Land Disputes at the Heart of Most Conflicts in Africa, says African Development Expert
Washington, September 14, 2004 -- Most of the conflicts we see today in Africa are directly or indirectly disputes over land, Howard University and SAIS adjunct professor Ben K. Fred-Mensah told a seminar of International Reporting Project Fellows. He cited ongoing crises in Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda and the Sudan and said that the root cause of these disputes was control of land.
He said there is a cultural discrepancy between the original owner's concept of property and the physical occupiers of the land, many of whom are migrants. Only when these two are in congruity will we see an end to the violence that we see on the continent. �For a land rights system to change we are talking about social change � changes that should take place in the interpersonal relationships with regard to land,� Fred-Mensah said.
A scholar who has analyzed land, rural development and economic reform in Africa for the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank and USAID, Fred-Mensah said that land is embedded in the social and cultural fabric of African societies. One of the biggest impacts of colonialism was to force a shift in the relationship between indigenous peoples and their land.
�Africans believe you cannot sell land even though you can make an exchange and give money to someone who appears to be [a buyer]. The seller is not really selling the land,� Fred-Mensah said. This is partly because Africa is a society based on ancestral worship and the ancestors are buried on the land. �Once the ancestors are buried, it is a mark of ownership,� he said, �and the ancestors expect the living [kinship group] to defend the communal property.�
It is also expected that the living will protect the land for the unborn. Fred-Mensah pointed out that in African societies dealing with harsh realities like poverty and HIV, land is one of the few commodities that people can pass on to their children, and has become part of a family's social safety net.
�What is the economy of Africa?� the scholar asked. �What guarantee do we have for those who are yet to come? These are the people who are torn between joblessness in the urban areas and increasing landlessness. Here in America if you don't have a job you may be entitled to some welfare benefits. The question is how many Africans enjoy these kind of welfare benefits?�
Fred-Mensah said that European colonialism altered the relationship between Africans and the land by introducing the commercialization of agriculture, which brought land into the market place. Colonial governments also passed �land ordinances� restricting who could own land. Countries such as South Africa, Kenya, and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) passed laws that reserved seventy to eighty percent of the arable land for whites. Contact with the west also resulted in the transferring of land to people outside of the kin group including migrants who had come to a particular country to work. This has produced ethnic tensions in countries like Ghana and the Ivory Coast where these �outsiders� are still highly resented.
Fred-Mensah said that there were very few models in Africa of successful land reform. �I can only talk about pockets of success in particular areas of a country.� He cited a small program in Ghana that allows people to buy land from the state with secure ownership rights. He believes that land reform is the biggest challenge to the continent's newest democracy, South Africa. �If there is anything keeping Thabo Mbeki up at night it is the issue of land,� Fred-Mensah said, referring to the country's president. �It is not just a political matter of taking the land from the whites. He will have to decide if he wants to risk the national economy.�
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