Competing Jurisdictions

Competing Jurisdictions © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 Afrika-Studiecentrum Series in collaboration with SAVUSA (South Africa – Vrije Universiteit – Strategic Alliances) Series editor Dr. Harry Wels (Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands) Editorial board Prof. Bill Freund (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) Dr. Lungisile Ntsebeza (University of Cape Town, South Africa) Prof. John Sender (School for Oriental and African Studies, United Kingdom) Prof. Bram van der Beek (Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands) Dr. Marja Spierenburg (Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands) VOLUME 6 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 Competing Jurisdictions Settling land claims in Africa Edited by Sandra Evers Marja Spierenburg Harry Wels BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2005 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Photo on cover: Harry Wels Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Competing jurisdictions : settling land claims in Africa / edited by Sandra Evers, Marja Spierenburg, Harry Wels. p. cm. — (Afrika-Studiecentrum series, ISSN 1570-9310) Selected papers from a conference held in September 2003 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-14780-2 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Land tenure—Africa—Congresses. 2. Land reform—Africa—Congresses. 3. Land use, Rural—Government policy—Africa. 4. Right of property—Africa— Congresses. 5. Land titles—Africa—Congresses. 6. Commons—Africa— Congresses. I. Evers, Sandra. II. Spierenburg, Marja. III. Wels, Harry, 1961- IV. Title. V. Series. HD966.C66 2005 333.3’16—dc22 2005050842 ISSN 1570–9310 ISBN 90 04 14780 2 © Copyright 2005 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 Contents List of tables vii List of figures vii INTRODUCTION – COMPETING JURISDICTIONS:SETTLING LAND CLAIMS IN AFRICA, INCLUDING MADAGASCAR 1 Sandra Evers, Marja Spierenburg and Harry Wels 1 COMMUNAL TENURE ǥFROM ABOVE’ AND ǥFROM BELOW’. LAND RIGHTS, AUTHORITY AND LIVELIHOODS IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA 21 Ben Cousins and Aninka Claassens 2LAND TENURE REFORM IN SOUTH AFRICA:A FOCUS ON THE MORAVIAN CHURCH LAND IN THE WESTERN CAPE 55 Lungisile Ntsebeza 3 CONTESTATION, CONFUSION AND CORRUPTION:MARKET-BASED LAND REFORM IN ZAMBIA 79 Taylor Brown 4 ǥWE FOUGHT THE WAR TO RETURN TO THE OLD WAYS’. CONFLICTS ABOUT LAND REFORMS IN DANDE,NORTHERN ZIMBABWE 103 Marja Spierenburg 5 FRACTIONATING LOCAL LEADERSHIP:CREATED AUTHORITY AND MANAGEMENT OF STATE LAND IN ZIMBABWE 129 Bill Kinsey 6 FIRST-COMERS AND LATE-COMERS:THE ROLE OF NARRATIVES IN LAND CLAIMS 157 Carola Lentz 7 STATE FORMATION, ACCESS TO THE COMMONS AND AUTOCHTHONY AMONG THE BERBERS OF THE MIDDLE ATLAS,MOROCCO 181 Bernhard Venema 8 LAND AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY.THE CASE OF ANYWAA-NUER RELATIONS IN THE GAMBELLA REGION 203 Dereje Feyissa 9 TRUMPING THE ANCESTORS:THE CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING A LAND REGISTRATION SYSTEM IN MADAGASCAR 223 Sandra Evers © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 10 THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND RIGHTS IN THE CONTEXT OF MULTIPLE NORMATIVE ORDERS IN TANZANIA 243 Rie Odgaard 11 TRADITIONAL ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES IN UGANDA AND THE MANAGE- MENT OF LEGISLATIVELY DECENTRALISED FOREST RESOURCES 265 Frank Muhereza 12 PARTICIPATIVE APPROACHES AND DECENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT OF THE SAMORI FOREST IN THE BAYE MUNICIPALITY,MOPTI REGION (MALI) 289 Bréhima Kassibo 13 INSIDERS OUT:FOREST ACCESS THROUGH VILLAGE CHIEFS IN SENEGAL 315 Sagana Thiaw and Jesse Ribot 14 FIGHTING OVER CRUMBS?SMALL VALLEYS IN WEST AFRICA AS A NEW LOCUS OF LAND 333 Mayke Kaag List of contributors 353 Index 359 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 List of tables 5.1 Domains of perceived authority I 140 5.2 Existence of administrative and enforcement mechanisms 141 5.3 Social identities and access to common pool resources I 142 5.4 Social identities and access to common pool resources II 143 5.5 Autonomy and control of resources 143 5.6 Domains of perceived authority II 144 5.7 Village heads’ declared methods of dealing with violations involving natural resources 145 5.8 Decision-making powers I 146 5.9 Decision-making powers II 147 5.10 Decision-making powers III 148 8.1 Land, population and political claims in the GPNRS 214 8.2 Political representation in the GPNRS council 215 8.3 Allocation of managerial posts in the GPNRS 216 8.4 The ethnic profile of the civil servants in the GPNRS 216 8.5 Demographic composition of the GPNRS 217 List of figures 3.1 Distribution of customary and state lands in Zambia (adapted from Van Loenen 1999) 82 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 Introduction – Competing jurisdictions: Settling land claims in Africa, including Madagascar Sandra Evers, Marja Spierenburg and Harry Wels Conference on competing jurisdictions in land management In September 2003, over twenty-five scholars from Africa, the United States, and Europe gathered at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to tackle the issue of competing jurisdictions in land management. The conference was organised to serve as a forum for exchanging ideas and a platform for future research. The main goal was to develop a comprehensive overview of land claim settlement in Africa. Papers covered a variety of geographical loca- tions in Africa, including Madagascar. Subjects included land disputes resulting from competing jurisdictions, the role of social identity in land claims, emerging alliances between local actors and regional, state, or international bodies in connection with land access issues (natural resource management), and analyses of the social and cultural repertoires used to create these alliances. The conference was organised by the Department of Culture, Organisa- tion, and Management (COM) and the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (SCA) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It was financed by the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation in The Netherlands (ICCO), the World Resource Institute from Washington D.C., and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. A selection of the leading papers delivered at the conference appears in this volume. These papers discuss the following sub-themes addressed at the conference: Narratives and cultural repertoires; land as the basis for identity, democracy and decentralisation; theories of property; social relations and property; property and the issues of violence, power, and authority. The various chapters of this book are primarily written from an anthropo- logical perspective. This predominance does not imply that the authors © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-14780-5 2 INTRODUCTION contributing to this volume do not have a keen eye for the ‘political eco- nomy’ of their research settings. The issue of land in Africa Securing access to land and other natural resources is the key to sustaining the livelihoods of millions of Africans across the continent. From a political point of view, African states naturally considered control of these resources a priority, for a large part as a tool to ensure authority over the African populace (Mamdani 1996; Benjaminsen and Lund 2003). The theme of access to natural resources has also received plenty of attention from the North, which began in colonial times. Colonialism ‘allowed Europeans to impose their image of Africa upon the reality of the African landscape’ (Anderson and Grove 1987: 4), that was ‘(…) often completely out of touch with local realities’ (Broch-Due and Schroeder 2000: 12). According to the latter, this detachment of (Western) representations from local realities ‘(…) has been carried into the contemporary age’ (ibid.). This might partly explain the continued abundant attention paid by Western scholars to issues of land, and especially land tenure, in Africa, as well as the prominent place on the agenda that is accorded to land issues in the ‘development business’ (see for an excellent annotated bibliography on land issues in Africa, with an emphasis on its relation to poverty and development, Palmer 1997). Many of the (Northern) narratives on land and other natural resources in Africa were, and often still are represented in the popular media as quite bleak, with doom-laden predictions about retreating forests, ongoing desertification, soil erosion, species extinction as well as resorting to other ‘declinist’ termino- logy (Beinart and McGregor 2003: 1). More recently, however, both colonial and current developmental narratives about land and other natural resources in Africa have increasingly been challenged, especially from within the emerging field of environmental history (Beinart and McGregor 2003; Dovers, Edgecombe and Guest 2002; Leach and Mearns 1996). These challenges have mainly taken the form of looking anew at historical (colonial) records

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