in Mvomero District who complain about Frederick Sumaye, Prime Minister from 1995 - 2005, who owns a large piece of land in their area.

During my research in two districts I have come across another former Prime Minister owning large tracts of land, and I have also heard of several MPs and a former President owning land on a large scale. I have come across these findings by pure coincidence; because it is not my field of study, I have not even been looking for this kind of large scale land ownership.

Of course Tanzania is different from Kenya. But when it comes to the convergence between political power and land ownership the difference may be smaller than what is commonly believed.

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.

Land and Politics

   A disputed area in Northern Tanzania.

When I framed my research project about land rights in Tanzania I decided not to focus on land grabs and state expropriations of land. Firstly, I wanted to focus on ordinary people and what I thought mattered to them - their access to land administration services (registration of rights, registration of sales and leases, etc.). Secondly, I was warned that though Tanzania is a democracy its leaders and bureaucrats do not always tolerate people who dig into sensitive issues. And as a foreigner here depending on permits to do my research, I would risk being either rejected or thrown out of the country if I dug into land businesses.

It is still not my intention to get involved in Tanzanian politics. But it has proved surprisingly difficult not to learn about it, simply because land is a political issue here. I have been researching in two villages now and I have come across stories about national politicians owning big chunks of land both places. When a suspicious land officer enquired why “Mr. Rasmus suddenly has become so interested in such matters”, I answered that I would be dishonest if I spent weeks and months in villages researching on land affairs but closed my eyes to the land issues the villagers talked about.

I am surprised that I have come across such cases in both villages – villages which were chosen from a set of different criteria. As I see it there are two possible explanations. One is that I was exceptionally “unlucky” when I chose my case villages and, therefore, ended up with two exceptional villages which are not representative of the state of land affairs in Tanzania in any way. The other possible explanation is that large land acquisitions, whether legal or illegal, are far more common here than I imagined when I started this project. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between.

If that is the case, then I have to revise my perception of what is important to “ordinary Tanzanians”. The fact that citizens in both districts talk about voting for other parties than the incumbent ruling party if the government does not address these problems, is a sign that the distribution of land matters to ordinary Tanzanians. Like many other Africans, Tanzanians tend to vote for the ruling party, which is also often the party which brought independence, possibly because they believe they owe it their freedom. If the talk of voting differently this time is more than mere attempts to put pressure on politicians in a year of election, then land is even more political than I imagined.

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 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?

Computers and the value of backups

My computer got stolen from my hotel room last week. It is very annoying. Partly because I have to find a new computer here in Dar es Salaam, which is not easy, and partly because of the trouble I shall get with the insurance company. It also annoys me that I have not been able to blog. But thanks to a good friend, it is not a catastrophe.

I found her overcautious when she told me to make backups on external hard discs, preferably on more than one hard disc. Now I wonder what I would have done without her advice. Probably I would have lost several weeks’ or month’s work. It may take a bit of time to make backups, but now I know that it is worth it.

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). 
 
  

Knowledge economy

The other day, on a visit to a village in rural Tanzania, I learned that village councils are told not to disseminate information about their decisions unless they have decided otherwise. The observation corresponds well with other experiences I have made during my research; it is difficult to get access to information from public authorities and, often, personal contacts within the institutions are required. The phenomenon brings a different connotation to the term knowledge economy which in the North signifies the importance of a continuous flow of knowledge and information; in Tanzania knowledge is made a limited resource.

For some months now I have tried to get an overview of activities carried out related to implementation of land policies. It has not always been easy. I have been to several meetings with ministry officials. People are always very friendly, but often they are only able to provide me with bits of information. Sometimes it is because they do not know the answers to my questions. Often, however, I feel that they know more, but that they are not in a position to tell me what they know. Several meetings may be necessary to get to the right person.

I am not alone with this experience. Most people I have met, who are conducting research or who are working in fields which require cooperation with public authorities, have come across the phenomena; you know that statistical data or a piece of information exists, but it is difficult and time consuming to find out how to get it.

In northern Europe you would normally be able to find such basic information on public authorities’ homepages. A country like Sweden has a stated policy that information from public authorities should be accessible unless there are very good reasons to keep it secret. Here it is different. Not only is the use of internet still limited. More important, I believe, is the fact that information is so entangled in issues of power. A person’s place in the hierarchy defines what he/she is allowed to tell people from outside the organisation.

I know that these procedures are a part of the game when working here. I am always grateful when people spend time on meeting me, and though people are busy they do find the time. Sometimes I just have this feeling that life would be easier, not only for me but for most Tanzanians, with fewer restrictions on the flow of information.

What is wrong with Africa? (2)

Many (western) land rights scholars describe efforts in African countries to reform land administration systems with a great deal of cynicism; policies will not get implemented anyway, and if they do, they will only increase the confusion about what is law on the local level. They may be right that there is a great deal of confusion. But rarely do these scholars provide a real alternative to reform. Read an analysis of this academic tradition here. I have not come across any perfect solution either, but most people in the area I currently work in say that management of land is better now, after the reform, than it was just a few years back.

Most African countries inherited a dual system for managing land from the colonial authorities; one system providing titles for the cities and large-scale farm land, where white people were supposed to live, and one system for the indigenous population. In reality the latter was not one but many systems. The colonial authorities did not really bother to interfere in Africans’ land rights. Over the years, however, the systems got mixed up and there was a great deal of confusion, especially in rural areas, about whether state law or customary laws should prevail. This situation is called Legal Pluralism. Often the wealthy and powerful could take advantage and use the system from which they would benefit the most. For instance a man could use the traditional system to access land for free through the traditional system, but denying other people, especially women, their traditional rights to collect firewood or berries on the same land with reference to his ownership rights, now secured by the formal system. Slowly the complexity of coexistent tenure regimes became unbearable.

In Tanzania they started preparing their land reform after a surge of land conflicts in the 1980ies and early 1990ies. The new laws aimed at simplifying the systems. They were passed by parliament in 1999. Since then implementation has been frustratingly slow. But slowly you start seeing some results on the local level; villages start to manage land more correctly and tribunals and courts to handle conflicts are set up. Is this “random” implementation, as some scholars claim, or is it a sign that a more durable land management system is underway? I have not reached any conclusion yet. So far I leave both options open…

Messy research

Just blend in.

I never adhered to the view that you can do research without interacting with the subjects you do research among. Social science is a social activity after all. This insight is more relevant in rural Africa than anywhere else. I have experienced it twice within the last 24 hours.

Yesterday I arrived in Kibaya, the main town of Kiteto District south of Arusha. The area is primarily inhabited by Maasai, but a growing part of the population in the area consists of farmers who have migrated from other parts of Tanzania. In the rural areas where I conduct my research these two groups do often not get along with each other very well. Therefore I have spent some time on finding a research assistant who would be able to talk with both groups without generating too much suspicion. I ended up with a Somali who was fluent in Maasai, Swahili, and English. He was supposed to arrive in Kibaya today, but he canceled because his father was sick and nobody else could take care of him. With the help of a friend I found a new assistant today (she will arrive by bus tomorrow); a female Maasai who also speaks all three languages fluently. It was an emergency and I had to skip my fancy ideas about which ethnicity an ideal research assistant ought to have. On the other hand she will probably be better at communicating with Maasai women, who play an important role in my research, than the male Somali would have been…

Similarly unorthodox was my experience this morning when a woman asked me to drive her to the local secondary school because she wanted to enroll some girls from the poor communities in which she works. I am probably going to interview that woman for my project later on. When she asked me for the ride, I remembered one of the things I had learned on the course on research methodology I attended a few months ago; never get personally involved with the people you interview. That is a ridiculous rule when working in rural Africa. First, she had previously helped me with establishing contacts here. Second, how can I ask her to spend time on an interview with me next week if I do not want to spend time driving her to the school today?

Many of the rules for how to conduct proper research idealise impersonal relations between researcher and the researched environment. Here those rules do not work well. I never read about pros and cons when choosing research assistants in methodology books. I never learned about how to respond interviewees who ask for a ride. In Africa research is as messy as everything else. I guess you just have to choose the best solutions when you are there.  

Karibu Kiti (while Bureacracy works)

“Karibu kiti” is an expression everybody comes across if staying in Tanzania for longer than an average holiday. It means “please sit down” and it is the greeting you are met with when entering a public office. Then you have to sit down and wait until something happens. You can not expect anybody to explain what is going on or how long it will take. Probably they do not know either.

I experienced the procedure when applying for a research permit, which is a prerequisite for conducting research in this country. I was told that it would take a few weeks; it took five and a half months. When I finally got it I was told that I had to apply for a residence permit also, otherwise the research permit would be worthless…

Tanzanians experience it all the time. It is everywhere. Sometimes it may take a while before you find out. For instance, if you read about the Tanzanian legislation on land everything sounds great; services are prescribed and delivered, rights are protected, etc. Then you learn about the number of forms which have to be filled out, the fees which have to be paid, the procedures which have to be followed…

As a foreigner you can choose to shrug your shoulders and take encounters with the Tanzanian bureaucracy as an interesting experience. Tanzanians cannot; they have to live with it. I really admire Tanzanians for being able to do just that. Karibu kiti.