Opening ParagraphFor over a decade African economies have been plagued by recurrent food shortages, economic decline and growing disparities between the living standards of rich and poor. To a large extent food shortages and rural impoverishment may be attributed to external shocks—world recession, oil price shocks, deteriorating terms of trade and mounting debt service obligations—compounded in the 1970s and early 1980s by drought and war. In addition government policies have exacerbated the effects of adverse environmental and world market trends, aggravating rather than alleviating food shortages and depressing rural output and incomes.
, twenty years after their victories brought Rhodesia's ruling white regime to the conference table, veterans of Zimbabwe's war of liberation began to occupy some of the large privately owned commercial farms that controlled Zimbabwe's most valuable land. During the next few weeks, thousands of people followed suit: by May, nearly a third of the country's large-scale commercial farms had been seized (New York Times, 27 May 2000; Moyo 1998). Armed with a court order, landowners demanded that the "squatters" be evicted, but the police demurred, and President Mugabe refused to order them to carry out the court's instructions. A few weeks earlier, voters had rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have strengthened the President's powers to seize white-owned land, without compensation, for redistribution to land-hungry blacks. Angry over the deteriorating economy, rising levels of corruption, and Zimbabwe's costly involvement in Congo's civil war, a majority of those who voted were unwilling to increase the President's powers, even if they supported the cause of land reform. When the veterans took matters into their own hands, Mugabe lost no time in associating with their cause. He, in turn, was accused by Western governments, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, and the international press, of sacrificing the rule of law in order to save his own political skin. While the land occupations in Zimbabwe attracted a great deal of attention in the international media, they were only the tip of the iceberg. Provoked by European appropriation and African resentment from the beginning of colonial rule, conflict over land has not abated since its end. Across the continent, competition over land intensified in the late twentieth century, leading to rising land values, increasingly commercialized patterns of land acquisition, concentration of land holdings, prolonged litigation and, as the recent conflicts in Zimbabwe attest, sometimes to assault and even murder. Evidence of growing land pressure and increasing conflict has prompted some observers to argue that land re-638
In their efforts to govern African colonies through traditional rulers and customary law, British officials founded colonial administration on contested terrain. By committing themselves to uphold ‘native law and custom’ colonial officials linked the definition of Africans' legal rights with their social identities, which were, in turn, subject to conflicting interpretations. As agricultural growth and commercialisation intensified demand for land, competition for access to land and control over agricultural income gave rise to disputes over customary jurisdictions and structures of authority. Using evidence from colonial Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Kenya and Northern Rhodesia, this article argues that, under indirect rule, the commercialisation of transactions in rights to rural land was accompanied by, and served to promote, unresolved debate over their meaning.RésuméEn s'efforçcant de gouverner les colonies africaines à travers les dirigeants traditionnels et le droit en usage, les représentants ofnciels britanniques ont fondé l'administration coloniale sur un terrain contentieux. En choisissant de maintenir ‘le droit et la coutume indigènes’, les représentants coloniaux ont lié la définition des droits légaux des africains à leurs identités sociales, qui à leur tour, étaient sujettes à des interprétations contradictoires. Comme le développement de l'agriculture et de la commercialisation ont intensiné la demande d'acquisition de terres, la concurrence pour accéder a la propriété et contrôler le revenu agricole ont engendré des controverses sur les juridictions usuelles et les structures de l'autorité. En prenant les exemples des colonies du Nigéria, de la Côte-d'Or, du Kenya et de la Rhodésie du Nord, cet article soutient que sous une représentation indirecte, la commercialisation des opérations dans les droits fonciers ruraux a contribué à engendrer un débat non résolu sur leur sens.
In the contemporary African context of rising competition and anxiety over access to land, neoliberal policy interventions designed to clarify property rights, broaden political participation and increase official accountability have frequently provoked rather than alleviated social and political conflict. Comparing case histories of local struggles over land and authority in selected rural areas in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Bénin, this paper argues that in situations where access to land has been linked historically to claims on authority and social belonging, pressures to privatize or clarify ownership have intensified debates over citizenship and governance as well as over land claims per se. Ensuing struggles over land and entitlement have intersected with national as well as local economic and political dynamics, reinforcing ‘traditional’ hierarchies, contributing to the proliferation of formal and informal governing agents and institutions, and frequently disrupting or subverting open governance and sustainable resource use, rather than helping to create conditions for sustainable development and democratization.
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