Farmer overlooks the farm land outside Kigali, Rwanda
The Christian Science Monitor carried an interesting feature yesterday about the prospects and potential for land reform in Africa. In it correspondent Jina Moore argues that land and access to resources is at the heart of most of the continent’s conflicts; thus, fixing land issues could offer a preventative fix for a region prone to violent tensions in recent years.
It’s certainly true that land issues certainly play their role in African conflicts. Among some of the more notable examples of land-based conflict are the recent riots in Kampala and the forcible evictions of White farmers in Zimbabwe. Further afield, the post-election violence in Kenya and the wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all brought the issue of land and who controls land into the forefront of African political affairs. With finite arable land, rising populations, and increasing pressure on resources, this potential for conflict is bound to increase in the future.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to sorting out the bewildering maze that often passes for property rights in African countries. This is because the Western notions of property law that came with colonization and continue to be encouraged by many international development schemes directly conflict with traditional communal views of property. Many African countries such as Sierra Leone and Botswana recognize both Western-based modern law and traditional law in their legal systems. This means that there is often not one way to determine who owns what land, even though these differing theories can give different answers to the basic question.
The lack of land security leads to tensions within communities since it can be so easy for someone else to claim or forcibly take the same land. And this is just the basic legal position; add in the corruption that is rampant in some countries like the DRC or Zimbabwe and new problems emerge. In Kinshasa, some home owners write graffiti on the walls of their own homes with notices that the house is not for sale as a way to try and prevent duplicate deeds. In their situation, the preventative measures can count for far more than any legal remedy since the ultimate court decision is usually decided by which side gives the judge the biggest bribe.
Giving permanent land security to owners should be a top priority, but it must be done in a way that is just and fair regardless of whether it is based on traditional or modern theories of property rights. It can also only be accomplished within a system where merit is the basis of the outcome and not money. Otherwise, land issues will continue to fuel conflict and community divisions, something that no country in the world needs more of.
