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African Land Questions, the State and Agrarian Transition: Contradictions of Neoliberal Land Reforms
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[Download complete version  - 785Kb ~ 4 min (154 pages)]
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SARPN has received an updated version of the paper by Professor Sam Moyo,
posted earlier on our website. If you accessed the earlier version you
might like to read this final version. This version was posted in October
2004.
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Introduction
In recent times Africa's land question has received growing research and policy attention largely because of concern over persistent food insecurity and rural poverty. Yet the incidence of increased conflicts over land rights has not been sufficiently studied. In some countries citizenship is increasingly being contested in relation to land rights and 'belonging' (Geschiere and Nyamnjoh, 2000). The land question in Africa highlights the neglect of social justice and equity issues during the era of neoliberal economic reforms as witnessed by growing trends of unequal control of land and natural resources (Moyo, 2000, Palmer, 2002). The escalation since 2000 of the land conflict in Zimbabwe is but one of numerous land and political struggles which reflect growing calls for land reforms and reparations on the continent. The land question has become internationalised, not least because it mirrors the incomplete decolonisation processes in ex-settler colonies, but also because global finance capital is increasingly entangled in conflicts over land, minerals and natural resources in Africa's rich enclaves.
While these issues suggest the need for critical reflection on Africa's land issue, the available research on the land question tends to be tangential, conceptually loose and generally inadequate. The most pressing research concern must be to understand the precise nature of the African land question, its land reforms and their effects on development. To unravel the roots of land conflicts in Africa requires thorough understanding of the complex social and political contradictions, which have ensued from colonial and post-independence land policies, as well as from Africa's 'development' and capital accumulation trajectories, especially with regard to the land rights of the continent's poor. This begs the fundamental question about the capacity of emerging neo-liberal economic and political regimes in Africa to deliver land reforms which address growing inequality and poverty. Moreover, it questions our understandings of the nature of popular demands for land reforms (Moyo and Yeros, 2004), and the extent to which the African state has the requisite inclination and autonomy to address its emergent land questions under current global political and economic structures.
We argue that Africa's land and agrarian questions have specific historical tendencies and a contemporary expression which not well recognised partly because they are qualitatively different from the experience in other regions of the 'global south'. The essence of this land question has not been adequately conceptualised by the plethora of 'new wave' policies and studies on land in Africa (see for instance: Toulmin and Quan 2000; Palmer, 2002; World Bank, 2002, EU land policy Guidelines, 2004). Nor has scholarship rigorously queried the assertion by some scholars that Africa does not have a significant land question, except in the former settler colonies, given the absence of widespread land expropriation (Mafeje, 1999). This suggests the need to review the effects of the longer term processes of capital accumulation, proletarianisation (see also Arrighi, 1978), as well as the effects of indirect colonial rule on the African land question (see also Hopkins, 1973; Mamdani, 1996).
Available empirical data indicates emerging trends of rural land concentration alongside expanded 'illegal' land occupations, and a tendency for various rural populations to be marginalised from land by a growing number of agrarian capitalists, elites and state agents. This trend, together with the incipience of specific problems over land rights, inheritance and selective exclusion, which arise from changes in the essences of African land tenure systems, especially during the last few decades, is built upon underlying processes of unequal gender relations and class differentiated access to the means of production, in ways which are peculiar to Africa. We suggest that Africa has witnessed the emergence in recent decades of a relatively 'unique' land question.
Increasing urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa (estimated at 38%) is partially a reflection of the complexity of this emergent land question, rather than an indication of its irrelevance, as has often been argued. Growing pressure on land resources for urban livelihoods in proliferating slums and informal settlements (Simone, 1998) and in coastal settlements (Kanyinga, 2000) reflect, quite apart from the effects of high population growth rates, the intensified quest by the land-short and unemployed for urban, peri-urban and rural land. Persistent rural-to-urban migration in a context of limited non-agricultural employment in Africa, suggests that a growing (not a declining) number of households continue to depend for their basic social reproduction on access to adequate land. Inadequate access to land persists in the framework of the gradual semi-proletarianisation of peasant labour and the expanded marginalisation of African peasantries. Voluntary and involuntary internal migrations and involuntary displacement, as well as changes in the land use systems over the last four decades, have reinforced inequalities in land control and generated new generations of land conflicts. Taken together these processes suggest a complex land question.
To assume that a land question in Africa can only arise out of a particular generic social formation or social process, as found for instance under the landholding monopolies of feudal, semi-feudal and tributary systems, or under settler colonialism, is to miss the salience of gradually growing land concentration and inequality over the long term, and the scattered but significant struggles to regain control over land. While the unequal patterns of land distribution may be more localized and occur on smaller scales than has been characteristic of land questions elsewhere, they amount to a socially significant land question. In this relative context, Africa's land question must be conceptualised in terms of the nature of existing struggles for access to land and its secure use, especially the struggles to reclaim alienated land rights. Struggles for land, which tend to be conceived in post-modern or pre-modern 'discourses' of the 'meanings' of land, which in Africa are perceived as a multiplicity of largely atavistic values of attachment to land, can best be understood in terms of the objective marginalisation of African livelihoods and organised resistance against the loss of land rights.
Moreover, the land question in Africa needs to be examined in the wider context of struggles over land rights "embedded" in the control, by external capital and the state, of extensive lands which harbour minerals and other valuable natural resources. As the exchange value of natural resources expands with growing global markets for tourism, forestry, bio-technology and new minerals, more African land is being concessioned into external control. Civil wars, migration and involuntary displacements and inter-country wars tend also to be symptomatic of increasing conflicts over control and access to such lands and key natural resources by both domestic and external forces. These land conflicts also reflect the particular gender, class and other social cleavages, and the subordinated power relations characteristic of the neo-colonial African state.
The dominance of external financial and development aid institutions in Africa's policy making processes and markets is organic to most of the emergent land conflicts. Pressures for the growing marketisation of land reflect both external interests in economic liberalisation and foreign access to land and natural resources, as well as the increasing internal class struggles over primitive accumulation by a broadening African indigenous capitalist class. New land policies justify these tendencies of unequal land control, but generate growing conflicts over land allocation and use, across class, gender, nationality and ethnic lines, and have even yielded xenophobia over minority land rights in some countries. Variegated struggles at varying scales and localities over escalating unequal access to and control of land represent a real land question in both rural and urban Africa.
Africa's land question cannot be understated from the perspective of the mistaken perception that the continent has an abundance and not a scarcity of land resources. Nor can it be assumed away or subsumed by the wider problem of Africa's agricultural crisis, characterised by the absence of an agrarian transition, based upon lack of agricultural technological transformation and agro-industrial articulation. In terms of the agrarian basis of the land question, it is notable that the extent of developed arable and irrigable land available for agriculture on the continent is limited, despite the continent's large size. While farming techniques generally remain 'backward', pressures on land arising from both demographic growth and the concentration of arable landholding, have led to land scarcities in numerous localities, despite the incidence of land use intensification in some regions of a number of countries. The extensive degradation of fragile land resources and increasing elite control of the prime lands under conditions of arable and grazing land scarcity, reflect the uneven distribution of land and the resultant contradictions of extensive land use and low productivity, which arise from constrained technical change and ineffective social relations of production.
There is reason to believe that food security and poverty eradication can be achieved through vibrant agriculture and natural resources sectors, which balance access to land resources and promote an agrarian transition based upon land use policies directed at the internal market. 'Pro-poor' 'poverty reduction strategies' have been notably negligent of the fact that diminishing access to land and, inadequate strategies to mobilize financial and human resources to effectively develop land use, are a fundamental constraint to development. The relative decline of agricultural production for domestic food and industrial requirements, vis-а-vis population growth and urban relocation, is central to Africa's development dilemma. The concentration of income and consumption among the wealthier few and in better endowed regions, in relation to access to land and extroverted land uses, limits the growth of the African domestic market and the accumulation of capital for investment in the optimal utilisation of land based resources. This land use problem is reinforced by unequal trade relations and limited agro-industrial growth in Africa, given that its development strategy is not based on a viable industrialisation project.
The African land question however has to be interrogated not only in relation to the agrarian question, but also in the multi-faceted context of unequal control of land which is tied to production processes in industries such as tourism, mining, and forestry. The contradictions of internal and external interests in these industries is critical. Africa's rich and diverse mineral and biological resources are of global significance, as is noted for instance by NEPAD, but these are of greater importance for addressing its internal consumption and economic development deficits. A possible transition from the overwhelming direct dependence on land for employment and consumption by the majority population requires a more complex view of the land distribution and utilisation questions.
These broad based social and economic sources of struggles for land in Africa, and their wider politics, require renewed research efforts to uncover the changing land questions faced by the continent. The analysis required ought to traverse the class, ethnic and gender basis of land struggles, and appreciate the role of the state and social movements in the politics of land. This monograph examines three aspects which appear to define the scope of Africa's land question: land distribution, land tenure and land utilisation issues. Chapters three and four discuss these and their gender dimensions. The experiences of land reform in Africa, focusing on the role of the state in land reform, administration and land conflict mediation, are discussed in chapter five. Then, chapter six discusses the mobilisation of various social forces and movements to defend or challenge unequal land relations. We conclude the monograph by outlining some areas for further research. The next chapter contextualises the study by reviewing global perspectives on the land and agrarian question and by further conceptualising the African land question.
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