Land: Africa’s greatest but still dead asset
http://www.theindependent.co.zw/
Thursday, 26 January 2012 16:51
By Eddie Cross
IN THE pre-colonial era of African culture, both in respect of those tribes
that cultivated and those that were nomadic in character or even the Nguni
tribes that pursued a militaristic form of life and culture, all regarded
land as God-given and a common good. Usage determined title and could be
usurped at any time by force of arms or tribal consensus. Life was insecure,
short and pretty torrid.
Because these widely spread communities were basically using the land until
it was exhausted or grazing was finished, they seldom built permanent
accommodation –– nomads living in tents and the cultivators living in huts
that could be simply abandoned when it became necessary to move on. Once
abandoned, the land recovered in its own time. A similar situation existed
in pre-colonial America and in Australia.
So long as the population remained very small in relation to the vast areas
occupied this was a stable and reasonable life that was reflected in the
culture and norms of the people. It was also environmentally sustainable.
Then comes the colonial era which introduced colonial forms of title rights
for settler interests, the restriction of people to prescribed land areas
and the erection of fences to limit access and establish control. At the
same time, tribal conflicts were halted, life expectancies raised and in the
absence of conflict and the control of disease, African populations began to
grow at a rate not seen for centuries. In Zimbabwe the population was
expanding at over 3,5% per annum by the 1950s and remained at this very high
level until Independence in 1980.
This created pressure on land resources, but so long as there were adequate
stocks of vacant state-controlled land, that could be allocated and settled
to accommodate the growing population. There was a need for security for
migrant workers and their families and to make provision for the exhaustion
of land now being occupied on a permanent basis. This was satisfied by
simply bringing more land into play. In the 1960s I was involved in just
such an exercise when the Rhodesian government opened up the Zhombe/Gokwe
area (some 10 million acres of land) for tribal or communal occupation.
This was the situation in almost all colonial states in Africa and once the
colonial regime had been overthrown or withdrawn, the new African
governments, one after the other, chose to revert to different forms of
tribal and communal systems of land use. In some countries like Kenya, the
transition was reasonably managed, in others it was done by the simple
abolition of colonial title rights.
This post-colonial process over the past 50 years, culminated in the “fast
track” land reform programme of the Zanu PF regime that governed Zimbabwe
for 28 years up to the formation of the Transitional Government with the MDC
in 2008. Here, as in most other African states the colonial imposition of
title rights, underwritten by the constitution were simply swept aside.
South Africa remains the only country in Africa with widespread title rights
covering a significant majority of the land surface. What are the
implications of this development for modern Africa?
Despite the collapse of many economies in the past colonial era and despite
poor social services delivery in most countries and human migration to more
developed countries, the population of Africa has continued to grow. Urban
populations still, on average, constitute half of total population and
social security systems (pensions, urban freehold housing, secure private
assets) are in embryonic form in most countries leaving urban workers and
dwellers with rural land rights established through tribal linkages, as the
only security for old age, ill health or unemployment.
The result is that rural agricultural and grazing land has become a vast
retirement and social security safety net for hundreds of millions of
people, even those living in the Diaspora often claim such rights as are due
to them under tribal law.
Then there is the fact that if such rights are exercised within the
framework of a consensual tribal culture, such land owners only have
security in so far as they occupy and use the land in question. So, for
example, you have the spectacle that each year people plough vast areas in
the vicinity of their rural homesteads just to maintain their traditional
land usage and occupation rights.
Such rights cannot be expressed in law or in writing and certainly cannot be
sold or used as collateral.
Such a system is reinforced in dictatorial tribal or country systems by
leaders who recognise immediately the leverage that such systems give those
with the tertiary rights to control land allocations.
The first result of this situation is that Africa is witnessing the fastest
destruction of its fragile environment in the history of mankind. The
deserts of Africa are all expanding –– some by kilometres every year. Much
of North Africa that is today sand and stone desert was at one time
productive savannah. It is within recorded history, that the Sahara Desert
was at one stage, the granary of the Mediterranean region.
The second is that those who depend on the land for a living are almost
universally among the poorest people on earth.
They constitute a disproportionate share of the absolute poor, living on
less than US$2 a day. Agricultural systems based on such traditional land
title rights are always subsistence –– barely able to meet the needs of the
immediate community let alone provide for urban markets.
Money transfers tend to be towards such communities rather than from them ––
absorbing savings and creating societies that cannot generate the capital
resources to develop their countries on their own.
The third consequence is that the African economy is denied the inherent
capital value of land and its ability to collateralise the rest of the
economy through the operation of land markets. In Zimbabwe for example, the
GDP stands today at about US$10 billion. The national debt nearly the same
value while the currency in circulation is perhaps US$4 billion. Compare
this to the theoretical value of urban assets at about US$5 billion and of
rural farm land of at least US$20 billion.
The fourth dimension of this situation lies in the simple fact that people
do not invest in assets that they do not own or control.
Communal land rights are universally characterised by poor development and
maintenance. Who is going to invest in infrastructure on land they do not
own? Who is going to try and improve the fertility of land that they might
lose control of next year? Such issues are universal in character.
Land is Africa’s greatest asset and yet it remains a dead asset under
present arrangements; barely able to sustain itself both economically and
ecologically. This critical issue is brought to the fore by two things ––
our inability to reduce the high proportion of our population in absolute
poverty and associated human degradation and our inability to control and
reverse land gradation.
Any good pasture scientist will tell you that once land has become desert,
it is almost impossible to reverse the process.
Yes you can plant trees across the Sahel, yes you can remove people from
vast swathes of country and relocate them to land that can support them for
a while, but so long as there is no ownership, backed by legal, negotiable
title rights, land will continue to degrade, irrespective of where it is.
In many respects this is Africa’s greatest challenge and until its leaders
come to grips with it and take the required steps to grant their own people
basic secure title rights to the land they use to make their living, there
cannot be any real long-term development either of African economies or
African democracies and freedoms.
Cross is MDC-T MP for Bulawayo South.