Land Invasions and Land-Grabbing

Briefing Paper 390 September 2015 Land Invasions and Land-Grabbing 1. Introduction land issues amicably, land invasions, threats of land invasions, and accusations that government Warnings abound that unless something is done to was not dealing with land reform urgently, have quickly resolve the issues of land ownership and been rising. access to both rural and urban land, people will invade and forcibly or violently take over land. Similarly, it was 20 years after Zimbabwe’s Thus no one can ever claim that they were not independence that there was an explosion of aware that such issues were bubbling among the radical land reform, farm invasions, land landless or the dispossessed. In Namibia, the expropriations, and farm occupations. If indeed Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement has history is repeating itself, we in South Africa do asserted that unless something is done to radically not seem to be learning much! address the need for land among the indigenous people of Namibia, they will invade and take over land. In South Africa similar warnings have been 3. Namibia and South Africa: A Common made by various landless people’s movements, Burden and by ordinary landless people. To make matters worse, there have been reports in both countries “At independence, 52% of the agricultural about ordinary individuals, officials, traditional farmland was in the hands of the white leaders and corporates illegally taking over pieces commercial farmer community, who made up 6% of land. Indeed, these land-related grievances are of the Namibian population. The remaining 94% of not unique to these two Southern African the population had to put up with owning only countries; Kenya, for example, has a similar 48% of the agricultural land”.1 As in South Africa problem. Why, then, are the governments under Apartheid, Namibia had a policy of separate concerned apparently so reluctant to radically development, instituted by the colonising white reform land ownership patterns? South African state. This meant that Namibia’s ‘homeland’ areas suffered similar issues of high population density due to limited land availability, 2. A 20-year Itch distorted land ownership patterns, lack of development, and high poverty levels. 20 years after the 1994 settlement in South Africa, land invasions and threats of land invasions are on As with South Africa and Zimbabwe, where the increase. Some political parties, such as the independence or freedom was achieved through Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and various negotiations rather than outright military victory, land movements and organisations, such as the concessions were made in Namibia regarding land Landless People’s Movement, Abahlali ownership, leading to the situation where those Basemjondolo, Ses’Khona Peoples Rights who had owned land before independence would Movement, and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction continue to own it, while previously Campaign, have been engaging in and publicly disadvantaged Namibians who needed land would promoting the invasion of land as the solution to supposedly be provided with it by the state. landlessness. The challenge has been, in Namibia as in South 20 years after Namibia’s 1991 national land Africa, colonial and apartheid land ownership reform conference, where 24 'consensus patterns have not changed very much, and there is resolutions’ were adopted that sought to resolve growing restlessness about land reform. To make matters worse, the Zimbabwean land invasions servicing erven in Windhoek, Walvis Bay and supported by President Robert Mugabe have Oshakati on a pilot project basis.’ It was also popularised the idea of forcibly and even violently resolved that ‘from July 29 to August 5, 2015, there reclaiming land as a viable and attractive option, will be a nationwide clearance of identified urban especially for the many who reject what they land.’ perceive to be their own governments’ reluctance to upset the status quo that favours commercial AR itself sent out a call to technical professionals farming and international investment and ordinary people to come and start clearing considerations. and servicing land for occupation by landless Namibians, beginning the process of seeking to service the 200 000 sites as per the agreement 4. The Natives are Restless! with government. 4 To be fair to the politicians, many of them do This extraordinary intervention stands to achieve recognise the urgent need to engage the question three important things: Firstly, it offers hope to of land reform. In Namibia on the 10th of July the landless multitudes who have waited more 2015, the government announced plans to than 20 years that finally something tangible is implement the recommendations of the Special happening; secondly it brings the landless into the Cabinet Committee on Land and Related Matters2, process of building and providing serviced sites which contain 89 resolutions on land and related for themselves; finally, it suggests that direct matters. These resolutions deal with questions of mobilisation of people, and even threats of forcibly the limitation of land ownership by foreigners, the taking land, are needed in order to prompt a revision of various laws regarding commercial response from government. and farming land, a Consumer Protection Act to regulate the rental property market, among Indeed, in this case, according to AR, the others. government’s response was noteworthy. It did not simply cry ‘law and order’, but responded to the In South Africa the government has proposed that needs of the people by providing what the people farm employees will be given 50% ownership of actually wanted; it did not simply promise them the farms where they work, that there will be something in future, or simply dismiss their limits to the sizes of farms, and that there will be demands by claiming to be actually doing restrictions on foreign ownership of land, something, while in reality leaving people to live something that Namibia proposed right at the daily in squalor and landlessness. start of independence in 1990. But if the various governments are doing 5. Land Occupation as Good News something about the land question, then why are citizens still talking of, and engaging in, land As the various threats and actual land invasions invasions and occupations? show, often these events are a very loud and desperate cry by poor and landless people for Speaking at a CPLO roundtable on land invasions something to be done about their plight. Often the recently,3 Job Amupanda, one of the leaders and Courts, especially the Constitutional Court in co-founders of Namibia’s Affirmative South Africa, have ruled in favour of landless Repositioning (AR) movement, a youth-based people and squatters, confirming that there can be radical movement that seeks to help mainly young no arbitrary evictions, and that even when legal people find housing and land, spoke passionately evictions take place, people must be provided with about the exploitation of tenants, and the terrible somewhere else to go to. The problem is often, indignities people have to face sleeping in one however, that governments fail to take seriously room with their parents or children, and often the desperation of people who live in squatter having to engage in sanitary activities in such camps, or backyards, overcrowded spaces. He said AR had given the Namibian neighbourhoods, or even on the street. In their government until the 31st July 2015 to do desire to follow proper processes, plans, and something about their land struggles or face mass programmes that take years, and that often get land invasions. diluted by negotiations with present land owners, they burden poor and landless people with On the 24th July, AR and the Government came to decades of destitution and struggle. Where this an agreement that ‘Government will start by happens – where people’s right to land is BP 390: Land Invasions and Land Grabbing 2 continually frustrated – invasions and occupations President Kenyatta also facilitated the illegal that force governments to respond positively can acquisition of massive areas of land in the coastal be seen as good news. region of the country, creating many squatters in the process. 6. Land Grabbing as Bad News Separatist movements like the Mombasa Council Republic (MRC), which seeks to create an In Kenya, which shares a somewhat similar settler independent Mombasa, the Sabaot Land Defence colonial history to South Africa, Namibia, and Force, and Mungikis, are a few of the violent Zimbabwe, the question of land has taken a groups that emerged out of the historical and slightly different but wholly undesirable present day land injustices. Most communities trajectory. that protested against the land injustices were also subject to physical violence, forced Speaking at the CPLO roundtable, Shingai displacement, and many other forms of human Mutizwa-Mangiza noted how the problem of land right violations. in Kenya has been characterised by enormous amounts of corruption and ethnic conflict. The Land and politics are intertwined. Current land first post-independence Kenyan government grabbing and historical injustices of land failed to deal with land issues and further aggravate the situation. Communities that have exacerbated land grievances after independence; been forced out of their land have been resettled due to this, current land conflicts and land in areas where they do not have historical land ties invasions often manifest themselves through or are still awaiting compensation. Moreover, ethnic and ‘tribal’ tensions. previous resettlement schemes created tensions as they unfairly favoured some ethnic groups over At the time of independence Kenya, rather than another. For instance, certain communities felt reforming the colonial land policy it inherited, there were other groups that were resettled in merely sustained the unjust land policies of the their accessorial land, increasing the tension British. Some even argue that the elites simply between the communities. The tension between inherited the social and economic characters of the Kalenjin and the Kikuyus in Kericho is a prime the colonizers and created their own political example.

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