Africa and the Near East

Recent changes in agrarian reform and rural development strategies in the Near East

Land reform in post-apartheid South Africa: In transition

Economic conditions of rural development in sub-Saharan Africa

Accounting for 'customary' land and institutional policies: The example of Niger

Agrarian reform and rural development strategies in eastern and central Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe

Recent changes in agrarian reform and rural development strategies in the Near East

M. Riad El-Ghonemy

M. RIAD EL-GHONEMY is fellow, Department of Economics, American University in Cairo, Egypt and senior research associate, International Development Centre at Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.

Introduction
Endnotes

Introduction

As suggested in the title of the workshop, the ideological shift expressed in the phrase "post-cold war" is a point of reference. Perhaps no other institution is more susceptible to ideological change than property rights in land. My understanding of the workshop background material leads me to suggest that we are indeed addressing two related questions.

1) How far does the realization of sustained economic growth and poverty reduction justify change in the institution of property rights, the power of the state and the freedom of entrepreneurs?

2) Is land reform policy dead because of the renewed faith in market superiority and the countries' adoption of structural adjustment programmes?

Given the space limitation and the wide geographical scope, these questions cannot be addressed adequately in this paper. However, an attempt is made to sketch the underlying issues backed by empirical evidence.

In the Near East region, private property-based economy was predominant, before and after countries won their independence. With the exception of Turkey, Iran and a part of Saudi Arabia, the Near Eastern people were ruled for one to five centuries by European colonial powers (Ottoman, British, French and Italian), who shaped their economies and agrarian systems along capitalist lines. In order to serve the colonial rulers' interests, private land ownership, together with mortgages and their legal framework, were imposed on traditional tenure arrangements leading to increased land concentration, landlessness, indebtedness and the encroachment on nomadic groups' grazing areas. The combined effect was a dual pattern of agricultural development with a vast area of traditional dry farming which bred poverty, inequality of opportunity for progress and a relatively small area of capital-intensive farming. These underdevelopment problems were generated by the violation of the institution of private property in a monopolized rural economy and by the denial of the fellaheen's (peasants') entitlements.

Anti-poverty rural development strategies, 1952-1975

AFTER INDEPENDENCE OF THE NORTH African countries in the 1950's, the coup d'états in Egypt (1952), Iraq and Syria (1958) and the revolution of the Shah in Iran (1962, 1967), the initial development strategies had to remove the institutional barriers against progress. Among these barriers were forms of violating property rights in imperfect agrarian market economies (e.g. institutional monopoly in land, credit and labour markets) that meant a loss of potential gains to peasants and to the national economies. Moreover, interclass relationships of exploitation and subservience have caused social unrest which cannot be explained solely in economic terms.

In many countries, the adopted strategies were based upon the reform of defective agrarian systems. With the exception of Algeria (1965-82) and south Yemen (1968-92), private property rights and individual family farms have constituted the institutional foundation of the reconstructed rural economies. In addition to fixing ceilings on private ownership and the redistribution of the expropriated balance, foreign-owned farms were expropriated against compensation. Furthermore, rental values were reduced and terms of tenancy regulated. In several countries (Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Saudi Arabia) public lands have been reclaimed and mostly allotted to small owners and tenants. Thus, there have been a few features of the agrarian policies similar to those in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, especially the establishment of state farms and government-administered cooperatives, whose members, however, retained individual property rights in land.

Other elements of the strategy have been: (1) migration facilities for an expanded international labour market (Europe for Turkish and Algerian workers and oil-rich countries for Egyptian, Jordanian, Sudanese and Yemeni workers); (2) the provision of free health and education services to rural people; (3) significant income support measures, including generous food subsidies and social security programmes, in addition to the established Islamic social security payments from the richer to the poorer persons (Zakat) (Sadaqah); and (4) in a few countries, notably Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, family planning services to reduce the ever-increasing population growth rates (around 3 percent per annum in the 1970s and 1980s).

Notable progress made in poverty and inequality reduction before the 1980s

I HAVE DOCUMENTED ELSEWHERE THE changes in nutritional status, living standards, poverty levels and the degree of land concentration according to available information from field studies and macro-level estimates. For easy reference, some comparable data are given in Table 1 for five countries during the period of anti-poverty agrarian reform and rural development strategies.

In addition to the favourable record shown in Table 1, investment in human capital between 1960 and 1979 has, on average, reduced infant mortality by 33 percent and increased life expectancy by 10 percent. These welfare gains represent increased abilities in daily life and human capital accumulation at the national level. Moreover, there have been unquantifiable gains such as self-respect and dignity among the fellaheen, in addition to attitudes and motivation to participate in the process of rural development. These unquantifiable, but significant, elements of anti-poverty strategy are difficult issues for the analyst who is particularly dependent upon statistics.

It is wrong to attribute poverty reduction solely to agrarian reform. As suggested earlier, migrant workers' remittances to rural areas, technological advance (particularly irrigation expansion), pricing systems, food subsidies, non-farm small scale activities and income-support measures are equally significant factors. On the negative side, prolonged droughts, political instability, civil unrest and frequent wars between countries, and the impact of world market instability are but a few examples. The 1985 and 1991 famines in Sudan as well as those in Mauritania and Somalia are reminders of the vulnerability of the rural poor to the disastrous consequences of floods and prolonged droughts in the Near East.

Missed opportunities for enhancing rural development

HUMAN CAPITAL GAINS AND POVERTY reduction rates could have been greater if the momentum of a wider scope of land redistribution - created by the unique political environment that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s - had not been dissipated. Many eligible tenants and millions of landless hired workers were left out because of the high ceilings on private land property, above which the balance was expropriated for redistribution. FAO studies and the results of the 1980 agricultural census indicate that pure landless households (not owning or renting land) represented between 20 and 35 percent of total agricultural households in the 1980s. They were denied the opportunity to own a piece of land that provided them with security of food, employment and earnings. In retrospect, it seems that the polemics of land reform proclamations were used by politicians to pacify the discontented rural poor without harming the interests of large farmers, in anticipation of their political support for the country's new leadership.

Table 1 LAND REDISTRIBUTION RATIO, CHANGES IN AGRICULTURAL GROWTH RATES, LAND CONCENTRATION INDEX, AND RURAL POVERTY LEVELS, 1950-71

Countries and years of reform	Land area redistributed as % of total arable land	Beneficiaries as % of total agric. Households	Agric. GDP average annual growth %		Land Concentration		Rural Poverty
			1950-60	1961-70	Year	Index
Egypt (1952,61)	10	14	2.8	2.9	1950	0.740	56.1 (1950)
Iran (1962,67)	34	45 circa.	3.8	4.4	n.a.		38 (1971)
Iraq (1958,71)	60	56	1.5	5.7	1958	0.902	80 (1950) circa.
Morocco	4	2	n.a.	4.5	1973	0.755	45 (1974)
(1956, 63, 73)					1982	0.687	32 (1985)
Tunisia	57	49	n.a.	0.1	1962	0.622	20 (1974)
(1956,58,64)					1980	0.604	49.**
						14.2 (1980)
						42.**

Sources: El-Ghonemy, 1990 and 1993

n.a. = not available

* Land concentration is measured in terms of the Gini index (or Coefficient) which ranges from 0 to 1; the larger the index, the greater the degree of inequality in the size distribution of landholdings.

** These are estimates made by ILO using poverty lines different from those of the Tunisian Institute of Statistics given in the preceding column.

Table 2 PRESENT AND POTENTIAL CULTIVABLE LAND, GROSS INVESTMENT RATES AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION, TOTAL PER WORKER, 1970-92

Country	CULTIVABLE LAND			AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION GROWTH				Gross investment as percent of GDP
	Percent of total area of the country	Area million hectares	Percent of currently cultivable	Agric. GDP annual growth percent		Productivity of working persons in agriculture Annual change percent
				1970-80	1981-92	1970-80	1981-92	1980	1992
Algeria	3.0	2.6	24.0	7.5	5.3	-0.8	2.5	37	28
Egypt	2.5	0.08	3.0	2.8	2.4	-0.9	1.0	31	23
Iran	8.6	0.36	0.3	3.9	2.5	3.1	1.7	N/A.	20
Iraq	12.0	3.41	41.6	-1.5	2.0	1.2	2.5	33	26
Jordan	3.5	0.11	27.5	1.7	4.9	9.0	4.4	21	22
Libya	1.0	1.19	49.5	11.1	4.1	1.7	3.0	32	N/A.
Mauritania	1.0	1.99	55.3	-1.0	1.5	2.7	0.3	38	16
Morocco	19.4	1.60	13.5	1.1	5.3	1.3	7.9	23	22
Oman	0.1	0.04	66.7	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	22	16
Saudi Arabia	0.5	0.07	7.2	5.3	14.0	0.1	18.8	26	21
Sudan	5.2	66.98	81.7	3.3	-0,1	0.5	-1.4	12	10
Syria	26.6	0.32	5.8	8.6	-0.3	9.5	-1.2	25	10
Tunisa	19.5	0.48	16.9	4.1	3.8	-0.2	3.2	28	26
Turkey	32.3	6.42	21.2	3.4	2.8	3.8	1.2	27	20

Source: Cultivable Land, Agriculture Towards 2010, FAO, 1993. Total and per working person agricultural production are based on data given in World Development Report, 1982, 1993 and 1994 (Development Indicators) and FAO Country Tables, 1989, 1993. Investment rates from World Development Reports.

The other missed opportunity concerns the misuse of the plentiful oil windfalls in 1973-81 by seven oil-rich countries concentrated in the Near East. To the best of our knowledge, human history has never experienced such sudden affluence from a single depletable commodity - oil.

The most dramatic jump, both in income per capita and in governments' (or ruling families') receipt of full economic rent, occurred in two fiscal years, 1973/74 and 1979/80. These windfalls coincided with a period when agrarian reform was being implemented in the oil-based economies (Algeria, Libya, Iran and Iraq). To comprehend the extent of such sudden change, the case of Libya is a useful example. Around 1940 Libya (also Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) was among the poorest underdeveloped countries. In less than 25 years its per caput income rocked from US$ 990 in 1961 to US$ 7170 in 1985, a level that had been reached by today's rich industrialized countries over a period of 220 years.

Have the four oil-rich countries implementing land reform-centred rural development strategies succeeded in bringing about rural economy and diversifying income sources? Table 2 shows the neglect of agriculture in terms of its share in total public investment relative to its share in total labour force, leading to falling productivity per working person in agriculture and increasing the country's dependence on food imports to feed their own people. In the 1980's, agriculture became the most lagging sector of the economy. It has also lost its pre-oil boom position in the economy, as the fastest-growing non-oil producing sector, employing the majority of the total workforce and producing food and tradeable commodities. The favoured sectors were the non-productive military and government administration as well as the construction sector which brought high profits to city contractors and the rural elite but produced non-tradable goods.

Perhaps there is no situation of wasteful oil money and loss of human resources parallel to that of Iraq, which dissipated opportunities for completing its extensive agrarian reform and rural development programme (see Table 1). The magnitude of the missed opportunities for bringing about great advances in rural Iraq may be appreciated by learning that Iraq possesses the third largest area of potential cultivable land in the entire Near East region, after Sudan and Turkey. Nearly 80 percent of this area (4 million ha) could have been cultivated and the present irrigated land doubled, if the roughly estimated amount of US$ 450 billion had not been wasted during the nine-year Iran-Iraq War followed by the 43-day Gulf War (invasion of Kuwait). In addition, out of the US$ 450 billion, we estimate an approximate amount US$ 63 000 per rural inhabitant that could have been allocated for health, education and housing services.¹ But the worst is the estimated loss of 750 000 Iraqi people killed in the two wars, the post-war suffering from hunger and the collapse of the rural people's purchasing power, leading to the increase in the number of undernourished children from 9 percent to 35 percent. The collapse was severe among the families displaced by both wars estimated in 1994 at 45 percent of the total number of the poor. Moreover, it was reported by researchers that child mortality was four times higher in just one year (1992) and that the incidence of rural poverty in Iraq, in that year, was greater than in India.² Are we too cynical to say that part of the Iraqi disaster was a result of the shift in ideology whereby the former Soviet Union, the strong ally of Iraq and its largest supplier of arms and technicians, deserted Iraq? Iraqi interests and people have been sacrificed in the pursuit of improved international relations with Western powers.

The shift from anti-poverty and egalitarian strategies towards economic growth and trade liberalization since 1985

WHILE COUNTRIES WERE MAKING GOOD progress in redistributing wealth, reducing poverty and increasing per caput income, their efforts were disturbed in the early 1980s, although not as catastrophically as in Iraq. The wind for shift blew from the West, under the influence of the USA (Reagan Administration) and the UK (Mrs. Thatcher's conservative government). Through their voting power, they were able to influence the World Bank and the IMF, using foreign debt-relief programme as the channel to impose conditionality in order to change development strategy priorities. The heavily-indebted countries were faced with a dilemma. The policy-makers had two choices. They could accept the resulting harsh effects of economic reforms and their politically and socially unpopular conditions imposed by foreign creditors via the IMF's stabilization programme and the World Bank's structure adjustment lending programme. Or, they could exhibit their nationalistic attitude by rejecting the imposed policy reform, and continue the anti-poverty Programme of Action of the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCAR-RD) they had adopted in July, 1979. They found out that the longer government actions were postponed, the narrower their options became.

In some countries (e.g. Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and Tunisia) the programmes were delayed after the political stability was threatened by riots of the urban working class. But the mounting pressure exerted on the economy by annual payments of high debt services and the adverse impacts of the prolonged economic recession in the West have speeded up the adoption of the prescribed economic reforms, irrespective of their adverse distributional impacts.

THE PRODUCTION IMPACTS OF PRIVATIZATION

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE NEAR EAST countries' agricultural public sector is much less than that of the centrally-planned and managed economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where the size of state farms, the scale of collective cooperatives and the enterprises, producing and supplying means of production, were colossal. For example in the 1980s, state farms were only 5.8 percent of total cultivable area in Egypt, Iraq, Sudan and Tunisia while the proportion was 66 percent in the Soviet Union and 85 percent in Cuba. However, the effects of privatization would be greater on the earnings of employees who were guaranteed high wages, salaries, bonuses and services, regardless of the actual level of productivity in communal tenure. Several studies have agreed that growth rates and labour productivity in communal tenure production are not inferior to those with individual tenure systems.³ This relationship also applies to the call for the privatization of communal tenure in tribal areas. To the best of my knowledge, there is no firm evidence of the production superiority of individual farming over grouped or communally-held farms.

Perhaps the greatest impacts of price liberalization in the process of stabilization and privatization are on the supply of such inputs as fertilizers, insecticides, seeds, pumped water, farm machinery and fuel, as a result of both the conditionality for their delivery by private trade, and the removal of subsidy. For example, a study in Egypt (November, 1994) shows that the sharp rise in fertilizers and insecticide prices have inhibited many small landholders (less than 1 ha) to purchase the quantity required and hence the decline in crops output. At the same time, larger farmers were able to purchase these inputs and increase their produce, especially those farmers producing exportable crops (cotton, rice, vegetables). The largest increase in cultivated areas between 1985 and 1992 was that of wheat and sugar cane, due primarily to the increased farmgate prices which were very low when prices were administered by government. This increase in both prices and area cultivated of wheat and sugar cane is contrasted with a fall in cotton area from 480 000 ha in 1980 to 330 000 ha in 1992 because of low-scale prices and high costs of production which made cotton less favourable than other crops.

ADVERSE INCOME IMPACTS ON THE RURAL POOR: THE CASE OF EGYPT

THE COMBINATION OF THE INCREASING costs of production of small farmers' crops, the declining real wages of farm workers and the sharp rise in rental values of leased lands has greatly harmed low-income groups and the landless hired workers. Egyptian data show that average wage rates in real terms fell in 1992 to one-half its 1986 value. In addition, the falling demand for migrant rural workers' employment has worsened their poverty conditions. The deterioration in annual incomes was worse in the case of the tenants who, until 1992, were protected by the 1952 land reform law against eviction and guaranteed a low rental value of seven times the land tax. These protective measures and the resulting tenants' gains were lost by the 1993 law which permits rental values to be determined by market forces starting 1996-97. Accordingly, many landowners have recovered their lands from the numerous tenants who became hired workers and who could not purchase land in the open market. Moreover, priority in the sale of publicly-owned lands has been changed from allocation to small tenants at low purchase price payable over 30 years installments, to a sale in open auctions to the highest bidders, who are mostly land speculators and rich farmers. Consequently, the area of land rented fell sharply from 47 percent of total cultivated land in 1967 to 24 percent in 1983 and fell further in the last few years. Also the share of small landowners of less than 2 ha category has gradually declined while that of the medium size category of 10-20 ha increased.

The sad result is increasing poverty and inequality of income distribution in rural Egypt. The results of household expenditure surveys of 1981 and 1991 indicate a fall in the share of the bottom 30 percent of the income scale, compared to a considerable rise in the top 30 percent of total household surveyed. Rural poverty in 1991 was estimated at 54 percent compared to 29 percent in 1982 and 28 percent in 1975. The number of rural poor has greatly increased from 5.7 million in 1975 to nearly 15 million in 1991 after the implementation of the package of economic reforms, but mostly in 1990-92. This rise in rural poverty, both in terms of numbers and in percentage, represents a regressive direction of living standard, not progress. In fact, the adopted economic policy reforms have brought poverty incidence back to its 1950 level of 56 percent, estimated by the present writer, before the introduction of the 1952 distributive land reform policy.

POST-1985 AGRARIAN CHANGE IN ALGERIA, IRAN AND IRAQ

FACED WITH THE PEASANTS' DISCONTENT about the tight state control of agrarian reform cooperatives, the three countries' policy-makers introduced measures towards the decentralization of farm management decisions, greater entrepreneurial freedom to beneficiaries and the registration of their private land ownership. Several inefficient state farms were sold and tenancy arrangements - which were abolished earlier by land reform - were permitted. The aim of this post-1985 deregulation policy is to strengthen the family farm economy and make it less dependent on government support (e.g. Algeria Law, No. 19, December 1987). In Iran, several farm corporations were liquidated and their ownership rights individualized. But the Khomeini government redistribution of private land exceeding three-times the size of a family farm in each locality was short-lived and, instead, the distribution of public lands was accelerated, allowing big farmers and traders to accumulate land. The anti-land reform faction within the ruling Mullahs, including some Ayatolla in the powerful Council of Guards and the Parliament (Majlis), called for the return of land expropriated during the Shah regime to original landowners. By early 1991, the Determination Council approved the redistribution of 450 000 ha of land that had belonged to large landlords who fled the country and had been seized by tenants after the collapse of the Shah regime. The end of the redistributive land reform was reflected in the Minister of Agriculture's commitment announcement in 1989 for no intervention in private poverty rights.⁴ In addition, the government allocated nearly 1 million ha of public agricultural land for their use, developed by business people in the private sector, supported financially by the state-owned Agricultural Bank.

EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC REFORM ON SOCIAL IMBALANCE IN PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

AS THE CONDITION FOR ECONOMIC REFORMS does not include adjusting governments' protection of the poor and the enhancement of priority areas of social concern (education, health, income support, social security and food subsidy) governments have responded differently in their total budget cuts required by the structural adjustment programmes. In addition, and for the realization of sustainable growth and poverty reduction, we should also be concerned about the adequate resource allocation to agriculture. It is the food producing sector of the economy and the provider of the main source of income to rural people, among whom poverty is concentrated. The poor are absolutely dependent on public services, not that they prefer government paternalism, but simply because they do not have the means to acquire literacy, good health, adequate nutritional standards or irrigation facilities through the private sector.

"Rural development programmes must be designed with the rural people, be sensitive to their specific needs, involve their representative structures (traditional and modern), aim to improve people's access to resources, including good quality land, services, supportive infrastructure and introduce employment-generating investment with the aim of reducing poverty and achieving overall development." MR. A.E. SIBANDA, ZIMBABWE

Post-1980 country development plans and government finance statistics published annually by the IMF show a general trend of neglect of these two broad areas of our concern - which are essential for the improvement of human fundamental capabilities (e.g. literacy and longer life), productivity, employment and incomes of the poor. The neglect of both agriculture and basic social services is suggested by data given in Tables 2 and 3. We have introduced military spending as an unproductive expenditure compared to social necessities of health and education. Since 1985, total public expenditure/consumption as a percentage of national income (GDP), has increased in rich countries (except Saudi Arabia) and also in low and middle income economies except Iran, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt and Mauritania. The emerging features of social imbalance in priority concerns are that between the 1960s and 1991, governments in most countries of the region progressively devoted more resources to education than to health and consistently gave military spending higher priority than education and health combined. These comparisons are in terms of the share (percent) in both total public expenditure and national income (GNP). This is a striking manifestation of imbalance in a region where high infant mortality, malnutrition and illiteracy are still pervasive, especially in rural areas of both rich and poor countries.

Table 3 SHARES OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND MILITARY SPENDING IN NATIONAL INCOME AND TOTAL GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE IN 17 COUNTIES, 1960-1991.

Countries (in descending order of per caput income 1991)	HEALTH, EDUCATION AND MILITARY SPENDING AS A PERCENTAGE OF:																		Ratio of Military Spending to Health and Education combined
	TOTAL PUBLIC EXPENDITURE									NATIONAL INCOME (GNP)
	HEALTH			EDUCATION			MILITARY			HEALTH			EDUCATION			MILITARY
	1972	1980	1991	1972	1980	1991	1960	1980	1991	1960	1980	1991	1960	1980	1991	1960	1980	1991	1960	1980	1991
Over US$ 5000
U.A.E.	4.5	75	6.7	16.0	11 1	14.2	24.5	47.5	44.0	na	0.8	1.9	na	1.1	2.9	na	6.2	8.3		310	173
Kuwait	5.5	4.9	7.4	15.0	9.0	14.0	8.4	12.2	na	na	0.5	2.9	na	1.0	3.4	na	2.9	6.5		193	123
Saudi Arabia	na	na	na	na	na	17.8	na	50.0	43.0	0.6	3.6	3.1	3.2	5.0	6.2	5.7	16.6	14.0	150	193	151
Oman	5.9	2.9	5.4	3.7	4.8	11.4	39.3	51.2	35.4	na	0.7	2.1	na	1.2	3.5	na	13.0	16.4		684	293
Libya	na	8.0	na	na	18.0	na	na	na	na	1.3	1.4	3.0	2.8	2.8	8.0	1.2	8.1	7.8	24	156	65
US$ 1000-5000
Iraq										1.0	na	0.8	5.8	5.0	4.6	8.7	29.7		128	550
Iran**	3.6	6.4	7.9	10.4	21.3	22.4	24.1	15.9	10.3	0.8	3.0	1.5	2.4	5.2	4.1	4.5	20.1	2.1	141	245	38
Algeria										1.2	1.2	5.4	5.0	4.9	9.1	2.1	2.0	1.6	31	43	15
Turkey	3.3	3.6	3.0	18.2	14.2	17.6	15.4	15.2	10.4	0.8	2.0	1.5	2.6	2.8	2.5	5.2	2.8	6.0	159	79	111
Tunisia	7.4	6.5	6.3	30.5	15.5	17.5	4.9	11.1	5.6	1.6	2.5	3.3	3.3	5.6	6.1	2.2	2.9	2.9	45	48	31
Syria	1.4	0.8	1.9	11.0	5.5	7.4	37.0	47.7	31.5	0.4	0.5	04	2.1	68	4.1	7.9	17.3	16.8	316	243	373
Jordan	na	3.7	5.0	na	7.3	14.0	na	25.5	27.0	0.6	1.7	1.8	3.0	6.3	5.9	16.5	13.1	10.6	464	164	138
Morocco	3.0	3.4	3.0	19.2	17.2	18.0	12.3	17.9	13.0	1.0	1 1	0.9	11	7.0	5.5	2.0	6.1	4.6	49	76	72
Under US$ 1000
Egypt	na	2.4	2.8	na	8.0	13.4	24.1	11.4	12.7	0.6	0.5	1.0	4.1	9.0	6.1	5.5	3.0	4.0	117	32	52
Sudan	5.4	1.4	na	9.3	9.6		24.0	12.9	na	1.0	0.3	0.2	1.9	2.6	4.0	1.5	2.8	4.0	51	96	95
Yemen	3.6	na	na	4.0	na	na	32.6	33.2	na		2.1	1.5		8.2	5.8		15.0	14.4		146	197
Mauritania	na	na	4.0	0.5	na	na	na	na	na	05.	1.2	2.0	2.1	4.1	4.7	4.1	9.9	4.1		187	61

Sources: World Development Report, 1983, 1984, 1993, Indicators. Human Development Report, 1994: Human Development Indicators, Table 21, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1993: Table 11. Disarmament as a Chance for Human Development, prepared for UNDP by Herbert Wulf, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1991, and African Development Indicators. Libya, Health and education spending as a percentage of total government expenditure for 1980 is estimated from data in Libya: Country Profile, E.I.U. London: Business International, 1991.

Notes: na means not available.

Table 3 shows a decline between 1980 and 1991 in health spending in eight countries including oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Oman and Iran and a rise in the ratio of military spending to health and education in Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Yemen. In 1991, Sudan and Yemen spent more on military establishments than on education and health, despite having the highest poverty indicators of infant mortality, under-five mortality and illiteracy in the Near East. At the other extreme of per caput income, we find that rich Saudi Arabia reduced total public expenditure between 1985 and 1991, but it spent an average of US$ 200 000 per person in its armed forces, compared to an average of US$ 17 000 per person on education, when nearly 40 percent of Saudi men and 60 percent of women are illiterate.

While economic reforms stress the need for increasing investment rates to accelerate the production growth of tradable goods, available data (Table 2) shows that out of 14 countries, gross domestic investment rates in national income declined in 11 countries between 1980 and 1991, and stagnated in two. Agriculture has been hit hard by the fall in investment rates and also by its share in budget cuts. This neglect, during the period 1980-92, is reflected in falling annual rates of agricultural GDP in all the countries, except Mauritania, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, during the same period.

INCREASING CORRUPTION OPPORTUNITIES

THE RELATIVELY-HIGH PUBLIC EXPENDITURE (25 percent of GDP on average), particularly military spending, has created corruption opportunities within bureaucracies and between governments and arms import dealers. There is empirical evidence of continuing corrupt practices (embezzlement of public money and property) since the adoption of economic policy reforms for the privatization of the public economic enterprises. Ironically, whereas donor countries and rich creditors in the West call for anti-corruption measures in developing countries, their powerful multinational corporations are the first to seize opportunities to award fat contracts in the Near East region.

There is a paradox in these developments. Contrary to economic wisdom, the increase in corruption and illegal rent-seeking coincides with privatization of public sector and austerity in government spending. Traders, tax collectors and bureaucrats extort from small farmers and the rural poor who are illiterate and ignorant of their own government bureaucratic procedures.

Prospects and challenge

GIVEN THE DATA LIMITATIONS ON THE impacts of recent changes, the discussion suggests a gloomy prospect for the increasing numbers of the wage-dependent landless workers and the rural poor. This judgement is based upon the following considerations:

· Macroeconomic policies adopted by the governments for debtrelief have not been accompanied by adequate income support measures. In fact, the policies have led to the removal of most subsidies, the relaxation of the active application of minimum wage policies and to the sharp rise in prices of goods consumed by the poor (e.g. food, textile, footwear and medicine). The deflationary component of economic reforms tend to reduce wages and salaries and thus the purchasing power of the low-income groups.

· The overemphasized necessity of increased average income per person for sustainable reduction in poverty, without reducing inequality, does not benefit the present generation of the rural poor. Although agricultural growth is essential for rural development, its link with the pace of poverty reduction must be clarified. The missing link is the timing of the distribution of growth benefits via land reform and other measures of raising incomes and the capabilities of the fellaheen. Available data show a weak association between the variation in agricultural growth and poverty levels. For example, Table 1 shows that despite Egypt's sharp reduction in inequality and poverty during the agrarian reform period 1952-65, agricultural growth remained nearly unchanged at 2.9 percent. Similar results were obtained by the present writer from a statistical analysis (OLS) of data from 21 developing countries, including Egypt and Morocco⁵. It was found that at an annual growth rate of 3 percent sustained for 60 years and without land reform (reducing land and concentration) poverty would be reduced by only one-half its present level. The same proportion of poverty reduction could be attained much faster by only one-third decrease in land concentration. In the case of Egypt, the period was 13 years (1952-65 by two land reforms) instead of 60 years (until the year 2010) if Egypt had relied solely on agricultural growth.

· The fallacy of an assumption made in structural adjustment programmes that the poor have no market involvement, thus are not affected by the price changes imposed by economic reforms. This assumption is not valid for small and landless farmers who are net buyers of food nor for poor tenants who are producers, buying fertilizers and selling goods in the market.

· The paradigm imposed upon, and adopted by, countries requiring no government intervention in the land and credit markets means the death of redistributive agrarian reform, at least in the medium term (next 13-15 years). The ideological shift in development thinking in general and in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries has weakened the lobby for land reform at the international fora. The former Socialist countries had been, until 1990, strong advocates of land reform in the United Nations Assembly and its Economic and Social Council. This post-cold war stance has weakened international aid policy toward government intervention to reduce inequality in general, and anti-land reform in particular, and was supported by the Group of Seven and their associates: the World Bank, the IMF and the European Community. The absurdity of such a shift against government interventions to reform the defective land and credit markets in agriculture lies in the fact that the same relationships used by these powerful agents to justify agrarian reform in the 1950s and 1960s exist today, and are still relevant to solving present world development problems. They revolve around the simple principle that access to productive land is a life-time insurance against the risks of poverty and undernutrition. These relationships are grouped as follows.

- There are several institutional barriers which block the poor from entering the credit market and the land purchase market, e.g. auctioneering of land for sale, usuary in lending, and the cost of borrowing without collateral is much higher for small farmers.

- The inverse relationship between farm size and productivity of land and labour is confirmed by authoritative empirical evidence and vigorous analyses accumulated since the work of Adam Smith in 1776.

- The vicious circle of a low standard of living can be broken by agrarian reform: the low purchasing power of the poor leads to chronic indebtedness and non-creditworthiness to purchase land through the market in order to secure self-production of food and family labour, which in turn leads to food insecurity, undernutrition and low purchasing power (poverty). The longer the persistence of these problems of rural development, the higher is the demand for land reform.

· Once a Middle East peace agreement is completed that is acceptable to the present adversaries, there are great positive prospects relevant to our study.

- Reduction in defense spending and the use of saved public funds for anti-poverty, pro-food security and comprehensive rural development efforts. Also there is the hope for transferring human energy and skills of the millions of youths from unproductive mandatory service in armed forces to productive activities in rural reconstruction.

- Expected flow of foreign private capital and aid, including oil money, as well as the mobility of labour between the affected countries, thus increasing employment opportunities.

- The expected rise in the standard of living of Palestinians living at present in occupied territories and in tents in refugee camps.

- The settlement of inter-country disputes over the use of water - the most scarce resource in the Near East - for irrigation to bring new lands under cultivation for redistribution among the landless poor.

Proposals

THERE IS NO SCARCITY OF IDEAS, AND NO need to shop around for new strategies. We have the comprehensive elements and operational principles provided by the Programme of Action of the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development adopted by almost all countries in July, 1979. This is the outcome of two-years of intellectual construction by leading world development analysts and practitioners and remains relevant to resolving current agrarian injustice and rural development problems. The principles might be blended with the recent work on sustainable development in relation to equity together with the results of the work of both the 1992 International Conference on Nutrition and the 1995 World Summit for Social Development.

FAO and the young researchers attending this meeting might consider lobbying for a greater emphasis on poverty reduction and the protection of the poor in the design and implementation of structural adjustment and stabilization policies, as an extension of UNICEF's 1987 "Adjustment with a Human Face". The lobby and the debate would be strengthened by an active involvement of non-governmental organizations.

In our debate with a broader audience, we should introduce both the moral dimension (with regard to injustice and caring for the poor) and the time factor, i.e. combining the arguments for rapid and sustainable agricultural growth with the time required to reduce existing absolute poverty levels and the numbers of poor landless wage-workers in agriculture. FAO, having been mandated by the international community to have the leading role both in nutrition and in agrarian reform and rural development, is in the best position to provide the guidance and assistance needed to meet this challenge.

Endnotes

1. The estimated war costs are made by Abbas Alnsary (1994: 79-86) Chapter 6 in Iraq Since the Gulf War, Routledge, London. The estimate of Iraqi people killed was made by Robert McNamara (1991) "The Post-Cold War World", Proceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.

2. The undernutrition and poverty estimates in postwar Iraq are made by the Harvard International Team (Dreze and Gazdar 1991: Table 1) and FAO Mission (1993: Table 3).

3. These studies are compiled and reviewed in chapter four of El-Ghonemy (1990) The Political Economy of Rural Poverty, cited 1 above.

4. The changes in post-Shah agrarian system are taken from Abdolali Lahsaeizadeh "Post Revolution Land Distribution in Iran", Land Reform, 1988, No. 1/2 FAO, Rome and Mohammad Majd "Land Reform Policies in Iran", American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 69, November, 1987.

5. The several statistical analyses of data from 21 developing countries are presented in two publications, El-Ghonemy, 1993, cited above.

Land reform in post-apartheid South Africa: In transition

Essy M. Letsoalo

ESSY M. LETSOALO is assistant director, Northern Transvaal Land Affairs, Sovenga, South Africa.

Introduction
Bibliography

Introduction

The issue of South Africa's apartheid policies was an international focus of debate for decades. At the heart of the debate was not only the inhumanity of the system but its impact on the redistribution of economic resources, especially land.

The grand apartheid strategy, denationalization of Africans by creating autonomous countries out of the bantustans, was officially declared dead in February, 1990, only months after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war.

The current debate focuses on the economic and social consequences of both the end of apartheid and the cold war. Although South Africa's democracy is less than two years old, its land reform policies have received high-profile attention from the media. The indication is that neither the minority landowners nor the majority potential beneficiaries of the land reform policies are satisfied.

This paper is an analysis of the land reform policy of South Africa in the context of the demands of the landless majority population, the pre-emption of land reform by the apartheid government, and the reaction of the landowners.

Is there a need for land reform?

STUDIES OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF South Africa have clearly indicated that the creation of the bantustans led to the unequal distribution of land between the races with the minority white population having ten times the land occupied by the majority black population.

Land dispossession took place long before the declared policy of apartheid of 1948. The 1913 Natives Land Act No. 27 and the 1936 Bantu Trust and Land Act No. 18 both sealed the unequal distribution of land between the races. In terms of the former, only 7.3 percent of the land was reserved for Africans. The latter was meant to release a further 5.7 percent. However, by 1991 when the Land Acts were repealed, 1.25 million ha that had been promised was still in the hands of the government under the South African Development Trust.

The creation of the bantustans as pure ethnic entities could never have been achieved without the massive forced removals that became the symbol of apartheid. The 'ethnic cleansing' entailed the establishment of ten bantustans into which Africans were forcibly removed under different categories such as the removal of black spots, the consolidation of homelands, the abolition of labour tenancy, and influx control measures, which were the four most detrimental.

Because of this social engineering, Africans have become landless and near-landless. They have become tenants on white farms or they are crowded in bantustans and are trucked daily into white farms as labourers where they have less than economic units of land and survive from migrant remittances, pensions and activities of the informal sector. Some have moved to the urban fringes where they form a shack population, commonly referred to as squatters.

The overcrowding and poverty in the bantustans have been acknowledged even by the apartheid government. However, measures to deal with the problem entailed another form of social engineering, 'betterment planning'. This strategy tampered with the land rights within the bantustans and led to the arrangement of scattered households in a grid pattern, the demarcation of agricultural plots in designated areas, the demarcation of grazing camps to replace the system of open grazing, and the establishment of agricultural projects with government taking over land and using it for state farming and exports.

Contrary to the proposals of the Tomlinson Commission (the architect of 'betterment planning'), no freehold land ownership was introduced, no agricultural infrastructure was provided for the betterment schemes, and no industries were started for the surplus population that could not be accommodated in betterment schemes and had to move into closer settlements.

The result of 'betterment planning' was not the promised improvement of agricultural production, but a reduction of land holdings for some households which resulted in more and more people being impoverished. This, plus the resettlement that accompanied 'betterment planning', and the introduction of apartheid chieftaincy, caused violent opposition.

Demands for land reform, therefore, have come from the victims of forced removals, tenants, farm workers, the unemployed small farmers and squatters. The demands are based on economic needs. The average size of land holding ranges from one-third ha in the former bantustan of Qwa Qwa, to a little more than 2 ha in the former bantustan of Bophuthatswana whereas Makhanya (1994) concluded that a farm of less than 8 ha is not economically viable. There is economic merit in the demands for land.

Land demands cannot be judged only on their economic merit. As indicated, land dispossession was a political tool of the apartheid government. Some of the landless and near landless (i.e. the majority of people who reside in betterment villages and closer settlements of the former bantustans who have no access to land for cultivation), have given up their land under cultivation and/or grazing for residential sites to accommodate the growth due to natural causes and immigration from white farms. Since 1990 they have resorted to land invasions.

The white population, as an exclusive group of landowners, naturally becomes the target of land reform. There is no doubt that the same land ownership pattern that made land reform imperative in countries such as China exists in South Africa where "the land owned by the rich (white) stretches from one end to the other without a break, but the poor (black) have no place even to stand upon" (Cheng, 1961:2).

Although Sachs (1990) includes two categories of whites as potential claimants of land, it is arguable that no white person has been a victim of land dispossession. Indeed, those whose land was taken in the process of the consolidation of bantustans were generously compensated. Furthermore, land reform is imperative not only because Africans have too small and uneconomic land units, but because the white landowners have too large holdings, on the average 1435 ha. In 1987 they owned 65 170 units. The average size varies from agro-climatic region to region with, for example, 664 ha in Natal and 2175 ha in the Cape.

The history of how the whites came to have exclusive territorial land ownership and the resultant benefits has been interpreted variously by social scientists and lay people, i.e. stories of how far a horse/mule could run, stories of how land was exchanged for a Bible, stories of outright theft, etc.

The legal instrument for whites to accumulate land was passed in the same year as the legal instrument that prohibited Africans from acquiring land outside the African reserves. The Land Settlement Act of 1913, as variously amended, provided for the acquisition of state and privately-owned land to settle white farmers; the use of public funds to buy the land, with the state subsidy of up to 84 percent of the sale price; and the provision of advances for production costs. All these were the basis for the maldistribution of farmland, with whites owning 84 percent of farmland although they accounted for only 10 percent of the rural population in 1987. The maldistribution of land and benefits is reflected in Table 1, which shows the racial involvement in the agricultural sector.

Table 1 THE RACIAL DIVISION OF RURAL AREAS BY PRINCIPAL ECONOMIC FEATURES, 1988

Feature	White Areas	Black Areas
Average farm size	1 300 ha	1 ha
Average farm income	R70 050	R141
Share of gross market output	96%	4%
Share in farm GDP	90%	10%
Share of transfer payments	97%	3%

The pre-emption of land reform

FROM THE 1980S

IN THE 1980S, THE APARTHEID GOVERNMENT was characterized by reform, repression and co-optation. However, the reform politics did not entail land reform as a universal remedy for problems associated with unequal distribution of land. Instead, the trend continued to avoid issues of land reform by concentrating on tenure reform, i.e. the redistribution of land rights within the bantustans.

Whereas in the 1950s, the proposal to have Africans purchase land within the bantustans was rejected, in the 1980s the government strategy was to promote a class of Africans hopeful of material advancement. Thus, together with mainstream economists and free-marketers, government changed from vociferous denial of freehold to a coercion for freehold.

Universities were commissioned to come up with development plans for the bantustans, for example, the Rand Afrikaanse University for Gazankulu and Pretoria University for Lebowa. In addition, there were commissions appointed for the same purpose, such as the Swart Commission for the Ciskei and the Buthelezi Commission for Kwazulu. All the commissions advocated so-called land modernization, i.e. freehold tenure. Dissenting voices were thrown out of the window (e.g. Fenyes, 1982). A significant feature was that these academics advised Africans to buy land in the bantustans, while they were denied the same right in white South Africa, a denial that remained unchallenged until 1987 (Letsoalo, 1987).

The governmental strategy of freehold landownership within the bantustans found a fertile ground in the African business community. The easy co-optation of this class is exemplified by the fact that the land tenure debate in South Africa has been dominated by the myth that the agrarian crisis in the bantustans was the result of African traditions, notably communal land tenure. It was alleged that this traditional system allocated land to inefficient families of male migrant labourers and therefore promoted absentee land-ownership, allocated land to inefficient farmers, prevented progressive farmers from getting larger farms and/or was a disincentive to farmers who could not use their land as collateral to access credit.

In addition to the above myth, there was a misconception that the apparent success of white agriculture was the result of freehold, despite evidence that white agriculture is over-subsidized, heavily indebted and ecologically unsustainable (Fenyes et al, 1988). For the African business community, lessons from other countries were completely disregarded (i.e. when land is mortgaged, it may be lost to the bank; the poor may sell their land for cash and become landless and homeless; the land market does not develop; freehold title is not a guarantee for credit-worthiness; increased productivity may result from relaxation of constraints; and/or conversion to freehold generally increases ownership disputes, introduces the possibility of land grabbing and erodes the rights of the poor and women to land).

FROM THE 1990S

AS INDICATED ABOVE, THE APARTHEID government not only endorsed the notion of freehold tenure for white South Africa, but extended it into the bantustans in the 1980s. This was part of the overall policy of promoting privatization. Thus, for instance, the White Paper on Privatization was published in 1987.

By the end of the 1980s, it was becoming clear that the metamorphosis from bantu reserve to independent bantustan had been aborted. A combination of factors contributed to the failure of the South African government to denationalize the majority of the indigenous population: the unfeasibility of creating countries out of the bantustans; the failure of even apartheid-apologist governments to recognize (constitutionally) the sovereignty of the bantustans; and the cultural, economic and political pressure on the South African government to abandon its apartheid policies.

Even before the negotiation strategy was announced in February, 1990, various groups had begun to work on future policies, commonly referred to as post-apartheid policies. These groups included the business community, the academic community, government agencies and non-government or extra- parliamentary organizations. Thus, they encompassed individuals and institutions with different backgrounds, ideologies and agendas.

The policy proposals were based on different myths or manipulative arguments. Although the primary root of poverty was traced back to land dispossession, when it came to proposals for land reform, many of the results of land dispossession and apartheid were used to argue against land reform and/or to propose a market-based land reform.

The first argument against land reform was that the African communal land tenure was a stumbling block to development. As indicated above, the systems of communal and freehold land tenure have been demythified. Therefore, the advancement of communal tenure as a problem was only to divert attention from the unequal distribution of land to the mythical evils of communal tenure.

The second focus of the anti-land reform economists was on agricultural restructuring. There is no doubt that the South African agricultural sector needs to be restructured. The problem was that the potential problems of the beneficiaries of land reform were presented as reasons for not having land reform. Clearly, the emphasis on productivity and food security was intended to reassure the minority white landowners, although the majority landless population could not be convinced that there was food security, let alone that it be protected at the expense of land reform.

The third argument against land reform was the urbanization fallacy. Proponents of this myth not only opposed land reform, they used the victims of land dispossession to argue that because bantustan populations survived mainly from migrant remittances, they were functionally urbanized and therefore would not demand land for agriculture. This assertion ignored studies of bantustan urbanization which show that the key factor in this process was forced removals (Letsoalo, 1983).

The migratory labour system has persisted as part of the reform politics despite the abolition of Influx Control Legislation in 1986. Therefore, access to more land is essential for families of migrant workers. Part-time farming among whites, at 20 percent in 1990, was found to be contributing much to the economy.

"RD develops people's inherent capacities to participate actively in providing the means for access to needed resources. RD enables people/households to utilize these resources economically and ecologically and in a sustainable manner for the improvement of the quality of life in rural areas for present and future generations." MR. THOMAS WESTERMANN - GERMANY

An extension of the urbanization fallacy is that the bantustan population has lost its agricultural skills. This refers to the very Africans who commute to white farms and form the backbone of so-called white agriculture. Alienation from agriculture is the result of land dispossession. Proponents of this myth are silent on the issue of lack of urban skills. Yet, they argue that to "rekindle a desire in agriculture or to reconstitute a peasantry (would be) pointless and costly" (Cobbett, 1987). This was the opinion that formed the apartheid government's strategies of broader industrial decentralization in the 1970s and regional development policies of the 1980s, which have all been very costly failures.

The proposal of those who upheld the above myths included market-based land reform. These proposals formed the strategy of the government as a means to ensure the economic survival of the white population, when a black majority government was inevitable.

The White Paper on Land Reform was published in March 1991. This led to the 1991 Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act No. 108 of 1991 and the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act No. 112 of 1991. Both Acts promote privatization or freehold tenure. The former endorsed land reform through the market; the latter endorsed freehold tenure in white South Africa and extended it to Africans in the bantustans.

Studies of forced removals show that they represented a serious violation of human rights and impoverished formerly strong agrarian communities. However, the government wanted to take advantage of the reconciliatory conditions of the 1990s to forget the past:

"The government is of the opinion that a programme for the restoration of land to the individuals and communities who were forced to give up their land on account of previous policies or other historical reasons would not be feasible. Apart from the vast potential for conflict inherent in such a programme, overlapping and contradictory claims to such land, as well as other practical problems, would make its implementation extremely difficult, if not impossible. The government believes that it is in the interest of peace and progress that the present position should be accepted and that the opportunities afforded by the new land policy should be exploited to bring about a more equitable dispensation" (South Africa, 1991: 6).

After pressure to reconsider its position on land restoration, the government appointed a controversial Advisory Commission on Land Allocation (ACLA). The Commission was not only controversial because of its composition and terms of reference, but most importantly, it pre-empted land reform in general and land restoration in particular.

First, the National Land Committee (NLC) and the Legal Resource Center (LRC) made representations for forcibly removed communities. They advised communities to form Land Trusts and agonized about the form of 'secure' tenure for land claimants. Second, the bantustan governments made representations for different tribal authorities to acquire more land or to establish 'new' tribes. Third, the white land owners who had sold their land to the government, made representations to purchase their old properties. All three occurred on the eve of independence and a new constitution.

Reaction to the White Paper on Land Reform was varied. There were those who considered it the final blow to apartheid or, to use the vocabulary of the government, it was an indication that negotiations were irreversible. There were those who considered it irrelevant, because the Acts had acted as a scaffolding and now that the apartheid building was intact the Acts had become irrelevant. There were those (the Labour Movement) who accused the government of unilateral restructuring of the economy in the 'old' apartheid style, i.e. without consultation. There were those (National African Farmers Union) who immediately took advantage of the Act to sell and buy land. There were those who accused then-President F.W. de Klerk of selling out to the Communists and giving them the land that had been acquired historically and legally by white pioneers.

Politically, the government was responding to the call for the abolition of the Land Acts by antiapartheid activists, academics and organizations. Economically, the government was pre-empting future policies on land reform and the restoration of land to the rightful owners.

The abolition of the Land Acts was more of a threat to the Africans in the bantustans than it was to the white landowners. It was significant that in the same breath that de Klerk threatened or promised to abolish the Land Acts, he also assured the white farmers that their freehold titles were non-negotiable. Under the restrictions of the Land Acts, Africans could not buy land outside the bantustans. Similarly, whites could not buy land in the bantustans. The Land Acts, therefore, had served to prevent white speculators or land developers from rendering the poor bantustan population completely landless.

With the restrictions lifted, land in the bantustans would be open for purchase. However, a negligible number of Africans could afford to buy land in white South Africa at the market value, while whites could easily buy land in the bantustans. The result would be chat the present victims of land dispossession would become victims of land privatization (Cross, 1990; Letsoalo, 1990).

The popular reaction towards the 1991 White Paper on Land Reform was that an illegal government should not make legislation. The reaction of the National African Federation Chamber of Commerce was to convert its Agricultural Division into the National African Farmers Union, whose objective is to promote freehold land ownership among Africans. A negligible number of this group has bought land at the market value. The implication of this move during the negotiation period was that land that would become available for land reform was moving into the hands of Africans. The new landowners would be against land reform, thus dividing the landless majority. The landless majority would remain at the mercy of landowners, black and white.

The pre-emption of land reform through The Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act of 1991 was not a pioneer act. The imminence of land reform prompted land sales in other countries. It has been demonstrated in Chile that land redistribution cannot be achieved through land sales. Nearly two-thirds of the buyers of land in Chile during the debate of agrarian reform were business people and professionals, another 14 percent already owned land. The only buyers who could afford the payments were those with incomes from other investments or professions. Absentee ownership was the rule among larger landholders; essentially land was turned into recreational facilities for absentee landholders (Brown, 1971).

Another example of the failure of land sales to redistribute land is Zimbabwe. Under the terms of the 1980 Lancaster House Constitution, land reform was to be through a market-based process, commonly referred to as the willing-seller-willing-buyer. By 1986, a Land Acquisition Act became necessary to release more land. The Act provided that the government be offered land first, and only when it had issued a 'certificate of no interest' could the land be sold on the open market. It also provided for the compulsory acquisition of land declared under-utilized or derelict.

However, by 1990, it was again necessary to have the Amendment of Land Acquisition Act. This entailed major shifts from the Lancaster Settlement including: land designation (i.e. not a willing seller); not more than one farm unit by one individual or company, with exceptions depending on merit; no absentee landowners; minimum and maximum farm sizes according to different ecological regions; and no agricultural land owned by foreigners. Thus, ten years after independence, the willing-seller-willing-buyer strategy was being discarded; it had failed to redistribute the land. Also, it has been reported that farms belonging to six Zimbabwean cabinet ministers and some senior state officials have been recommended for acquisition by the state for resettlement/land reform (Star International, 11-17/2/93).

In the light of the above examples, it is understandable why it is considered that the advocates of a market-based process in South Africa were only making cautious excuses for not being willing to give up white land, while recognizing that the present racial division of land must change.

Recent attempts towards a land reform

MOST POST-INDEPENDENCE AFRICAN governments had some form of land reform. In South Africa, the struggle for liberation was the struggle for land. Therefore, it is not only expected, but mandatory (Bruce, 1989).

The Constitution of South Africa Act No. 200 of 1993 provided for an Interim Constitution for a democratic South Africa, pending the writing of the Constitution by the Constitutional Assembly. The Interim Constitution provided significant parameters for land reform, for example, land is classified as a national function. Significantly, provinces cannot have different land reform policies, as these are the responsibility of the national Department of Land Affairs.

The Bill of Rights provides for protection of property rights. The different interpretations of this clause indicate that it is possible to use the provision to block land reform. Principles of equality, affirmative action and reconciliation are also embodied in the constitution. However, they are all subject to interpretation and may or may not promote land reform.

The government's Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) aims at redistributing 30 percent of land within a five-year period. There is, therefore, provision to purchase land through the different policies of housing and rural development.

The Interim Constitution is very detailed in how land reform is to be done. The government of national unity will redress the injustices of the past within a free market economy. Land reform will be market-based or demand-driven and needs-based to use the concepts used by the Department of Land Affairs.

The 1991 White Paper on Land Reform had singled out victims of forced removal to indicate that only the principle of a willing-seller-willing-buyer would constitute land reform, pointing out that restoration of land would not be feasible. Similarly, the 1993 Constitution singled out victims of forced removals as the only category of the landless majority that would become the beneficiary of land reform through restitution of land rights.

Restitution of land rights had already started in 1991 with the establishment of the ACLA by the apartheid government. Noting that the former government had pointed out that it would be a difficult task, it cannot redress the inequities of the past on its own. Consequently, the Department of Land Affairs has a three-pronged land reform policy - restitution, redistribution and tenure reform.

RESTITUTION

THE RESTITUTION OF LAND RIGHTS ACT No. 22 of 1994 is the first Land Act of the democratic government. In terms of this Act, a Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights and Land Claims Court were established in 1995. Both bodies were prescribed by the Interim Constitution.

The Land Act of 1994 was drawn by institutions and organizations that had assisted the communities fighting against forced removals and had assisted victims of forced removals to claim land from ACLA. Quintessentially, the Act does not provide for indigenous land rights. However, the landless majority as described above has put its hope for land on restitution. Indeed, land claims are on the lips of everybody, whether they qualify in terms of the Restitution Act or not.

The twist in the programme of restitution is that many communities have claim to land that is presently owned by other Africans. Table 2 shows categories of African land subject to land claims that have been identified in the Northern Province. Were such land claims to succeed, then the democratic government would have to carry out forced removals. Some of the affected would be those who had been victims of forced removals, as they were dumped on land claimed by other groups.

With the Restitution Act, provision for restoration of land is not feasible. Therefore, the above scenario of forced removals may not be valid. However, alternative land may be neither available nor affordable -even state land may be claimed by other groups or be used for other purposes of national importance.

The Restitution Act provides for just, market value compensation of land for restoration. This factor has not been appreciated by the present landowners, whose opposition to land restitution shows that they do not consider restitution a redress of past inequities. Their arguments range from food security and economic growth to war against communism.

Considering that the present landowners have to be willing sellers to enable restitution, the prospects for land reform under this category seem doomed. Even if the prospects were good, this category of land reform deals with less than 5 percent of the land - a wide margin in the 10:1 racial space, in favour of white.

The other controversy surrounds claims to land by different communities. Because of the lack of understanding of traditional African land-ownership, most commentators and even land claimants do not understand that such counter-claims do not constitute conflicting, fraudulent or even frivolous claims.

REDISTRIBUTION

THE CONCEPT OF REDISTRIBUTION IS USED officially to refer to the government programme of willing-seller-willing-buyer. This programme was also initiated by the apartheid government through the Distribution of Certain State Land Act No. 126 of 1993. It entails state assistance to landless households willing to buy land from willing sellers (private and state) through a Settlement or Land Acquisition Grant of up to R15 000 per household (R4.54=US$ 1, 1996). Qualification for access to the R5000 is an income of up to R1500 per month. But these beneficiaries, by definition, have low income and are not credit worthy. So a household cannot buy land on its own and therefore needs to form a group of buyers.

Inherent in the above land grant is the imperative for willing group or community buyers to have access to credit to supplement the land grant because R15 000 is not enough money for land purchase. Furthermore, the Agricultural Credit Board does not give credit to Trusts, which are the legal entities for the acquisition of land. The government's policy proposal for beneficiaries to use their livestock as collateral is a recipe for disaster.

Table 2 AFRICAN LAND SUBJECT TO LAND CLAIMS: NORTHERN PROVINCE, 1994-1995

Category	Example
Land bought by tribes	Sekhukhune tribe vs Mashabela tribe
Land allocated to tribes	Mamone tribe vs Vergelegen Community Kibi tribe vs Malebogo tribe Masha tribe vs Nchabeleng tribe
Land bought by communities	Bochum communities vs Malebogo tribe
Tribal land excised for establishment of townships	Lebowakgomo vs Mphahlele tribe Namakgale vs BaPhalaborwa tribes
Land allocated to bantustans	Gazankulu vs Venda tribes Gazankulu vs Lebowa tribes
Land allocated to tribes under 'apartheid chiefs'	Officially recognized tribes vs unrecognized chiefs. (Land claims coupled with claims for chieftaincy.)
Land allocated by ACLA to tribes and/or communities	Maja tribe vs Mmaboi community Makgoba tribe vs Bjatladi tribe
Land under lease from the state/bantustans	Venda leaseholder vs Manendze tribe

In line with the government policy of land reform, in the context of the alleviation of poverty and the improvement of household welfare, the strategy of land purchase is combined with a grant for settlement. In effect, the beneficiary household may use the R15 000 grant to improve their settlements and/or tenure conditions.

Communal or tribal land has never been purchased, except for a brief period between the advent of whites in South Africa and the 1936 Land Act when Africans were prohibited from buying land. Even the apartheid government failed to eradicate the system of communal tenure under tribal rule.

The Interim Constitution has guaranteed the existence of Chieftaincy. Chieftaincy does not exist in a vacuum, but goes together with land. Tribal groups have continued to demand land from the democratic government, just as they did with the apartheid government. The government policy of land purchase is, therefore, not a response to the land demands of the majority population.

A number of people have formed Community Trusts to access the Land Acquisition Grant. The distribution of the projects registered is reflected in Table 3. The provincial variation in the number of projects is a reflection of the concentration of work by the former (pre-1994) Department of Regional and Land Affairs.

The Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill of 1995 is currently under discussion. Labour tenants as described in the Bill excludes the majority of Africans who have remained on the white racial space, despite the onslaught on Kaffir farming dating back to 1913. However, those who are covered by the Bill will qualify for the Land Acquisition Grant. Hence, the strong opposition to the Bill has come from the South African Agricultural Union. Considering that the present farmers have to be willing sellers of land that is presently used by labour tenants, the prospects for land reform under this category are doomed.

In addition to the regular hardships of labour tenancy, the imminence of land reform has exacerbated the evictions of labour tenants and farm workers/residents. For example, it was reported in 1992 that in a 10-year period, the depopulation of rural areas was at the alarming rate of 11 000 to 22 000 inhabitants per rural town in the Transvaal and Orange Free State.

A generally unacknowledged fact is that the exacerbation of evictions from the white farmland has added to the overcrowding in communal/tribal land. Yet, there is no provision in the land reform (redistribution) policy to respond directly to the land demands of tribal groups.

Table 3 LAND FOR REDISTRIBUTION THROUGH THE REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAMME 1993-95 AT R73 529 MILLION

Province	Area (ha)
Mpumalanga	10 142
Kwazulu-Natal	9 184
Northern Cape	6830
Eastern Cape	2 370
North West	859
Gauteng	-
Free State	-
Northern Province	-
Western Cape	-
Total	29 385

TENURE REFORM

THERE HAS BEEN A CONSISTENT TREND TO avoid issues of land reform, i.e. redistribution by concentrating on land tenure reform (the redistribution of land rights in South Africa's communal/tribal land). From the Glen Grey Act of 1894 to the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act of 1991, there has been an attempt by the government, with the support of academics, to convert communal/tribal land tenure into freehold ownership.

The official rationale for the conversion has changed from time to time (see Table 4). Government policy presently recognizes the diversity of land tenure systems. However, upgrading is still advocated for reasons of equality. The interim constitutional provisions for equality before the law and no discrimination on the ground of inter alia, race and gender, have been the key weapons against both communal tenure and customary law.

A combination of upgrading of land rights by individuals within communal/tribal land, and the fact that there are no plans to increase communal tribal land through the government redistribution programme, may finally destroy the system of communal tenure by the democratic government.

Conclusion

WRITING ELSEWHERE THE AUTHOR HAS stated that:

"Confiscation and compensation are the least of the problems that will be faced in the redistribution of land by the future majority government. One issue that will have to be resolved is how to transfer the land to the landless majority population, that is, what social production relations will be chosen by the people" (Letsoalo, 1994,: 214).

The negotiated political settlement in South Africa precluded any confiscation of land. The inevitability of this was no excuse for the provisions in the property clause that: on expropriation, compensation shall be at market-value; that only land rights lost after 1913 shall be restored; and that beneficiaries of land reform shall buy land from the state and private landowners.

The present analysis shows that the land reform policies are based on the market economy. The apartheid government was responsible for this strategy, since the mixed economy that was preached by the Liberation Movement was never clearly spelled out.

The final Constitution of South Africa is expected by 9 May 1996. Therefore, the prospects for an authentic land reform are still open. Indeed, major role-players in the land policy debate, namely, the National Land Committee and the African National Congress, have called for a non-market-based land reform and a more land reform-friendly property clause, respectively (NLC, 1995; and Pretoria News 31/1/96).

Table 4 CHANGING LAND TENURE POLICIES, 1950-1991

A. TENURE
1950s*	®	REJECTION OF CONVERSION TO FREEHOLD
1980s**	®	COERCION TO FREEHOLD
1990s***	®	UPGRADING TO FREEHOLD (Pre-Independence)
1990s****	®	UPGRADING TO FREEHOLD (Post-Apartheid)
	®	TRUST vs TRIBE
* Culture **Modernization ***Equality ****Equality & Security
B. ACCESS
1913	®	RESERVES
1936	®	TRUST ® ALLOCATION
1991	®	ABOLITION OF 1913 & 1936 LAND ACTS
1991	®	WILLING-SELLER-WILLING-BUYER

The emotive response from both the present landowners and potential beneficiaries of land reform shows that the government's reconciliation and RDP cannot be achieved with a land reform policy that ensures that the beneficiaries of apartheid are compensated justifiably, while the former victims of apartheid have to pay for the land. The route to follow is for the government to use the same resources intended to subsidize willing buyers for the purchase of land and its free redistribution to the poor landless majority for residential and productive purposes.

Bibliography

Brown, M. (1971)
Private efforts at reform, in:
Dorner, P. (ed), Land Reform in Latin America: Issues and Cases, Land Economics Monographs, 3, University of Wisconsin- Madison, p. 243-257.

Bruce, J. (1989)
The variety of reform: A review of recent experience with Land Reform and the Reform of Tenure, with particular reference to the African Experience, Paper for Conference on Human Rights in a post-apartheid Constitution, New York, Colombia University.

Cheng, C. (1961)
Land Reform in Taiwan, China Publishing Co., Taiwan.

Cobbett, M. (1987)
The land question in South Africa: A preliminary assessment, South African Journal of Economics, 55 (1): 63-82.

Cross, C.R. (1990)
Legal and extra-legal factors involved in South African Land Reform: A response to the Latzky/Urban Foundation Model, Newick Park Initiative Meeting on Land Reform and Agricultural Development in South Africa, Battle.

Fenyes, T.I. (1982)
Memorandum for the Commission of Inquiry into Land Tenure and Ownership in the Republic of Venda, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Pretoria.

Fenyes, T.I. et al (1988)
Structural imbalance in South African Agriculture, South African Journal of Economics, 56 (2&3): 181-195.

Letsoalo, E.M. (1983)
Displaced urbanization: The settlement system of Lebowa, Development Studies Southern Africa, 5 (3): 371-387.

Letsoalo, E.M. (1987)
Land reform in South Africa: A black perspective, Stokaville Publishers, Johannesburg.

Letsoalo, E.M. (1990)
Beyond South Africa's Land Acts:
Another dispossession? African Law Review, Tenth Anniversary Celebration Issue, p. 28-30.

Letsoalo, E.M. (1994)
Restoration of land: Problems and prospects, ini Maphai, V. (ed) South Africa: The Challenge of Change, SAPES books, Harare, p. 202-220.

Makhanya, E. (1994)
The Economics of small-holder sugar cane production in Natal, ini Weiner, D. and R. Levin (eds) Community perspectives on land and agrarian reform in South Africa, Project report for the MacArthur Foundation, Chicago.

National Land Committee (1995)
National Land Committee Land Reform Policy proposal, Johannesburg.

Sachs, A. (1990)
Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa, Oxford University Press, Cape Town.

South African Institute of Race Relations (1991)
Race Relations Survey 1990-1991, SAIRR, Johannesburg.

Economic conditions of rural development in sub-Saharan Africa

Bolaseke Mbokoko

BOLASEKE MBOKOKO is assistant professor in the Economics and Management Department, University of Paris, France.

Introduction
Endnotes

Introduction

Food insecurity and poverty are rife in the African countryside, yet African farmers refuse to adopt modern production techniques with which they could increase output and improve their working conditions. We shall begin with a retrospective assessment of policies directed at the African rural scene and an analysis of how these are currently being reoriented in the context of structural adjustment policies. We shall then offer some alternative proposals based on the principle that mobilizing and involving small farmers through autonomous forms of organization is an essential preliminary to rural development in sub-Saharan Africa.

The problem

FOOD INSECURITY, RURAL POVERTY AND SMALL FARMERS' CONSERVATISM

IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, MORE THAN 300 million people suffer from malnutrition and 160 million from undernourishment, because food supplies are still structurally insufficient to meet needs. For example, the average daily intake was 2096 calories in 1992, whereas an adult requires 2200 to 3000 calories per day. Further, a deterioration in the situation is predicted by the year 2010, when the number of people suffering from undernourishment will reach 300 million.

However, the more affluent enjoy a higher-than-average food intake and the urban population benefits from large flows of imports and food relief. The rural population seems to suffer more from problems of malnutrition and undernutrition.¹ This situation is compounded by disparities between rural and urban areas over access to basic social services. Between 1988 and 1993, 49 percent of the rural population had access to health care compared to 78 percent of the urban population; 35 percent of the rural population had access to clean drinking water compared to 73 percent of the urban; and 27 percent had access to drainage in comparison with 59 percent of the urban.⁴

The lack of food security in rural areas comes from a continued choice of techniques favouring an extensive use of land. Although it did assure food self-sufficiency for traditional village communities, the extensive model is proving completely inadequate today, as population pressure leads to a reduction in the length of fallow periods and increasingly infertile land, leading in turn to the need to adopt intensive production methods. Experience shows that such methods are more effective than traditional farm implements and the fallow system for feeding a fast-growing population, for they bring a better yield per ha.

A comparison of Africa and Asia highlights the results obtained under the intensive model.

"Between 1952 and 1983, per capita cereal production fell by 16 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, while it rose by 41 percent in Asia. Yields rose by 17 percent in sub-Saharan Africa compared to 102 percent in Asia. In China and India, small farmers produce as much as 4000 kg of cereals on one-half ha with two crops per year, whereas in Africa they produce 1000 to 1500 on 2 ha using the traditional system, with one crop per year which depends on normal rainfall."⁵

Such results have allowed most Asian countries to become self-sufficient, thus confounding the forecasts of international organizations at the beginning of the 1950s, that predicted Asia would find it very hard to feed its population and was in serious danger of famine.⁵ The main question is why small farmers in Africa are so attached to production methods that are so limiting in comparison with development demands.

Some authors say that the idea of progress is alien to African societies, where people try "not to destroy and transform nature, but, rather, to restore it to its primordial fullness and integrate themselves deeply with it."⁷ If this is the perspective in which we are to explain the technological inertia shown by African small farmers, how are we to explain the progress made by their Asian counterparts, who also used to use extensive production methods?

Other authors see this inertia in the context of Africa's centuries-old isolation⁵. Unlike Asia, which has been open to exchange with the outside for centuries, sub-Saharan Africa was isolated from the rest of the world for much longer because of its inhospitable coastal areas and the various diseases to which travellers were prey. This meant they were much later learning about methods that had been used for a long time such as the wheel, the pulley, the cart, the plough and animal traction. Africa has had about four centuries of openness and exchange with the outside, particularly the West, but how many more centuries are needed before it manages to improve its production methods?

African small farmers' conservatism can be explained, not as the outcome of cultural conformity or geography, but as a rational approach based on the minimization of risks in the face of the constraints imposed by their political, social and economic environments. As certain authors emphasize, intensive cultivation corresponds to an individualistic approach that minimizes risks, economy of labour and anticipation of land scarcity, despite the fact that it represents a danger to ecosystems.⁸ In other words, farmers prefer to destroy their environment in the attempt to delay their own destruction. If they sometimes show scant interest in the technical improvements offered, it is probably because the risks involved are greater than the anticipated results, or because of problems over access to loans, marketing outlets and the necessary inputs (including know-how).

The conservative attitudes of small farmers in Africa reflect the impact of the rural development policies that have been adopted by African states more than the farmers' own incapacity to adapt to modernity.

FAILURE OF AGRARIAN CAPITALISM

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 1960S, IN THE first flush of independence, a movement was born in sub-Saharan Africa for the development of small-scale agrarian capitalism with the aim of promoting small farmers. However, this movement ran out of steam by the mid-1970s, and in the few countries where it succeeded (e.g. Côte d'Ivoire and Kenya) the overall results have been disappointing. In Côte d'Ivoire, the rural middle class produced by this movement invests very little in agricultural activity and assures production growth basically through extensive occupation of land, thanks to an always-abundant and cheap immigrant workforce. On the other hand, it spends a significant portion of its profits from agricultural activity on consumer or prestige items, or in speculative investments offering quick, easy returns (real estate, taxis, transport, trade, and bars in urban areas). Such an approach works against the interests of the rural world, but seems to be a response (at least in part) to the high prices of the inputs supplied by upstream (foreign) industries and the fall in the real price of exported produce imposed by the world market in a context of overproduction organized by the World Bank in an exclusively Ricardian approach.

This process came up against growing population pressure, which places major limitations on extensive farming, thus condemning such small-scale capitalism to an increasing dismemberment into small plots barely capable of assuring even the bare subsistence of those farming them, as is seen in southeastern Togo and the rice-fields of Basse Casamance.⁹ This situation encouraged the rise of large-scale landowning capitalism made up of the urban landed middle class, the state and international capital.

Its key feature is intensive modernization of agriculture with the help of massive injections of capital intended primarily to expand new fields of agricultural speculation (oil-bearing crops and sugar cane, for example) and traditional export products (coffee and cocoa) which are of interest both to foreign investors and local states in search of hard currency. Although this model has allowed real progress in terms of agricultural output (Côte d'Ivoire), it does have major drawbacks: its economic viability is low because of the high financial investment needed and its dependence on the vagaries of the world market; and it speeds up the spread of rural landlessness and the flight to urban areas which do not have an industrial apparatus capable of absorbing the influx. Given the unpopular and excluding nature of its dynamics, this model has proven as incapable as the thwarted and decried small-scale capitalism of helping to solve the problems of malnutrition, hunger, poor health and joblessness in the African countryside.

Zaire, for example, has not even known this particular process because of the chaos engendered by the 'Zairianization' policy implemented in 1973, under which all farmland and concessions belonging to foreigners (in other words, Europeans) were forfeited to the Zairian State, which then divided them among certain of its citizens (senior administrators, friends and influential members of the single party) as gifts. These new owners see their farms first and foremost as a source of immediate profit and do not hesitate to draw on their capital at the expense of low or unpaid wages. The few rare farms that have not reverted to bushland are those where the new owners have kept the previous white settler on as managers. The destructive management approach elsewhere led to a rapid fall in output (palm oil, coffee and cotton) and exacerbation of problems resulting from the political unrest that Zaire had suffered in the 1960s (decay of the production, storage and transport infrastructure, decline in the skilled workforce, return of small farmers to a subsistence economy, massive rural exodus, etc.). Moreover, the Zairian State can depend on a mining 'industry' to provide most of its budgetary resources and therefore lacks any interest in developing the agricultural sector (imports and food relief take care of the rest).

Were things much different for countries such as Tanzania and Ethiopia which chose the socialist path?

FAILURE OF AGRARIAN SOCIALISM

In the Ruvuma region of southern Tanzania, a small group of militants, who had been collectively farming a small cashew plantation since 1960, set up the Ruvuma Development Association with three villages and 70 families in 1963, expanding to 17 villages and more than 400 families between 1967 and 1969. The main aim of the association was the development of food crops through collective production in order to improve the health and productivity of small farmers and reduce their dependence on the cash economy (in other words, the world market). The association invested its surplus locally and drew direct benefits leading to the establishment of small industries and improvements in housing, health and education services. At that time, the movement nourished hopes of starting 'the rural revolution'. However, it elicited no enthusiasm in the socialist state and its arms, neither political (the Party) nor administrative. Not only did they find it too independent, they also preferred the development of export crops which allow them to make a good profit on the world market, particularly through the use of export duties. They controlled the profit, which they used for urban consumption or investment out of the control of the small farmers, bringing in profits mainly for high-ranking members of the regime.¹¹

In 1969, the Central Committee dissolved the Ruvuma Development Association after accusing it of plotting against the Party. After this decision, the Party and district and regional officials launched a huge campaign to create Ujama village centres through the voluntary - and then enforced (with the help of the army) - reorganization of the hitherto scattered rural population into rural communities, in order to step up production and improve conditions in the rural sector. The programme did not succeed and in fact led to a reduction in agricultural output, so that Tanzania was forced to import 384 000 tons in 1974 (and another 521 000 tons in 1975). The reason behind this failure was twofold. First, there was the resistance of the small farmers. Like most Tanzanians, colonialism had left them deeply individualistic, and they did not understand, or refused to accept, the Ujama village principle, despite the excessive subsidies granted or promised by the government. The second factor was a combination of the incompetence of agricultural planners and the fact that the bureaucracy was simply exploiting the farmers in the name of socialism.

In Ethiopia, the new government set up a thorough agrarian reform in 1974, abolished private ownership for a policy entailing equal redistribution of land, as well as decentralization based on small farmers' own management of rural units. However, the government very soon showed its intention of directly controlling a large and growing proportion of the marketed produce. In 1976, it set up an Agricultural Marketing Company to stabilize input and produce prices, reduce marketing profit margins to the advantage of producers, and ensure adequate supplies of farm inputs to the countryside and foodstuffs to the urban world through the public distribution system. It also set up a system of quotas to be filled by each region, together with fixed, uniform farmgate prices, "in order to eliminate price competition between the Agricultural Marketing Company and private merchants, and extract enough cereals from producing areas to satisfy urban and public consumption, ensure flour production and create buffer stocks."¹²

These linked demands of production and policy, however, were translated into increasingly-absurd prices paid to small farmers compared to the prohibitive prices of the manufactured items obtained in exchange and, to some extent, the prices paid for the food crops delivered by state farms and producers' cooperatives.

Moreover, the small farmers found it hard to fill their production quotas because of the scarcity of seed and their own consumption needs, apart from the conviction that delays caused by the lack of transport would discourage the authorities from demanding their quotas. In order to fill their quotas some of them were forced to purchase cereals on the parallel market. The end result of all these contradictions was that the small farmers started to produce primarily, and increasingly, for their own consumption. For its part, through its pursuit of a centralizing and authoritarian approach increasingly far from its original spirit, the government cut itself off definitively from its peasant base.

These analyses demonstrate the contradictions in development policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Whether based on capitalist or socialist tenets, such policies are consistently based on a system of asymmetrical extraction of the surplus produced by the agricultural sector (through prices and taxation), reflecting a Colbertian approach. We would emphasize the concept of asymmetrical extraction, for this surplus is then used - in the best hypothesis - for an industrialization that does not meet the development needs of agriculture, or - as is most often the case - for parasitic consumption. For example, in the early 1970s, although the rural population represented 80 percent of the overall population of sub-Saharan Africa, it received a bare 10 percent of public expenditure.⁵

It is therefore clear that major irrigation schemes, agricultural enterprises set up by multinationals, and the green revolution that is associated with modernized medium and large landholdings (driving poor peasant farmers from their land), marketing boards or buffer funds (diverting the surpluses of good years to the national budget), and state farms and cooperatives managed by government officers (depriving small farmers of control over both economic decisions and the organization of production, while forcing them to adopt types of production and methods that allow extraction of an increasing surplus) are all methods used in an attempt to break through small farmers' conservatism and isolation; not in order to improve their lot, but to exploit them. Some experts¹⁵ observe that subsidies granted for inputs in no way match the amounts extracted.

This is why agrarian capitalism and socialism in sub-Saharan Africa have both reached similar dead ends.

LIMITED-RANGE NEOLIBERAL SOLUTIONS

SINCE THE 1980S, UNDER THE COMBINED pressure of their own countries' economic failures and economic, political and ideological changes in the world scene, African governments have set about a total liberalization of their economies through a series of macroeconomic reforms. So far as agricultural and nutritional policies are concerned, these reforms encompass the closing down or privatization of the various companies and other structures through which the state plays an active role on the market, and the reduction or even suppression of taxes and subsidies, together with a steep rise in farmgate prices. There is also a major swing away from large-scale projects, which consume vast sums of money and generate excessive production capacities for primary commodities, preferring small-scale projects with pride of place being given to smallholders, whose energies and potential - previously stifled by all-pervasive and inefficient state interventions - should be liberated and mobilized by these reforms.¹⁴

These reforms are broadly based on the radical liberal theory of F. Hayek, and their central elements are the exclusion of the state and renewed encouragement of the free play of market forces. This is expected to reestablish macroeconomic balances and, above all, assure a more effective distribution of resources, which should in turn allow both an increase in food production for the domestic market and considerable comparative advantages on the world market, hence fulfilling the various conditions for an effective campaign against rural poverty - especially since great emphasis is laid on the participation of smallholders "in all the aspects of agricultural activity and services".¹⁶

"Seeking ways to secure and improve adequate livelihoods for non-urban populations that are economically, technically, ecologically and socially sustainable and equitable." MR. MICHAEL GINGULD - ISRAEL

Such policies are undeniably logical in theory. Economic actors are more highly motivated to play an active part in the economic process if the basic conditions in which it takes place are healthy. Macroeconomic balances offer this framework without which such actors can only become discouraged, while the chances of obtaining economic growth grow slimmer. The rise in farmgate prices is an incentive for small farmers, who have suffered from the lack of such encouragement for a long time. The same applies to the struggle against overvaluation of currencies, which encourages food imports and hinders the development of exports. However, even in these two contexts, as certain authors point out,⁸ there are some clear contradictions: if exports are to be competitive on the world market, this presumes low wages and therefore low prices for foodstuffs, which is against the interest of small farmers; a reduction in the real rate of exchange alters the import structure to the advantage of consumer goods and the disadvantage of capital goods needed to increase output of agricultural exports or even food crops.

Observation also shows that small farmers do not increase their output even when farm produce prices rise, for they are not sure of being able to dispose of their produce for want of transport, and they cannot purchase consumer goods that are found only in towns. Another reason is that small farmers often lack the means for increasing their output, because of the vagaries of climate, the absence of resources in terms of land, labour or capital assets, the prohibitive price of inputs, or the lack of access to formal loan facilities. It should be added that adjustment policies tend to aggravate these problems, for example by reducing public expenditure on agriculture (input subsidies, technical assistance, etc.) and "by increasing land insecurity (particularly through liberalization of the land market, which works to the disadvantage of smallholders)"¹⁴. Even if small farmers were given the possibility of increasing their production, and if competition from foreign products were reduced considerably through devaluation, they would still be faced with the inelasticity of the demand (bearing in mind the social costs of structural adjustment: redundancy, unemployment, pay reductions or a wage freeze) and their powerlessness vis-à-vis pre-production supplies of inputs and post-production middlemen.

These contradictions are only some of the examples, but clearly show how much adaptation neoliberal-type policies need for the African rural world, especially in view of the small farmers' particular way of thinking and the structural factors preventing them from increasing their supply to the various markets. This failure to recognize the real situation basically indicates how lightly rural development (or all development, for that matter) has been treated in Africa. Such policies have brought no change from the period analyzed above, except the exclusion of the state and the transfer of its structures for intervening in the agricultural market into the hands of private operators, who have no interest in small farmers nor the majority of marginalized people. The aim is to promote the creation and growth of large-scale, capitalist-style modern businesses. As certain authors emphasize¹⁴, "liberalization and privatization generally transform income linked to state control into market-linked monopoly income". Having realized the social and political risks entailed in these policies, the World Bank has now accepted the need to add a social dimension¹⁶, but this reorientation is so slight that it hardly affects the overall workings of adjustment policies¹⁴. "With his well-known mathematical precision, Jan Tibergen has calculated that implementation of the policies advocated by the World Bank would resolve the social ills of our era in exactly 908 years."¹⁷

An alternative

THE NEGATIVE RESULTS OF PREVIOUS rural development policies in sub-Saharan Africa and the major limitations of neoliberal solutions lead us straight to the vital issue of reallocation of a larger proportion of the economic surplus extracted from the rural sector back to this same sector in order to allow revitalization of local farming systems. This seems to us - obviously with certain provisos - an appropriate response to the poor living conditions of African small farmers and the rural population in general.

MOBILIZATION AND PARTICIPATION OF SMALL FARMERS

IT IS REMARKABLE THAT EVEN PEOPLE WITH the most widely-diverging opinions agree on certain points, especially concerning the primary place that small farmers must have in the process of agricultural and rural development. This, however, leads to considerable confusion when the notions of mobilization and participation are given a sense other than that desired by the small farming sector itself. Before replacing them in their true context, we would therefore make some preliminary observations with the help of a general rural development method worked out by some authors¹⁸ and based on the following principles:

· (rural) development cannot be simultaneously conceived at the top and carried out at the base;

· a priori recognition of grass-roots communities as capable of taking their own initiative in the development sphere is necessary;

· a decolonization of the conceptual instruments of development is necessary;

· "participation" means participation of the support structure in initiatives decided by the grass-roots communities, and not the reverse;

· a development project is simply a proposed plan of action, complete with budget, but its implementation is always conditional on the decisions of the grass-roots communities;

· self-development is not some distant aim, but a social practice, a process initiated with the first development action undertaken;

· support entails the supply of the necessary means on demand and does not see lack of training as an obstacle to self-development; and

· a response to a priority that is expressed by a grassroots community and is the object of some initiative on its part is the vital precondition for implementation of any development action that this community will undertake with outside support.

Respect for these principles obviously leads to a total break with the principles that have traditionally underlain development actions in the African rural sphere and means that the concepts of mobilization and participation take on quite another sense. The small farmers must mobilize their own energies (through various forms of organization that are freely designed and managed by themselves such as village associations or cooperatives), but also those of other actors who can offer them some kind of support (the state, external sources of funding, NGOs, etc.). If such support is appropriate and comes at the right moment, it thus constitutes an honourable participation of these actors in initiatives decided by the farmers themselves. Such actors must accept the need to work with informal local networks (craftsmen, tradesmen, transporters, people with special knowledge of a given aspect of the small-farming environment). Their close relations with the farming world means that such networks can play a determining role in the rural development process, just as they can hinder it if they are ignored. This whole approach avoids imposing solutions on farmers that have been drawn up outside and favour forms of production organization (large private companies, schemes managed by the state with the support of foreign donors, etc.) that lead to their reduction to unsatisfying salaried work, depreciation of their know-how, misuse or even stifling of their initiative, together with concentration of all decision-making power in the hands of local or expatriate administrators and technical experts.

Mobilization and participation of small farmers in this context does, however, have a certain number of linked pre-conditions¹⁹. The farmers must have enough economic space in terms of access to land (agrarian reform) and negotiating power on the input and produce markets. They must have an effective voice in the political arena through their various types of organization, which enable them, for example, to enter certain economic sectors otherwise irrevocably closed to them (formal loan facilities) and to be accepted as full dialogue partners by public authorities and donors. They must have (by tradition or acquisition) production systems (cropping techniques, biological resources, farm implements) appropriate to themselves and their natural environment, which should give them full control over the use of their economic space.

AN INDUSTRIALIZATION POLICY CENTRED ON AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

WE HAVE ALSO SEEN THAT MANY WORKS, under the influence of World Bank reports, attribute poor agricultural productivity solely to African governments, which they say have accorded excessive priority to industry at the expense of agriculture. Such writers omit that there has never been any real industrial deployment in sub-Saharan Africa. Starting more or less from zero in 1960, African industry recorded a growth rate (3.3 percent) in the 1970s that was equal to only one-half the continent's urban growth and barely higher than its population growth. It employs less than 10 percent of the active population and has not therefore reached the point at which we can talk about a secondary production sector. Moreover, its share in world industrial production is falling.

This superficial diagnosis has the advantage of providing a simple argument for the new forces keen to oppose the idea of building a domestic industry in the service of agricultural and rural development. Such an industry must produce the inputs that agriculture needs in order to increase its productivity (fertilizer, improved seed, equipment, etc.), and ensure conservation and processing of farm produce supplied by small farmers to meet rural and urban demand. It must also ensure production of other items needed in the countryside, such as hydroelectricity, sheet metal and cement.

From the point of view of its technical design, this industry must favour local inventiveness, not out of some cultural nationalism, but because the available advanced techniques are very costly and hard to adapt to African small farmers' working conditions and natural environment, or local consumption models.

Multinationals have so far taken no particular initiative in the development of techniques or products suited to African production and consumption conditions, because it would be unlikely to provide a good economic return. If reliance is placed primarily on local creative capacities, it will mean that the technical design of this industrial sector will be produced in close collaboration with craftsmen, small farmers and local agricultural research, while not ruling out the possibility of applying for help to other developing countries that have had success in this type of undertaking (some Asian countries, for example). Although such collaboration has been absent in Africa - owing to the overbearing and paternalistic attitude of agricultural research - it represents one of the key factors for the success of the operation, as it was in developed countries, where agricultural research proved successful because it was closely integrated into rural life, and financed and controlled, at least partially, by cooperative-style farmers' associations. In other words, agricultural research is an important element, and it should be consistently oriented toward: "the rise of indigenous crops capable first of all of meeting the food needs of African populations, forms of animal husbandry linked more closely to the use of local fodder and oilseed meal, new crop rotation systems appropriate to soil conservation problems, and small-scale mechanization and the use of equipment that will increase farm output and lighten heavy labour, but without replacing too many workers" ¹⁹

This process also means that agricultural and rural development support industries should be located in the countryside itself. The few modern production units found in Africa are concentrated in urban centres in most countries, or often just in the capital. This encourages the rural exodus, even if these urban areas are unable to absorb the influx of people. Dispersal/decentralization of agricultural support industries into the countryside therefore makes it possible to maintain a strong population, both by slowing the rural exodus and by encouraging the urban exodus. It also allows a reduction in transaction costs through close control of users, an improvement and reinforcement of interdependence within production sectors, and an assurance of remunerative prices for small farmers by avoiding "the development of large-scale secondary enterprises (major processing companies, foreign distribution chains, large cooperatives) that create wage units that are costly in comparison with the remuneration received by farmers, and very soon find themselves in a de facto monopoly situation". It also facilitates the access of the rural population, especially women (who are excluded from agricultural and other training services, although they often contribute as much as 80 percent of food production) to social services, including training, to the extent that it goes hand in hand with administrative decentralization.

This form of industrialization seems to us to be the only way for local agriculture to capture urban markets and assure its protection against low-priced food imports and the constant flows of food relief which quickly discourage local production efforts. It gives the state an opportunity to legitimize its intervention. Without it, no initiative of this type could be undertaken, and its assistance plays a determining role in the decentralization and creation of agricultural support industries in the countryside and in developing the necessary infrastructure investments (transport, hospitals, schools, electricity networks, storage silos, etc.). Such an approach does not seem incompatible with openness to the outside, seeing that receipts from exports help to finance this industrialization policy.

IMPROVEMENT IN RURAL FINANCING INTERMEDIATION

A KEY FEATURE OF AGRICULTURE IS THE seasonal nature of its operations, which may vary in degree but means that farmers' cash needs and availability do not coincide. Another is the fact that farmers' income depends to a large extent on weather conditions beyond their control. It is therefore hard for them to gain access to official financing - unlike the classic type of business activity.²⁰ Moreover, when commercial banks do grant loans to farmers, they run into various problems: higher transaction costs because their clients are widely scattered; maximum interest rates officially fixed so that they cannot pass on all these costs to the borrower; the frequent absence of guarantees; and problems in enforcing respect of contractual obligations²⁰. All this means that commercial banks have no incentive to extend credit to farmers, and when they do so, they concentrate almost exclusively on large-scale farmers.

This inequality, which puts smallholders at a disadvantage, is also found in the public financing system. When officially-allocated funding is not creamed off by the local elite, it is always granted to large-scale farmers. Similarly, specialized rural financing bodies are interested only in large-scale farmers, under the pretext that they offer fewer risks than small farmers. This injustice toward small farmers is contrary to the very principle on which the state intervenes in this sector, that of promoting the growth and development of agriculture, and integrating small farmers into the market economy (in the broad sense of the term).

This situation leads small farmers and the rural poor to turn to non-formal financing (professional money-lenders, shopkeepers, pawnbrokers, specialized loan agents, landlords, relatives and friends, savings groups, savings and loan associations, etc.). Non-formal financing has features that allow it to solve problems that most of the formal systems do not solve correctly - or at all.²¹

It offers a variety of services to its clients, which clearly shows that the inhabitants of low-income countries require a large range of financial services. It almost always requires participation in organized activities, leading to an increase in disciplined behaviour. It keeps transaction costs low for borrowers and savers by bringing financial services to its clients in places and times that suit them. It brings into play large sums of savings, indicating a strong tendency toward voluntary saving, and also pointing up the failure of the majority of formal finance systems which have not managed to produce attractive deposit services. In general terms it entails reciprocity with direct links between loans and deposits; one person lends to another with the idea that the roles could one day be reversed. It is flexible inasmuch as it has innovative financial approaches allowing it to adapt rapidly to different economic situations (inflation, prosperity or recession).

These advantages, which are totally absent in the formal financing sector, refute the criticisms and attacks made against non-formal financing. From the viewpoint of the small farmer living in a remote area, for example, the shopkeeper who lends him money at a high interest rate is not an exploiter, but simply somebody who offers him a service that no bank or institution would provide for him. Moreover, the institutions supposed to finance agriculture are all based in urban centres, meaning chat small farmers need time and means to visit them.

The question of improving rural intermediation unfortunately fares ill under adjustment policies, which aggravate credit conditions and even bring about the collapse of the whole financing system by liberalizing interest rates and privatizing semi-public financial bodies. According to such policies, interest rates must reflect the relative scarcity of capital, and their liberalization should allow rural financing intermediaries to cover their running costs. It is clear that the interests of small farmers now take second place, since interest rates no longer reflect the priority of investment in the agricultural sector and the countryside in general, but rather the priority of a reasonable return on investment for commercial banks and privatized semi-public bodies. In this 'new' framework, small farmers will always have to face the same problems - an absence of guarantees, high unit costs caused by application processing, high risks, etc., while large-scale farmers will continue to benefit from favourable treatment.

It is true that as subsidized funding programmes have worked to date, they have led to clientelism and inequality - to the disadvantage of small farmers and the rural poor. Rather than being dismantled, they should be corrected by making them much more accessible to all the rural population, for example through the application of a sliding scale of interest according to farm size (in order to make sure that the larger farmers do not corner most of the funds allocated) and varying degrees of coordination with the non-formal financing sector, although unfortunately there is a call for abolition of the latter. This approach will allow an improvement in rural financing intermediation, mobilizing rural savings and channeling them particularly toward development of agricultural activities. This aspect of agricultural financing is complementary to the aspect considered in our previous subsection, for there is no point in setting up agricultural support industries in the countryside if small farmers cannot obtain the necessary funding to use inputs supplied by these industries in order to improve their output.

OBSTACLES IN THE WAY OF AN ALTERNATIVE RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY

LIKE ANY CHANGE BROUGHT ABOUT FROM below, the mobilization and participation of small farmers in the rural development process runs the risk of coming up against the indifference - if not the hostility - of official decision-makers, who are accustomed to thinking for small farmers and monopolizing the decision-making power. This problem is aggravated by the economic crisis and structural adjustment policies which particularly affect small farmers, the rural population and the most needy sectors in general, as well as by the democratization process which distracts them through quarrels with urban elite groups over the redistribution of cards in favour of one or another private economic-interest group. Moreover, this trio of crisis, structural adjustment and democracy is far from neutral in its effects on small farmers, in particular reducing their capacities for expression and fostering "a fragmentation of their behaviour and struggles: their identity is segmented by the many practical problems they have to deal with in order to survive, identification of their opponents becomes blurred, and the stakes seem purely defensive".¹⁴

Dispersal/decentralization of agricultural support industries into the countryside requires a supportive state policy. However, such a policy is impossible while the decision-making power of African states is mortgaged to the authorities in Washington who establish public investment programmes in their place, linking the promise of loans to choices of economic policy and to cost-effectiveness criteria that they themselves have specified. These programmes sacrifice public and social investment on the altar of budgetary orthodoxy and servicing of the exterior debt of African countries. They prevent any possibility of African countries' recovering their own internal focus, however well-formulated the policies in question, in other words the implementation of those directly favouring small farmers, the rural population and the most needy sectors in general.

It should be added that even though, as we have shown above, a policy centred on the development of industries focusing on the domestic market is not necessarily incompatible with a policy of openness to the outside, it is consistently condemned by the World Bank and the IMF, which always advance the immediate comparative advantage of certain African agricultural products, whereas every Western country, apart from Great Britain (at least until its entry into the EU) has adopted anti-Ricardian agricultural policies that have allowed them to reach food self-sufficiency. These countries grant their farmers about US$ 300 000 million in subsidies per year,⁸ while their overall protectionism costs developing countries about US$ 74 000 million per year.¹

Conclusion

RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS UNDERTAKEN in Africa have so far failed because they have generally been designed without taking account of small farmers, and have also been deflected from their initial objectives. A break has to be made with the classic rural intervention methods which assume a superior attitude to small farmers, imposing solutions on them that take no account of their capacity for initiative and creativity, nor of the aspirations of the rural population in general. Such a change in attitude means that we have to start by recognizing that small farmers have the capacity and right to mobilize themselves through the forms of organization they choose, and to have official actors participate in initiatives decided by themselves, with the idea that technical experts should work not for farmers but with them, and according to a timetable fixed by or with them.

This recognition of small farmers' rights to self-development is not enough to bring them and the rural population in general out of their poverty. They also need an environment favourable to improvement in their working conditions and an increase in their output. Such an environment is lacking in Africa and has to be created, particularly through development of agricultural support industries in the countryside, and improvement of rural financing intermediation; the latter means opening the tills more fully to small farmers and the rural population in general, as well as increasing coordination with the non-formal financing sector, which mobilizes rural savings better than the formal sector. The necessary environment also requires an agrarian reform to establish a stable land-tenure system that will offer security to small farmers (collective or private appropriation of land, depending on the circumstances of each country or region). These are the conditions for overcoming the logic behind the small farmers' conservatism which constitutes such an obstacle to sustainable rural development. It is hard to see such a process taking off without the judicious intervention of African States. However, who knows whether they in fact have the will and means to carry out such policies.

Endnotes

1. T. Coutrot and M. Husson, Les destins du Tiers Monde (Paris: Nathan, 1993).

2. P. Leroy, La faim dans le monde (Paris: Le Monde-Marabout, 1994).

3. According to FAO and WHO norms.

4. UNDP, Rapport mondial sur le développement humain (Paris: Económica, 1995).

5. M. Rousselet, "L'agriculture, une priorité oubliée". Les Tiers Mondes Cahiers Français, 270 (March-April 1995).

6. A. Kabou, Et si l'Afrique refusait le développement? (Paris: Harmattan, 1991).

7. F. Diawara, Le manifeste de l'homme primitif (Paris: Grasset, 1972).

8. P. Hugon, L'économie de l'Afrique (Paris: La Découverte, 1993).

9. C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Afrique noire: Permanences et ruptures (Paris: Payot, 1985).

10. R.W.L. Alpine and J. Pickett Jr., Agriculture, liberalisation et croissance économique au Ghana et en Côte d'Ivoire 1960-1990
(Paris: OEDC, 1993).

11. R. Dumont and M.-F. Mottin, L'Afrique étranglée (Paris: Seuil, 1981).

12. J. Pickett, Le développement économique en Ethiopie: L'Agriculture, le marché et l'Etat
(Paris: OEDC, 1991).

13. J.-M. Siroën, "L'agriculture, le GATT et le marché", DEMETER 94/95, Economie et stratégies agricoles (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994).

14. M. Haubert, "Politiques alimentaires et mobilisations des paysans", M. Haubert (éd.), Les paysans peuvent-ils nourrir le tiers-monde? (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995).

15. P. Salama and J. Valier, Pauvretés et inégalités dans le tiers monde (Paris: La Découverte, 1994).

16. K.M. Cleaver, Stratégie de développement agricole en Afrique subsaharienne et le rôle particulier de la Banque mondiale (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993).

17. S. Amin, La gestion capitaliste de la crise
(Paris: Harmattan, 1995).

18. A.-M. Hochet and N. Aliba, Développement rural et méthodes participatives en Afrique
(Paris: Harmattan, 1995).

19. P. Jacquemot and M. Raffinot, Accumulation et développement
(Paris: Harmattan, 1985).

20. A. Braverman and M. Huppi, "Comment améliorer le crédit rural dans les pays en développement", Finances et Développement (March, 1991).

21. The following paragraph, which describes the features of non-formal finance in developing countries is taken from D.W. Adams and D.A. Fitchett, "Introduction," D.W. Adams and D.A. Fitchett (eds.), Finance informelle dans les pays en vote de développement
(Lyon: Presse Universitaire de Lyon, 1994).

Accounting for 'customary' land and institutional policies: The example of Niger

Tidiane Ngaido

TIDIANE NGAIDO is a research associate, Land Tenure Centre, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

Introduction
Endnotes
Bibliography

Introduction

Recent efforts by Sahelian states to define and recognize 'traditional' ownership rights and encourage local participation in resource management have often been based on an inadequate understanding of local institutions in the 1990s. Niger's most recent land reform effort is representative. It involves writing a new Rural Code which in theory recognizes and empowers customary land tenure practices and institutions. The Code's objective is to establish a national-level legal and institutional framework for increasing local participation in resource management, recognizing customary ownership rights, and incorporating local tenure and land management systems. The problem is that Niger, like many African states contemplating resource management reforms, seems unaware of or willing to ignore the structural impact on 'traditional' institutions and practices of 30 years of post-colonial policy reforms.

Restoring customary rights: Why?

THE NEW DEBATE AROUND INDIGENOUS tenure systems rekindles arguments that took place between the 1950s and the 1970s concerning the adequacy of indigenous tenure systems for agricultural development and resource management. The first concern of this debate was tenure security and the incentives of farmers to invest in labour and capital to improve the productivity of the land they cultivate. A second aspect of the debate was the rights of communities over resources and their institutional capabilities to define and enforce equitable rules of access and resource use.

In general, customary land tenure systems and institutions were perceived as inhibiting agriculture development. It has been argued that "unless traditional systems are to be displaced and destroyed, they must be reconstructed" and that "new arrangements are needed to give greater scope to the expansion and liberating influences of development" (Parsons, 1971:26). Sahelian states responded to concerns about the adequacy of customary institutions and tenure systems by progressively replacing traditional institutions' control over land and natural resources (the basis of their authority) and by replacing customary tenure systems with Western-style legislation. Land reform policies took two routes: promoting private property and titling of customary rights to respond to the needs of agricultural development, and asserting control and management over natural resources by appropriating the rights and roles once held by local communities. However, these "post independence political changes and administrative reforms have apparently undercut the legal bases for effective local regulation" (Lawry, 1990:404). This undercutting and the mitigated successes of development efforts have led to the current reconsideration of the utility of customary rights and interest in their restoration.

BACKGROUND

IN RECENT YEARS, MANY RESEARCHERS AND policy-makers noted that post-colonial land and resource management policies did not favour sustainable resource management or agricultural development. Bruce (1984) argues that efforts to alter rural land rights have been frustrated because customary arrangements have prevailed, distorting attempts to introduce more formal systems. Freudenberger (1992:8) argues that the attempt by "Sahelian states to replace indigenous systems has resulted in tenure insecurity for rural populations in many instances and reduced the incentive for rural population to invest in land improvements and sustainable natural resource management practices." Hesseling and Ba (1994:8) argue that "legislating land, water and forest is difficult to enforce at the local level. Almost everywhere, land legislation is seen as an obstacle to balanced, equitable, environment-conscious development." Oxby (1980:1) found that "the lack of local knowledge and lack of staff have considerably undermined the implementation of rural development programmes. For this reason, the need for farmers' participation in the implementation of programmes has become more pressing."

Researchers and policy-makers agree that there is a need to change existing legislation to accommodate customary rights and greater participation of local communities. Lawry (1990) argues that states and donor communities should promote better resource management through policies that give users stronger incentives for sound resource use by extending clear property rights to them and by promoting local institutions that are more accountable to the public and better situated to regulate resource use than the centralized state. Moreover, Lawry argues that to achieve this goal, it is necessary to create a balance between the rights and roles to be devolved to individual users, communities and states. Individual users need "the tenure security that will assure returns to investment and good land management," communities need to have the power to control and enforce rules for better resource management, and states should provide "a legal framework for such structures, which define and protect the use-rights of individuals and groups, but also define the rights and responsibilities of communities in relation to chose of the state."

There have been initiatives to involve or even devolve resource management to communities since the mid-1980s, when Sahelian countries as well as donors realized that most of the agricultural projects implemented in the 1960s and 1970s did not achieve their targeted goals. However, this devolution effort has concentrated mainly on forest and natural resource management. These attempts to devolve the role played by state agencies in local communities focused on (1) mismanagement of forest resources and promoting sustainable resource management strategies and (2) environmental degradation and providing communities with secure tenure over resources which allows them to invest in better management and soil improvement practices. The devolution effort recognized that customary tenure systems, mainly common property resources, could be the basis for development and aimed at restoring local control over resource use and management.

RECOGNIZING CUSTOMARY RIGHTS

THE VIEW THAT COMMON PROPERTY encourages opportunism because individuals overuse common resources influenced policy-making greatly, because solutions for better agricultural development and resource management depended on better population control policies and privatization. However, the failure of statutory legislation to achieve better resource management and agricultural development has fostered a new interest in customary land tenure systems. Customary tenure systems are no longer perceived as things to reform but as systems that can help solve problems related to bad resource management. McKean (1992:8) argues that "well-organized communities of co-owners are capable of protecting and managing their property quite well." Falloux (1986:17) argues that "the virtue and strength of indigenous land use systems derived from the fact that they were easily accessible to all and managed by the village." Verhelst (1969:643) argues that "customary law and tenure has often shown its ability to be a proper base for development. This must be ascribed to its remarkable flexibility in adjusting to new conditions, as well as the security it continues to offer." Freudenberger (1992:3) proposes that "development programmes should seek to build upon the strengths of these complex sets of conventions; conventions that are not age-old and immune to change but constantly adapting to meet new needs."

The debate on indigenous tenure systems has emphasized the issue of common property resources. Blaikie and Brookfield define common property resources as resources that (1) are subject to individual use but not to individual possession, (2) have a limited number of users with independent use rights, and (3) users have organized as members of a "collectivity" that has the right to exclude others who are not members. Bromley (1991) defines common property as the "private property of a group of co-owners." These definitions suggest that users have an equal right of property over resources and that they have the capacity to fix the rules of access and the norms of utilization of these facilities.

Common property, co-ownership, and membership

Common property definitions do not take into account the caste organization of many African societies nor the nature and availability of resources that remain under the control of the patriarch or chief at the family or village level. Members, who are supposed to be co-owners, are in fact use-right holders who must conform to the rules governing access and the norms of utilization. Moreover, membership is viewed as providing a de facto co-ownership right over the resources of the family, the clan, the tribe or the village. As a result, there is a general belief that once individuals are members of a community they can automatically claim co-ownership of community common lands.

Possibilities for individuals to claim co-ownership depend very much on the nature of the community and the nature of 'common lands'. For example in Niger, communities include tribes, clans, lineage, families and villages. Common lands are lands appropriated by families and lineages. Chieftaincy lands (terres de chefferie) are controlled by tribes, clans, villages, and canton chiefs. This distinction among "common lands" is important because chiefs of customary institutions control common lands of their families or lineage as well as chieftaincy lands. Family or lineage common lands are only loaned by chiefs, but they grant use-rights of the chieftaincy lands. In addition, individuals can claim co-ownership of lineage or family common lands only if they are members by descent of that group. On chieftaincy lands, however, all community members have land-use opportunities. Hence, the level at which a person received land will determine the right she or he exercises on the land.

Restoring local control over resource use and management

New participatory approaches, Gestion du Terroir (GT)¹ and Natural Resource Management (NRM), try to "empower the rural population with the responsibility for planning, implementing, and decision-making concerning project activities" (Litche and Al, 1994). These approaches grew out of recognition that the control exercised by government institutions did not allow sustainable resource management practices (McLain, 1992). Local groups that have developed sustainable rules and practices to manage these resources should be made responsible. Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop (1975:721) argue that "common property, with the regulatory institutions it implies, is capable of satisfactory performance in the management of natural resources, such as grazing and forest lands, in a market economy."

One of underlying premises of these approaches is that mismanagement of resources results from a lack of well-defined rights. So it becomes necessary, in order to promote a sustainable management system, to secure resource users by granting them private property rights. Velded (1992:23) noted that "from different perspectives, proposals are made for increased decentralization of government authority and devolution of control over resources with local user groups to be given legal authority and tenure rights so that they can assume the responsibilities relinquished by government." Bruce (1986) and Lawry (1990) argue that the state should grant rural people the power to legislate locally the rules governing resource use and create mechanisms to enforce these rules.

The Gestion du Terroirs/NRM approach has received particular attention on natural resource management projects.

Compaore (1993:5) defines Gestion du Terroir as "a development approach based on greater participation and responsibilization of rural communities for better resource management in a given space, the territory, under secure rights." Painter (1991:2) argues that Gestion du Terroir "came to correct rural development methods, which for many years limited the participation of local populations to the application of indications given by Integrated Rural Development project personnel." Sawadogo (1993:3) argues that the objective of Gestion du Terroir is to answer two questions: (1) how to assure a better reproduction of natural resources to guarantee the control of development; and (2) how to involve the populations so that they become actors, beneficiaries, and decision-makers of their development. Rochette (1993:24) argues that this approach is "a method for overcoming present constraints and reverse ecological and socio-economic tendencies of the deterioration of rural societies."

"The promotion of policies that will improve the quality of life for the rural poor without destroying the indigenous institutions and knowledge while enhancing the capacity for participation in the national economy." Ms. ESSY LETSOALO - SOUTH AFRICA

In addition, the number and severity of conflicts between different users, which are increasingly ethnic, require a new management approach with well-defined user rights and liabilities. Rochette (1993:24) argues that to achieve this goal it is important to work with rural populations and "create the internal conditions (at the level of the community) and external (at the regional and national levels) that enable the community to manage sustainably its territory, by its initiative." Furthermore, Gestion du Terroir/NRM approaches are interesting because they recognize the rights of rural communities over their territory and resources on that territory and they grant decision-making power to communities regarding access and use of these resources. Moreover, these approaches grant exclusive property rights to a specific community and common property rights to members of that community who have equal rights over access and resource use. In addition, community members are vested with power to exclude strangers from using community resources. However, there are major shortcomings to these approaches.

· The dichotomy between rules and rule-makers, and traditional institutions. Customary common property is workable only if institutions which have defined access and use still have enforcement mechanisms. In addition, local institutions could be a base for sustainable resource management policies only if (1) these institutions continue to control resources that are to be managed and (2) communities at large continue to abide by the rules governing access and use of these resources. For common property approaches to be viable policy-making instruments, rules and rule-makers need to be integrated and dealt with as a whole.

· Targeting users and non-traditional institutions. Users are commonly organized into local management committees or cooperatives. According to FAO (1993:21), "to assure a real involvement and responsibilization of village actors, the best formula is to encourage the emergence of a local organization which is representative (of all land users) and disposes of full decision-making and of management capacity." The role of customary institutions was reduced to an honorary status, while the decision-making lies in the hands of cooperatives or committees village members. Moreover, this devolution did not account for customary status of these resources. For example in Niger, village and can-Con chiefs traditionally controlled common village and canton resources and defined rights and liabilities of resource access and use. Recognizing local institutions and requesting their participation is important for achieving better resource management practices. Not integrating institutions which have traditionally controlled resources and defined rules of access and use of these resources will foster their opposition or apathy. This can lead to conflicts and interfere with tenure reform. Thus, the role of chiefs should be defined in term of both social relations and of effectiveness in enforcing rules.

· Membership involved mainly individuals who are directly using these resources. Kjell and Al (1993) noted that in the Gueselbodi (Niger) forest, the cooperative did not play a big role in forest management activities. Only wood-cutters and straw-harvesters were members of the cooperatives. The majority of the participants in these projects were peasants and/or wood-cutters. Herders and women, who used the forest for grazing or collecting fire wood, were not involved in these village organizations.

· The democratization of resource management is similar to state control because, although the group is perceived as homogenous, it actually has a lot of internal variation that reflects customary social relations of production (Madougou and Breidemann, 1993; Elbow, 1994). The emergence of another sphere of decision-making, management committees, encourages competition among customary decision-makers who strive to recuperate these committees. In addition, social hierarchies (castes, age groups, etc.) cause blockages. The project Energy II in Niger encountered many problems in setting up management committees to regulate the use of the Tientiergou forest by Fulani herders, their former slaves (rimaïbé), and the Zarma population.

"Fulani are herders and rimaïbé and Zarma are farmers for whom the activity of wood cutting is socially acceptable. Therefore we had two clans in every village. On the one hand the Fulani herders who retain the traditional power and on the other hand the rimïbé, former Fulani slaves, and the Zarma immigrants, able to cut and sell wood" (Madougou and Breidemann, 1993:3).

So, these social realities hinder projects that attempt to reduce the disparities in decision-making regarding resource management. The former 'managers', here the Fulani, were able to remove grazing areas and rainy-season watering points from the management of these committees. The caste system is still very strong in western rural Niger; social origin helps determine status and decision-making power within society. In rural areas the main distinction is between borcin (noble) and bannya (slave). Slavery has been abolished but subjective considerations continue to prevail. Their access to land was dependent on their former masters and chiefs.

· More emphasis on farming communities. Painter (1991:66) found that Gestion du Terroir/NRM approaches are limiting because they favour farming communities over pastoral communities. This bias is a problem because it transforms seasonal rights into definitive rights. In the Sahel, farmers exercise their property rights on their fields only during the rainy season when they are cultivating. During the dry season, herders have use-rights over harvested and fallow fields. Failure to consider this aspect of the Sahelian production system has fostered many conflicts.

These devolution efforts and grants of rights to create local common property institutions are not always viable in the long term because their life span corresponds to the life of the project. The control and management over resource use and access becomes less efficient and could degenerate into abuses. The problem is not "common property rights", and whether these rights are recognized or changed, but the roles to be played by the customary institutions that defined and granted rights to members of their communities. These customary institutions and tenure systems have survived in rural areas because they have found ways to maintain their traditional social relations of production with community members.

Moreover, the critical point in the management of these common lands came with the shift of common lands from "common property" (socially-based, socially-controlled, and socially-enforced property) to property over which the state asserted right and control. This shift eliminated the social mechanisms that helped to manage resources. The devolution of these state-confiscated rights at a later period did not restore customary mechanisms of resource use and access.

Recognition of customary rights and institutions in Niger

IT IS NECESSARY, WHEN DEALING WITH common property issues in the Sahel, to consider both rules and rule-makers. Parsons (1971:18) proposed to identify "basic issues in ways that permit the modification or modernization, rather than the total destruction of customary tenure systems." Bruce and Freudenberger (1992) propose to move from "replacement" to "adaptation" through the development of national land legislation that focuses on the "capacity of indigenous legal systems to develop in response to changes in their demographic and economic environment, and the processes by which this occurs."

The 1990 National Conference was a turning point in Nigerien politics because 30 years of state policies were evaluated. The Conference served as a forum during which past government land policies were criticized and rejected. There were found increasing land use conflicts and rejection of many reconciliation efforts in eight districts of Niger immediately after the conference. Two major laws which directly affect rural people were enacted after the Conference: the March 2, 1993 Ordinance (93-015) fixed the principles of orientation of the Rural Code, and the March 30, 1993 Ordinance (93-028) defined the status of the chieftaincy in Niger.

THE RURAL CODE (ORDINANCE 93-015)

THE MARCH 2, 1993, ORDINANCE (93-015), Principes d'Orientation du Code Rural is the latest effort of the Nigerien Government to alleviate problems plaguing rural areas and foster private investment in the land. The Ordinance provides a legal framework for the elaboration of a Rural Code for (1) providing tenure security to rural operators, (2) organizing and managing rural areas, (3) promoting better natural resources management and conservation practices, and (4) helping plan and manage country-wide use of natural resources (Secretariat Permanent du Code Rural, 1993). The proposed Code recognizes that to meet these objectives, previous mistakes must be avoided. Therefore, law-making should be pragmatic in recognizing customary rights and the possibility for chiefs to grant exclusive rights, drafting complementary texts that will clarify different provisions of the law, and promoting new mechanisms of resource management. Moreover, the law creates local land boards (commissions foncières), which will register land rights, control land use and help in conflict resolution.

RECOGNIZING CUSTOMARY RIGHTS

LAW-MAKERS IN NIGER WERE PROMPTED to recognize and elevate customary rights to the same level as written property rights in order to provide tenure security to rural people. The Ordinance stipulates that:

ARTICLE 8: Land ownership is acquired by custom and by means of written law.

ARTICLE 9: Customary ownership results from: acquisition of land ownership by inheritance since time immemorial and confirmed by the collective memory; a definitive land grant to a person by the customary competent authority; and all other forms of land acquisition foreseen by local customs.

Customary ownership confers to its holder real and complete land ownership.

Attempts to recognize customary rights are not recent in Niger. The Diori regime (1960-1974) enacted a law which recognized customary rights on July 19, 1961. However, the contextual reference and the implications of the two laws are different. The Diori law was enacted right after colonization, when customary rights were still very strong. The Rural Code was enacted after the government of Niger had tried for 30 years to promote ownership among use-right holders and tenant farmers. Thus, it becomes difficult to determine what is 'customary' because of the many attempts to change customary tenure systems. In the Diori law, the recognition of ownership is just a confirmation of existing rights. The Rural Code's recognition of ownership both confirms existing rights and allows customary landowners and the chieftaincy to challenge post-colonial land reform policies.

The major innovation of this law is the integration of customary institutions into the legal framework and the definition of their roles in resource management as well as in conflict resolution. Article 9 of the Ordinance (93-015) stipulates that customary ownership can be acquired by "the definitive attribution of land to an individual by competent customary authorities." The right of customary institutions to grant land rights was recognized.

Moreover, the Ordinance requires litigants to first seek reconciliation at the level of customary authorities, and that chiefs record the outcome of the reconciliation, whether litigants were reconciled or not. In addition, the Rural Code reduces lengthy procedures and revisions of reconciliation by eliminating conflict resolution at the administrative level and confining it to customary authorities or judges.

THE CHIEFTAINCY STATUS (ORDINANCE 93-028)

THE RECOGNITION OF CUSTOMARY institutions is an important initiative in the Sahel. This makes the Nigerien experience very interesting. This recognition is a process that started during the Kountche regime (1974-1987) when, following the military coup on April 15, 1974, the chieftaincy created an association. Charlick (1991:65) noted that "the association of traditional chiefs was a holdover from colonial times, which the Diori regime had effectively disbanded, and its revitalization seems to represent a step toward greater involvement of rural elites. During this period however, Kountche allowed the chiefs little autonomy, treating them as administrators and even replacing certain chiefs with military officers." The March 30, 1993 Ordinance (93-028), which defines the new status of customary authorities, confirms this process that started during the Kountche regime and highlights the importance of customary institutions in Nigerien politics and in rural areas.

ARTICLE 1: It is ascertained on the territory of the Republic of Niger the existence of collectivities whose structures are inherited from our traditions and customs under the denomination of customary and traditional communities.

ARTICLE 2: Customary and traditional communities are hierarchically integrated in the administrative organization of the Republic of Niger and placed under the tutelage of administrative circumscriptions and territorial collectivities districts and townships, as they were defined and set by the legislation in force.

ARTICLE 19: As an authority invested with popular legitimacy, the chief of cantons, of groupings, of provinces or the sultan is a rightful member with a deliberative voice at district or municipal council.

ARTICLE 22: As a magistrate of the administrative order, the traditional chief has the duty to maintain the public order within the collectivity of which he has under his responsibility and to report facts capable of affecting him and all infringements to the penal law, to the administrative authority.

This official recognition of traditional chiefs and their integration into the administrative organization make them an integral part of the Nigerian administration. Moreover, chiefs claim that their popular legitimacy entitles them to participate in decision-making at the level of the district and commune. In addition, Article 22 elevates them to the rank of administrative magistrates. Chiefs were very happy because for a long time they were only considered "administrative auxiliaries." As auxiliaries, subprefects could make decisions without consulting chiefs but now, with their new status, subprefects would have to consult them for any decision regarding the area and people under the chiefs jurisdiction. In addition, Article 7 limits the people who can run for office to people from chieftaincy families.

Thus, chiefs have been able to assure the continuity of the chieftaincy in Niger because only people with customary legitimacy can run. Chieftaincy has become a caste in which only birth members can aspire to the role of chief. This is a real concern for present-day Niger because the legitimacy of some canton chiefs is being challenged. In October 1993, two major newspapers, Sahel Dimanche (No 542) and Le Democrate (No. 74) published a dispute between two candidates for the chieftaincy of Tamou (district of Say). The newly-elected canton chief was originally from the canton of Djongore which was annexed to the canton of Tamou in 1932 by the May 2, 1932 Local Act. His opponent claims that he does not have any right over the chieftaincy of Tamou.

Furthermore, Article 15 grants chiefs the power to conciliate disputes. The article stresses that once litigants agree and affix their signatures to the minutes of the reconciliation, they can no longer refute the dispositions of these reconciliations.

Article 15 also recognizes chiefs as managers of the lands within their cantons. This includes virgin lands to which they can grant use rights. Moreover, they can assure tenure to landowning families. This 'custom' was used by chiefs and landowning families to recapture the land they lost during previous land reform policies.

Both Ordinances recognize the importance of customary tenure rights and chieftaincy institutions in rural areas. Control over land is a requirement for the effectiveness of customary institutions. For the chiefs, controlling common lands under their jurisdiction means controlling people, because they provide production opportunities to landshort or landless households, which are so important for their survival. For rural households, the sustainability of their production strategies depends very much on the lands they own and land access options available to them in the case of need.

IMPLICATIONS OF INSTITUTIONAL AND TENURE CHANGES IN NIGER

THE ONGOING INSTITUTIONAL AND TENURE reforms in Niger offer hope if they are carried out properly and if they account for tenure and social changes in the rural areas. Rights and access options are key to the maintenance of traditional production and social systems. Guaranteeing access-options requires the presence of institutions that traditionally allocated land to their members and to needy farmers. Patriarchal and chieftaincy systems were affected by post-colonial tenure reforms. The Rural Code offers hope at individual, family, contractual, and chieftaincy levels.

During all the different periods, access to individual and family land was constant with more concentration during the colonial and Diory regimes. Fifty percent of these lands was acquired before 1965. Moreover, 75 percent of contracted fields (borrowed and pledged) was acquired after 1975, with a concentration between 1987 and 1990. The graph also shows that 75 percent of the fields on chieftaincy lands was acquired from 1985 and 1990. These different findings suggest that in the case of Niger, tenure reform and institutional reforms (Chieftaincy status) have to be analyzed together.

Individual tenure security refers to the ability of individuals to acquire land through purchase, inheritance and gift. Achieving individual tenure security requires well-defined and recognized customary rights, and the existence of a land market that allows land transactions between those who have land and those who demand land. Articles 8 and 9 of the Principes d'Orientation du Code Rural addressed this condition by elevating customary rights to written rights. Moreover, the Principes d'Orientation du Code Rural stipulates that customary ownership rights can be obtained through inheritance, grants from customary authorities and other forms of access recognized by local customs. However, the status of lands obtained by tenant farmers and use-right holders during the Diori and Kountche regimes needs to be well defined to avoid the multiplication of disputes and the reopening of resolved cases. As of yet, this issue has been avoided.

Increasing sales of land in rural areas indicate an emerging informal land market that allows farmers and entrepreneurs to secure land. By elevating customary rights to written rights, the Rural Code will contribute to the development of the existing informal land market towards a more formal land market that will allow secure land transactions. For this to be achieved, customary rights need to be recorded at the level of the tenure commissions. The level of dispute between buyers and sellers of land in rural areas makes the recording an important component of the Rural Code process.

At the family level, the provisions made by Article 8 and 9 of the Principes d'Orientation du Code Rural provide tenure security to landowning families and use-right holders. The possibilities for extended families to register their common ownership rights and give security to their members are crucial for agricultural development policies. Still, it is important to make sure that absent members are taken into consideration because many conflicts between family members result from the failure of patriarchs to secure the welfare of absent members. The failure of patriarchs to ensure tenure security to family members generally results in the fragmentation of the family land.

The recognition of chiefs' capabilities to grant ownership rights is an important step toward changing use-rights to ownership rights. The participation of chiefs in the Rural Code process provides an opportunity to grant ownership rights to use right holders. Their status and their regained power over land grants make them an important partner for rural development issues. This does not mean that they will implement relations of exploitation with rural communities but rather an institution that will participate in the making of Niger. The level of education and their participation in the different governments of Niger make actual chiefs ready for change. Moreover, the graph shows farmers' increasing reliance on chiefs for land.

The degradation of trust between landowners and tenant farmers, following the "land to the tiller" policy, and increasing land disputes provide the rationale for formulating a Rural Code. Contractual tenure security is crucial for landless and landshort farmers who depend on borrowing to meet their family land needs.

Setting up a system of contracts would provide a greater certainty to tenant farmers on the lands they cultivate and enhance their production strategies. Contracts are important for agricultural development because they enhance access options through "exchange of opportunities beyond the traditional confines" based in trust. Article 20 specifies that tenant farmers are required to develop the contracted field in the same manner as landowners. This provision and the possibilities of non-rural people to participate in agricultural production will enhance production systems.

Conclusions

THE NIGERIEN LAND AND INSTITUTIONAL policies are original and innovative because customary rules and rule-makers are an integral part of the legislative reform. These changes do not relegate people to their traditional social relations of production, but increase the efficiency of customary institutions to manage resource use and access. However, for these reforms to be effective, complementary texts should carefully assess the impact of previous legislation and adaptation of those rules. Failing to take these changes into consideration will favour the multiplication of land disputes.

Endnotes

1. The Gestion du Terroir is a development approach that targets the village. It considers that each village has a space that it controls and which resources are used by village members to assure their survival.

2. To date, fifteen complementary texts have been identified: (1) Titling and rights registration (Dossier Rural), (2) Decentralization and the status of forests, (3) Development (Mise en valeur), (4) Expropriation for public utility, (5) Fish and Fishing, (6) Forestry, (7) Herding areas (terroirs d'attache), (8) Land use contracts, (9) Conflicts resolution, (10) Property rights, (11) Rural concessions, (12) Land Management Schemes (Schémas d'aménagements fonciers), (13) Status of lands developed by the state: irrigation, vegetable gardening, etc., (14) Wildlife, (15) Definition of the status and role of Tenure Commissions.

3. Article 149 of the Principes d'Orientation du Code Rural.

4. Association des Chefs Traditionnels du Niger, "Reunion Ordinaire du Conseil Executif National. " 1993.

5. For further detail, see Ngaido (1996).

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Agrarian reform and rural development strategies in eastern and central Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe

Arnold E. Sibanda

ARNOLD E. SIBANDA is research fellow, Department of Agrarian and Labour Studies, Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe, Harare.

Introduction
Bibliography

Introduction

Much of the rural sector in Africa today is characterized by forms of a pre-free enterprise economy and forms of a free-enterprise political economy. There is, however, no homogeneity among the peasantry in Africa and within the political economies of different countries. There are important and dynamic variations in terms of structures of production, outcomes of production and modes of extraction of surplus labour and deployment of the surplus product.

Whatever its intensity, pace and form, the penetration of free-enterprise economy into the countryside has had one observable and cardinal effect - the accelerated differentiation of the peasantry and the creation of a former-peasant wage labour force. At the other end of this social force, is a rich class that owns and controls the land and the means to make it productive. In between these two core forces is a mass of small masters who own small pieces of land (though differentiated in terms of sizes of holdings) and limited means of production and, like the rural labourers, partake directly in the production process. This, though vulgar and oversimplified, in many ways depicts the character of the rural sector in much of sub-Saharan African countries. It should be emphasized that though differing in terms of intensity, character and form, the policies of the states towards the rural sector have invariably contributed to the acceleration of this process.

This paper will look at the salient features of the rural sectors in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Kenya

A MIDDLE CLASS HAS EMERGED IN THE rural sector of Kenya and this social force has been pivotal in the transition to free-enterprise agriculture. Some observers have claimed that to speak of Kenyan agriculture is to speak of the rural sector middle class. This claim is due to the observation that the large-scale - small-scale dichotomy has become irrelevant with the accelerated impoverishment of the non-middle class sectors. Some authors claimed this process was so much underway in Kenya that its countryside was becoming dominated by small-commodity production, i.e. small agricultural producers who, with the help of their family labour, produce mainly for their own subsistence and for the fulfilment of their obligations to the state. With respect to the development of the rural sector of countries like Kenya, it is important to review their colonial and post colonial policies.

The colonial agricultural policy fostered the dominance of white settler capital. The agricultural sector was thus divided into the large-scale sector in the European-owned highlands and the small-scale sector occupied by African producers in marginal lands called "reserves." The large-scale sector prevented the development of African commodity production, i.e. coffee and tea plantation and dairy and beef production. Toward the close of the colonial period, Africans in the small-scale farm sector constituted some 90 percent of the country's total population, but the expansion of internal agricultural and industrial markets was restricted by the Europeans. This constitutes the background of the land revolts of the 1950s.

After independence, both local and export markets and structural changes increased production. These policies were accompanied by changes in land tenure in African reserves and the removal of the racial barriers in commodity production. The years between 1959 and 1963 witnessed accelerated deracialization of land ownership in the white highlands. As a result, the social location of commodity production was transformed between the two sectors.

The post-independence period saw the rise of the small holder farmer/producer in the former African Reserves accounting for about 50 percent of total recorded sales of agricultural products, and the continued development of the large-scale farm sector, albeit at a slower pace than the small-scale sector.

Government obviously changed with decolonization and the post-independence agricultural policies were put to thrust by the African nationalists. Governments have not changed in Kenya since independence. They have been formed successively by the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) Party, first led by the late Jomo Kenyatta, and since his death in the late 1970s, by Daniel Arap Moi. Since the 1980s, Kenya has followed a quasi-liberal-capitalist political and economic path.

Today 80 percent of the land surface in Kenya is arid and semi-arid and is home to 20 percent of the Kenyan population. The remaining land is medium high potential areas with 80 percent of the population. Kenya has three identifiable land tenure systems -leasehold, freehold and customary. Communal land ownership was fragmented and replaced by private land ownership on the basis of it being inimical to individual advancement. This replacement was part in the 1961 Independence Constitution which allowed the purchase and sale of land. This became the major policy thrust of post-colonial land reform and rural development strategies.

Even during the colonial period, a few settlement or land transfer programmes were initiated. For example, there were Low Density Schemes in which some support was given for small peasant owners. Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, a High Density Million Acre Scheme was implemented to settle 70 000 families on low quality land. Landless Kenyans were settled on high density small-holdings.

Loans given via the Agricultural Finance Company (AFC) facilitated the transfer of land (by purchase of large-scale farms) to the African middle classes. Loans of up to 80 percent of the value of the land were given. Other land transfer programmes involved Harambee Schemes which targeted more modest populations. Some land transfers took place on a cooperative basis.

These schemes have achieved some success in land transfer and redistribution, as well as in helping in the overall decolonization process. Some observers feel the land transfer programmes have watered down Kenyan land politics insofar as middle-class Africans were integrated into ownership of the Kenyan Highlands, while few landless and unemployed persons were given land.

These transfers were supported by international financing. This emphasized values of individualization and the protection of private property. On the other hand, state, trust and forest lands were - via the 1961 Settlement Fund Trust - brought into productive use for the benefit of some landless, unemployed and displaced persons.

In Kenyan agriculture, the dominant form of land tenure is the freehold system. In this system, private land cannot be acquired by the state except for public use. If so acquired, the government grants compensation through the High Court of Kenya. In the leasehold system, both state and private owners lease land to tenants. State-owned land includes game parks, state forests, state farms, state lands under lease, etc. Community-occupied land is really state land which lies mainly in arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya. Most peasant pastoralists are sustained in these areas.

Kenya has institutionalized programmes such as the Land Adjudication Programme which is administered under the 1968 Land Adjudication Act Chapter 284 and the 1968 Land (Group Representatives) Act Chapter 287. This programme involves straight forward registration of land (with certificates of registration issued) as per the Adjudication Act.

The problems of this programme can be summarized as follows:

· it conflicts with customary beliefs;

· where land swapping is suggested, this may conflict with individual preferences for the soil quality of already held plots as opposed to that offered for swapping;

· the processes are costly and slow; and

· some communities resist change from communal to individual tenure (linked to conflict with custom).

Under the Land (Group Representatives) Act, group means tribe, clan, section, family or others occupying land communally. A group ranch is an area of rangelands with members holding a collective title deed.

The privatization of arid and semi-arid lands (mainly pastoral areas) involves fragmentation of land into small holdings insufficient for individual unit use and increased rigidity of boundaries. The potential results of this exercise are felt to be overgrazing, environmental degradation, reduction of pastoral capacity, etc.

LAND ADMINISTRATION

THE MINISTRY OF LANDS AND SETTLEMENT has various developments through which lands are administered. These include departments of physical planning, mapping, land surveying, land registration and evaluation, land adjudication and coordination, land settlement and land control. The country is administered through a two-tier system of central government (sector ministries) and local authorities. The planning policy is highly decentralized in a manner meant to achieve democratization and relevance. However, the budgets for local authorities are still centrally controlled, as are the external aid inflows from donors. There is also district-level decentralization with ministerial departments accountable to district level development committees. These committees are nominated by government and their composition is varied, ranging from church leaders to 'chiefs' and civil servants drawn from the community. The democratization has seen the introduction of a multi-party system in Kenyan politics since 1991. This is also seen in the election of councillors in each district constituency.

The Department of Physical Planning is responsible for consolidation and land use planning. It draws up regional plans for urban and rural centres, long-term structure plans which are advisory plans for urban settlements, short-term development plans which are zone-specific, and site development plans which advise on specific uses of land. The Department of Land Surveying and Mapping supplies boundary information, topographical analysis and draws up survey plans. All this information gathered and prepared is made available to the Registrar's Office. As already indicated, the Department of Land Adjudication and Settlement confers title deeds to settlers/peasant farmers, approves boundaries and sorts out disputes over them, and takes aerial photographs and produces resource maps for land use planning. The Land Registration and Evaluation Department confers title ownership/leasehold rights to an individual, keeps information on all controls on the land (Land Registration Office) and settles inheritance and boundaries disputes. Some of these activities are carried out through the Land Control Board which has the mandate to ascertain and safeguard the rights of different individuals, for example, a wife and children. It is often consulted as well when considering subdivision, mortgage or sale of land. Land Control Boards are constituted at district, provincial and national levels. The Evaluation Department values land for compensation purposes, for collection of revenues by local authorities, for stamp and transfer duties, and also evaluates properties for purposes of receiving rents and giving loans to members of the civil service.

SOME PROBLEMS AND APPROACHES

THE EFFICIENT USE OF THE LAND AND THE implementation of strategies for rural development are hampered by numerous pieces of legislation and the complex bureaucratic procedures relating to approval of plans, subdivisions and registration. This has reduced the pace of rural developmental activities. Land boundary disputes take long to be resolved. Customary laws also hinder or delay progress. Inadequate information on the land market, due to the high costs of feasibility studies and mapping, has also slowed development.

Gender dimension

Women may own land in their own right in Kenya, although for married women, most land is registered in the name of the husband. Kenyan society is a patrilineal society, therefore inheritance follows the male line and women are generally left out of land inheritance. Adult males are given land upon marriage and as per custom, the wife is shown the boundaries of fields/land allocated to her husband. Kenyan Women's Organizations contend that adoption of freehold title as the main land tenure system has weakened the security of tenure since titles are registered in the husband's name. Some wives and children have been reduced to destitution when husbands have sold titled pieces of land without knowledge of their family members. Women are usually the actual tillers of the land, but the registration of titles in their husbands' names restricts their access to credit facilities. Activists therefore call for a law which will confer legal land rights to wives, sons and daughters, if women's rights to land are to be safeguarded.

New approaches

Suggestions have been made that the government initiate programmes to document information on land, given the increasing population growth and development needs in the districts, for example, by preparing land information data base systems at each district lands office for easy retrieval and processing. Also, the already existing data base could be reorganized in an easy retrieval system, to reduce duplication, foster harmony and reduce costs. Land resource surveys need to map out and computerize land use patterns to include quality, quantity and land available for different uses in different districts.

In the course of transfer of land from white settlers to black 'elites', land was frequently not sufficiently sub-divided and this created a privileged class in the face of many landless people. In some drier parts of the country, informal sub-division to sons took place without reference to registering institutions and this has tended to reduce farm sizes. The once-efficient livestock production has been replaced by unsuitable crop production, which has led to low agricultural incomes. In addition, the transformation of pastoralists to sedentary farmers has had a negative impact on the ecology of the affected areas.

CONCLUSION

IT CAN BE SAID THAT KENYA'S LAND and agricultural reform strategies which meant massive land transfers and privatization have scored some limited success. The strategies dealt with the problem of landlessness and brought peasants into commodity production. The creation of the small commodity producer has been an important contribution to Kenya's economic development. However, much of the redistributed land was of poor quality. Nevertheless, the move produced more productive farms as compared to the large-scale farms. This increased overall agricultural output and land use efficiency. Employment levels also rose in the rural areas.

Most new settlements were established on previously unutilized or under-utilized land, meaning that the process brought idle resources into productive use. Privatization of land improved management and efficiency. However, granting title deeds over communal lands created landlessness and the growing problem of squatting. Also, people who have been displaced tried to reclaim their land, even though those who now occupy that land have title deeds. This poses a potential for greater ethnic confrontation and an early solution has to be found to the way this redistribution is being done.

Uganda

UGANDA IS A FERTILE COUNTRY IN WHICH every citizen may have access to arable land and can resort to farming as a major economic activity as many have done. It is a country that has gone through political traumas and economic disintegration in several conjunctures. The ascendance to power of the present regime in the mid-1980s saw the inauguration of social reconstruction and the revival and reform of the collapsed economic system whose control by external forces has today led to charges that impacts have been negative on peasants and working people.

Uganda's economy is predominantly an agrarian one. It has passed through two successive stages of economic retrogression. From 1972 onwards, there was accelerated economic mismanagement, political turmoil and decay resulting in victimization of vast sections of the population, and a systematic decrease in production and import capacity. Although some improvement was noted in export performance, foreign capital inflows and production conditions, the economy remained trapped in a managerial and administrative malaise. This is the malaise that was inherited by the current political regime. The reform programme pursued has been criticized for being fire-fighting, externally-driven rescue operations, i.e. emphasis on macro-economic regulation, management and stabilization rather than fundamental, internally-driven structural transformation. Despite this, Uganda, like Ghana, is singled out as a model of IMF-WB structural adjustment programmes that work.

The new regime and its policies

Between 1971 and 1980, the economic system of Uganda fell apart, infrastructure was destroyed, peasants were impoverished and production of all commodities declined tremendously. Imports shifted from consumer and capital goods to arms.

There was a high exodus of people from Uganda, particularly supporters of the Uganda People's Congress (UPC), Asians (singled out and expelled), expatriates and highly-skilled manpower. Thus, there was a tremendous labour drain on farms, factories and even services. In the late 1970s, the country experienced a three-year drought, affecting mainly eastern Uganda. This was accompanied by an unprecedented level of armed rural banditry and cattle theft. By 1980 a very skewed pattern of distribution of income had developed, with rampant unemployment and excessive corruption.

From about 1980 onwards, Uganda was under prolonged inflationary pressures which distorted the cost-price and relative-price structures. The economic policies pursued included a managed floating exchange rate system, abolition of price controls, rescheduling and cancellation of existing public debt, and with IMF-WB instigation, ceilings were imposed on budget deficits, government borrowing and domestic credit expansion. Most important for an agricultural economy, subsidies on agriculture were removed. Educational capitation grants were also removed. The structural adjustment programme was thus in place. With what effects on Ugandans?

There was a tremendous squeeze on the people creating many social categories.

· Peasants, numerous poor but differentiated with some rich ones

· Wage and salary earners, significant but relatively small and poorly paid

· Top executives, also with poor pay and incentives

· Industrialists and contractors - dominated by big and foreign enterprises.

· Business lucrative only in construction but hampered by corruption, so not prosperous, low industrial base

· Traders, middlemen, transporters, several petty activities, not productive but predominant, corruption rampant, exorbitant charges for services rendered

· Importers and exporters, excessive charges, corruption

The social categories listed above are not mutually exclusive because the severity of the situation in trying to make ends meet made one social actor assume several social categories, e.g. a top executive was an importer and exporter and at the same time a trader and transporter.

The precarious social situation was harmful to the well-being of the society, so that ugly social ills became the order of the day with the following becoming some of the predominant forms of survival strategies.

· Thefts and bribes at work-place

· Gambling, prostitution, smuggling, blackmail, begging, parallel-marketing

· Anti-production means: dis-saving, capital consumption, disinvestment, etc.

· Productive means: farming, trading, moonlighting, etc.

· Belt-tightening strategies: reviewing consumption habits, de-urbanizing family members and ruralizing them

· Violence: burglary, armed robbery

Uganda saw a deterioration in organizational efficiency, for example in the public sector and service institutions between 1981 and 1985, jobs were normally allocated on the basis of corruption rather than in terms of professional efficiency. By the close of the 1980s, even the IMF had not produced a meaningful and appropriate system of incentives except the usual price incentives for agricultural producers.

REFORMS AND AGRICULTURE

EXCHANGE RATE MANIPULATION TO increase producer prices was central to the economic recovery of Uganda. However, in practice, there was long-terms stagnation in real producer prices. In terms of agricultural production, food security and nutrition, from the early 1980s onward, there was a stagnation in agricultural production leading to constant or rather dwindling per caput food and general agricultural productivity. By the late 1980s, the urban areas were experiencing food deficits and basic needs problems. But the reform policies introduced focused more export promotion than on solving local problems. Observers have noted that as usual, the benefits of export promotion did accrue only to small sections of the working and business people. This strategy did not protect the urban and rural poor especially when it is considered that the producer price incentives did not encapsulate the context of agrarian and urban social reform.

AGRICULTURE AND THE RURAL SECTOR

ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN UGANDA IS largely dependent on the agricultural sector made up of some 2.5 million small-holders. They are directly affected by the change of prices for agricultural products which have dwindled by some 50 percent in recent years. From as high as US$ 394 million in 1986, Uganda's coffee earning dwindled to only US$ 98 million in 1992.

Uganda's rural social structure consists of rich rural capitalists who own significant non-land assets, middle-class peasants who own little productive and non-productive wealth, landless labourers and poor peasants. The poor peasants constitute more than 70 percent of the country's population and produce the bulk of agricultural production. There are very strong rural-urban links. Urban households depend on food remittances at subsidized prices from rural areas. These food transfers increase with the acceleration in economic decline. The cash remittances from urban to rural areas declines as the urban standard of living deteriorates. Even the urban well-off find it worthwhile to inject capital investments in rural areas.

Despite claims that Uganda has staged a remarkable economic recovery, World Bank figures show 55 percent of Ugandans are living in poverty. The reform programme's public spending cuts have reduced the maintenance and prevented the expansion of the already-poor social infrastructure.

Having stabilized the economy, the Museveni regime which came to power in 1986 is seeking to achieve sustainable and equitable development. The constraints are immense. The revenue base is tiny, the investment rates are low, the debt burden is one of Africa's heaviest, and the public sector, as already indicated, is inefficient, demoralized and suffers from corruption. Aids is decimating the work force in all sectors.

As indicated earlier, only those peasants producing for export benefited from the adjustment programme which saw the lifting of a coffee export tax in 1991. This helped to raise coffee farmers' income despite the indicated fall in world prices. Up to half the small-holders grow coffee and their benefits were significant. But this covered only half of the small producers and was concentrated in certain geographical areas. Furthermore, due to ageing trees needing replacement, coffee production was falling. With prices forecast to average only US$ 0.95 a kilo in 1995/96, projected coffee earnings of US$ 136.8 million would be less than half the 1980s average (Africa Recovery, October 1993:18).

Uganda's food crops were doing even worse than coffee, although maize prices were rising in the early 1990s and Uganda was doing well on this front, becoming a key maize exporter. Planners were not only trying to boost maize production but to look to non-traditional exports to boost rural incomes. Although the fears were that everybody would start competing in this arena, horticulture is a promising activity particularly in flowers and silk production. Schemes for vanilla, pyrethrum and asparagus were either under preparation or in production in 1993. Uganda was also taking advantage of Sudan's collapse of the good quality sesame exports.

In order to improve Uganda's agricultural economy, much capital has to be invested in socio-economic infrastructure. Lack of feeder roads, extension services and credit facilities are the scourges of the development programme. The adjustment programme's effort to control spending goes hand in hand with the need to raise the efficiency in allocating resources. But Uganda is prudent because it has a low revenue base. There is low tax collection in Uganda and the infrastructure to improve this is only juvenile. Agriculture remains little monetized and the government is said to be reluctant to introduce any form of land tax. The sector's 50 percent contribution to GDP remains largely untaxed. The revenue base is therefore set to grow at a snail's pace from some 7-8 percent of GDP to 11 percent in 1995/96 (the current average for sub-Saharan Africa is 20 percent). A new withholding tax on agricultural products replaced the coffee tax.

CONCLUSION

UGANDA HAS MADE SOME SIGNIFICANT strides in economic reform and management.

Politically there are still some disturbances but the social system is stable and more democratic and developing for the better. However, poverty remains extremely high. Agriculture, which is the mainstay of the economy, remains dominated undesirably by a coffee monoculture. Efforts to defuse this by diversifying are commendable, but appropriate institutions need to be built for this. The infrastructure needs to be built but this requires programmes to lure the requisite skill and capital resources which are seriously in short supply. Uganda needs more internal control of its development programme which currently seems to be over-determined by external forces.

Zimbabwe

ZIMBABWE WAS COLONIZED IN 1890. From that date, appropriations of land by white settlers ensued so that by 1898, Native Reserve Orders-in-Council had been passed to establish 'reserves' for indigenous people in drier and more remote parts of the territory. By 1914, the policy of giving reasonably good land to 'natives' for them to cultivate, graze and water their livestock, was abandoned. Good land found in the 'reserves' was allocated to white settlers. In 1930, the Land Apportionment Act (LAA) became operational. It established racial segregation in land ownership and use between whites and blacks. High potential areas became large-scale privately owned farms of white settlers and blacks were relegated to marginal lands. In 1951 the Land Husbandry Act was passed to enforce private ownership of land, destocking and conservation practices on black small-holders. This caused massive resistance and kindled nationalist politics. The law was scrapped in 1961. In 1965, the Tribal Trust Land Act (TTL) was passed to change the derogative term "Native Reserves" and to create trustees for the land. But due to population pressures on arid and semi-arid lands, the TTLs became gradually degraded "homelands." A Land Tenure Act (LTA) was passed in 1969 to replace the LAA. This Act divided the land half between white and black. But this did not bring equity. Instead, together with the TTL Act, the colonial Zimbabwe land ownership pattern was similar to apartheid. It is this apartheid which was inherited at independence in 1980.

In 1981 the Communal Lands Act (CLA) was passed to change TTLs to Communal Areas (Cas). This came with the change of land authority from traditional leaders to District Councils and to start a process of resettlement. Only 52 000 families were resettled by 1985 via the willing-seller-willing-buyer model imposed by the independence agreement. This was far short of the government's target of resettling 162 000 families by that time. The exercise was hampered by costs and availability of land (Moyo, 1995). In 1985, the Land Acquisition Bill was introduced and became law with the objective of giving first right to purchase land for resettlement purposes to the state. It did not yield any land for resettlement and so the programme stalled. By 1990, the Act was being strengthened to acquire via 'designation' up to 5 million ha from the large-scale commercial farm sector (LSCF) for resettling people. At the expiration of the Lancaster House Constitution/Agreement in 1990, the changes cited above could be implemented and the government came under fire to effect land reform. In 1991, it was announced that 100 000 families would be resettled on 5 million ha acquired from the LSCF sector. Table 1 gives information on land distribution by farm sector and natural region before 1990, or at the close of the 1980s. Data below gives numbers of large-scale farms and the land use classification by farming sector.

CURRENT STATE OF THE RURAL SECTOR

SINCE INDEPENDENCE, ZIMBABWE HAS BEEN trying to tackle the problem of environmental degradation, land underutilization, low levels of investment, low productivity and low incomes in the rural sector. The current land tenure systems have been subject to much criticism for being the cause and perpetuation of these cited problems. A brief explanation of the land tenure systems would be in order. These systems are important insofar as they define the character of the rural social forces based on them and the possible rural development strategies to be pursued.

Table 1 LAND USE CLASSIFICATION BY FARMING SECTOR, 1990

Farming Sector	Amount of Land Held
Communal areas	16.35 million ha
Large-Scale Commercial Farms	11.22 million ha
Small-Scale Commercial Farms	1.38 million ha
Resettlement	3.29 million ha

Source: Land Tenure Commission Report, 1995

Communal areas (Cas)

The land tenure system is based on customary law and tradition and is administered by the Ministry of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development. Within this system, every person has the "right of avail" to the resources but cannot have a title deed on the land. The State owns the land on the people's behalf. This sector suffers from acute environmental degradation, low investment level and low incomes. The existing local government and traditional institutions are invariably castigated for providing little encouragement to optional investment and sustainable conservation. The amount of land under this sector has already been indicated. Moyo indicates the poor character of the land allocated to Cas and the population pressures on the sub-sectors: "The Communal Areas, formerly the Native Reserves"... today account for 16.4 million ha or 42 percent of land in Zimbabwe, with 74.2 percent of this land located in the poorest rainfall zones of Natural Regions IV and V. The CA population in 1988 was 5.1 million persons and 1 020 400 households, representing a population density of about 31.1 persons per km².

Resettlement areas (Ras)

Land in these areas is held under a Temporary Permit System which confers the right to the holder to cultivate, graze and reside on the allocated plot over an unspecified life span. Holders do not hold title and cannot sell or exchange the land.

There are several models in the Ras which can be summarized as follows:

Model A is defined by a land tenure system based on: (a) a permit to cultivate and a permit to raise livestock i.e. small-holder arable production with communal grazing, (b) revocation of a permit where the older has not breached any of the conditions; and (c) the converse of (b) is true.

Model B is cooperative farming where a single permit is given to a cooperative group allowing it to occupy the farm and perform agricultural operations on a collective cooperative basis.

Model C is a settler outgrower scheme linked to a commercial core estate. Mostly, it is based on leases from the State Agricultural Development Authority (ADA) with a provision to purchase. The core estate will also provide services like draught power, inputs, processing and marketing facilities to the outgrower settlers.

Model D is CA livestock grazing on commercial farms. This allows translocation of livestock only not the CA residents.

The institutional framework for the administration of Ras except Model B schemes is provided by the Ministry of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development through the Department of Rural Development (DERUDE) and the District Development Fund (DDF) since 1985. Before 1985, it was the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rural Development. Within the schemes themselves, the Departments of Agriculture and Extension Services (Agritex) and Water Development operate. Village Development Committees (VIDCOs) and Ward Development Committees (WADCOs) also operate in the schemes. The Model B schemes are administered separately by the Ministry of National Affairs, Employment Creation and Co-operatives.

By 1993, the Ras held 3 million ha of land, occupied by 58 000 households with more than 200 000 ha vacant and another 200 000 ha undergoing acquisition (Moyo 1995:86).

Large-Scale Commercial Farming (LSCF) Areas

Much of LSCF is in areas of high agricultural potential (Natural Regions II and III). The land here is owned by individuals, private/family companies, parastatals, government and transnational companies (TNCs). Freehold tenure is the title to land. The large-scale farms in this sector employed some 227.6 thousand permanent and casual workers in 1988, with a population of about 1 571 300 in 1992 growing at 3 percent per annum. The majority of the farm owners are white colonial settlers or their descendants. The average farm size in the LSCF areas is about 2 406 ha nationwide, while individual farms average some 1 402 ha. Private individual farms take some 59 percent of the total number of LSCFs, but they hold only 34 percent of that land. Some 38 percent is taken by large companies who account for more than 61 percent of the LSCF sector. The state owns up to 2 percent of LSCFs which are leased out to white farmers and some blacks.

The administrative framework is provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, (AGRITEX); Ministry of Lands and Water Development (Water Development); Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs (Deeds Office); and the Ministry of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development (Department of Physical Planning).

Small-Scale Commercial Farming (SSCF) Areas

Much of the land in this category falls in Natural Regions III (35.4 percent) and IV (38.2 percent) comprising some 8 653 allocated farms with an average farm size of 124.2 ha. Some 564 800 ha are allocated under agreements of lease and purchase, and 484 000 ha were deeds of grant and transfers. This left some 37 800 ha of which some 177 400 ha were transferred for resettlement by 1985, leaving about 202 400 ha vacant or not allocated (Moyo, ibid). Thus, the two basic tenure forms in this sub-sector are leasehold and freehold systems. Under the leasehold, tenure ownership of land is often under a settlement scheme whereby the settler leases a farm with an option to purchase by the lessee. Under the freehold tenure, when a lessee eventually purchases the land, he gains freehold title to the land after a five-year period of lease.

State land

This is composed of land on lease in small-scale and large-scale commercial sectors and land in the Ras which is allocated on a permit basis. State involvement in direct productive farming predates independence. Land under the state occupies some 353 006 ha through 20 estates managed by ADA. ADA also implements the Resettlement Model C schemes of outgrowers and the livestock grazing programme under the Model D schemes. ADA also manages the newly-purchased lands which await occupation by resettlers (Moyo, 1995:88).

Also the state holds title to some 20 percent of national land managed by the Forestry Commission and the National Parks Authority. The former is a parastatal body while the latter is a government department. These two institutions are land "lessees" via legislation enabling them to manage and utilize the state lands but with no legal lease contracts. State lands also expand through district councils' control of increasing quantities of woodland areas in the Cas. Moyo notes that there are growing land-centred conflicts between District Councils and communities over rights to exploit natural resources on these lands and the right to the proceeds from tourism and hunting operations undertaken therein.

LAND TENURE SYSTEMS AND AGRICULTURE

THE LAND TENURE COMMISSION (LTC) (1995) argued that the link between land tenure and agricultural productivity, investment and natural resource management came from the security of the tenure, not the type of the tenure. In Zimbabwe, security is given by the following sets of rights.

· Use rights

Rights to raise animals and grow perennial crops, including making permanent improvements, cutting trees, etc.

· Transfer rights

Rights to sell, give mortgage, lease, rent and bequeath.

· Exclusion rights

Rights at the community and individual level that exclude others from access.

· Enforcement

Legal and administrative provisions to guarantee these rights.

Thus, communal, private and state rights are recognized in Zimbabwe. Land is scarce and ownership of it confers symbolic wealth, social status and political power. Therefore all forms of land are political operations.

Under communal tenure, the authority is vested in the President. The arable and residential land is held under traditional freehold tenure with rights to subdivide for family members and to bequeath and inherit. There is also provision for communal tenure for grazing, forests and other resources. The growing population shares the limited and finite resources, but this also facilitates social cohesion and integration. However, there are difficulties in managing common resources where there is acute and growing land pressure and where the administrative and legal structures are ineffective. The tenure system is susceptible to political and local authorities.

Investment livestock is greatly encouraged because land use for grazing is free to the investor. It facilitates close social interaction, labour sharing at peak periods and efficient ways of providing goods and services, e.g. dams, rods, dip-tanks, extension services, and allows greater flexibility in physical planning.

The problems associated with this tenure system are that over-exploitation of common resources had led to deforestation, overgrazing and long-term breakdown of the ecosystem. There is no incentive to invest in pasture, wells or afforestation. Due to reduction in farm sizes, productivity per unit area can increase but the income per household declines. Communal land title is not accepted as collateral by private credit institutions in Zimbabwe. Communal tenure is appropriated in areas of high population densities with limited resources only if effective and credible administrative systems are in place.

In 1988, the Rural District Councils Act authorized the establishment of a unified system of local government. Rural Development Councils (RDCs) became effective in July 1993 to control, regulate and direct development within their districts. As indicated earlier, serious land conflicts have occurred here and worsened by acute breakdowns in administration structures and erosion of authority and responsibility. RDCs are expected to take cognizance of customary law in administering communal land. However, they do not consider traditional leaders important in this process. Current law excludes traditional leaders in land administration. Communal people have called on the state to restore the role and power of traditional leaders and the state is positive to the idea.

"Rural development includes: · human capacity building · institution building · sustainable resource management." MR. STEFAN KEYLER - GERMANY

Village Development Committees (VIDCOs) were created after independence to initiate development at grassroots level. However, they have usurped the functions of traditional leaders on land administration and there are no periodic elections to allow circulation. Evidence abounds of autocracy and manipulation (LTC, op cit). The Commission reported that there is far-reaching abuse of authority over land that various authorities hold. Moreover, delineation of VIDCO boundaries has tended to split traditional villages, hence conflicts over land and resource use which continue to stifle overall rural development of the Cas. These conflicts have produced disparate and feeble institutions. The Commission noted that three times more people are living in Cas than the environment can sustain. This leaves little, if any, arable land to be allocated. It called for a well-defined land allocation authority in order to ensure equitable and productive uses of CA land.

Arguments against land re-distribution to CA farmers have always pointed to their low productivity potential, and this is usually compared to what is considered the 'efficiency' of the LSCF sector although closer analysis of the evidence suggests otherwise. While data on yields demonstrate that productivity in the LSCF is superior, they also show that rainfall and soils account for a critical proportion of the productivity differences. Moyo in fact argues that the CA farmers are more efficient in resource use than the LSCFs and their use of hybrid seeds and small quantities of fertilizers improved their value added faster from the early 1980s onwards. However, net improvements of their yields requires increased investment in fertilizer use, water development, fiscal support and land redistribution. In fact, the Cas contributed 35 percent to national crop production in 1980/81. This rose to 60 percent in 1989/90. Between 1980 and 1988, land under cultivation increased by about 51 percent. Low productivity, noted the Commission, is attributed to low levels of public sector investment into productive assets e.g. infrastructure, water, finance and technology. The Cas are in fact producing the largest amount of food grain that feeds the nation.

Public investment in the Cas has been in the form of main roads (though the feeder network is poor) and marketing outlets (though skewed towards high potential crop growing areas). There were 93 grain marking deports in 1993 and 64 growth points and rural service centres. About 80 irrigation schemes are operating. Investment has however been inadequate and the achievements so far are very limited. More needs to be done and as already said, the improvement of the local infrastructure, both in the form of capital resources and administration, is urgently required.

The Resettlement Programme has progressed at a slow pace, mainly because of the slow release of funds. The reduction in budgetary allocation has created difficulties in purchasing land, settling farmers and supplying adequate infrastructure to support the settlements. Though the dire need for resettlement is noted, the government still wavers at whether to continue resettling people on previous models, or to concentrate on selecting only trained and experienced farmers.

Resettlers hold permits, not titles, as the land belongs to the state. There is no provision for inheritance or for sale or renting out of land by the permit holder. The holders feel they are at the mercy of state bureaucrats who give out the permits. These officials have assumed de facto powers over inheritance, to the disadvantage of widows in some cases. The holders prefer title deeds because the permit system is insecure. Women are said to prefer traditional rather than state authority to preside over these issues.

Also, in Model B, some holdings have had to be sub-divided due to lack of commitment by some members.

Administration-wise, implementation is spread over many ministries and departments. Power struggles, limited budgets, power and function centralization have thwarted comprehensive agricultural and rural development and settlement policy.

In terms of agricultural productivity, the Ras brought abandoned or under-utilized land into production. Between 1988/89 and 1990/91, the Ras contributed to about 7 percent of national maize production and 7.4 percent of national crop production. Average crop yield was about one 1 ton per ha for the period 1987-1991, lower than the LSCF but higher than the SSCF and the CA sectors.

Investment remains inadequate particularly in immovable property. Financial services for the sector are underdeveloped. Farmers are unhappy about the lending policy of the hitherto parastatal lending body, the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC) which was recently transformed into a private commercial bank. It has provided only short-term and medium-term lending, which is not suitable for land improvement. Public investment in roads, service centres, health centres, etc., is still inadequate. RDCs have been asked to maintain the infrastructure, but with no powers to raise revenue they are hard put to perform this role.

On the Small-Scale Commercial Farming (SSCF) sector the Land Tenure Commission concludes that administering the countryside via a centralized system is untenable because it alienates the country folk. It leaves many issues unresolved and allows state bureaucrats to take decisions for the people regardless of the cost to society. A policy of decentralization was therefore called for which would allow relevant decision-makers to make decisions affecting the SSCF.

Sub-division of land had prevailed in the SSCF sector. Farmers have not been able to access title deeds or renew their leases through the Rural State Land Office in Harare. Political interference in the handling of leases have negatively affected the SSCF sector and a policy of decentralization might redress some of these issues.

There are serious inheritance problems in this sector for both leased and titled properties. This negatively impacts on farm productivity and investment. Where there is testate succession, the Wills Act No. 13 (1987)/Wills and attesting Witnesses Act Chapter 306 prevails. The heir appointed is upheld unless the validity of the will can be factually challenged. There are very few such levels of procedure on the mainly black-owned SSCFs. In the situation of intestate succession, customary law applies which usually recognizes the eldest son as the heir. The Ministry of Agriculture is empowered to approve the cessation.

The productivity of the SSCFs has been generally low. The sector has a potential contribution of 5 percent to national crop production but the poor resource base has led to a share which is below this potential level. The farmers in this sector suffer heavy indebtedness and a tough struggle to service debts. But they have lost resources such as implements through confiscation for debt recovery by the AFC.

Private investment has been very low as farmers are unable to fulfil lease conditions which would qualify them for title deeds. They lack the financial resources to meet these conditions. They have hardly any surplus from agricultural production. They lack the required collateral and then are unable to service loans. It is a vicious circle. Public investment has also been low since from the colonial period to the post-colonial time, governments have favoured the LSCF and the Cas respectively. Thus there is inadequate and poor infrastructure in the SSCFs.

We have already indicated that the Large-Scale Commercial Farms (LSCFs) are located in areas of high agricultural potential. Freehold tenure is the title to land and therefore many of the problems of SSCFs and Cas are not found here. Problems of administering the land in this sector arise from the poor resource base for the responsible institutions. For example, the Departments of Physical Planning and of Agritex have meagre resources with which to process consolidation, amalgamation and sub-divisions of lands. The Deeds Registry is poorly funded and has no reliable information on farm ownership, multiple ownership, foreign ownership, etc. The Department of the Surveyor General has manpower problems as there are too many departments doing similar work and a great deal of inefficiency.

The Department of Water Development is dealing with the contemporary hot issue of water rights. Farmers in the LSCFs have such rights by virtue of the rights attached to the land they hold title to (since the 1920s). This discriminates against those who need such rights now and in the future, as well as farmers in the SSCFs and Cas who do not have title to land and water. Reform is very urgent on this issue.

The LSCFs have been the most productive in the agricultural sector. Between 1983/84 and 1988/89, they contributed over 70 percent of the total marketed output. From 1980 to 1990, their contribution to total crop production was about 21 percent. High productivity is achieved through better quality of land and rainfall, improved technologies, good management, extension services, markets and subsidies available to the sector.

Public sector investment has been very high in the LSCF sector since colonial days. But there is growing evidence of land underutilization; only a small percentage is under crop production and much of the land is used extensively.

The concentration of high potential farmland in the hands of a few LSCF former colonial settlers makes a mockery of democratic and equitable distribution of land resources in Zimbabwe. Land redivision would help increase efficiency of the LSCFs and agriculture as a whole. It would expand the internal market for industry as well. But political indecision, cumbersome bureaucratic procedure, subjectivity and insufficient resources for dealing with land issues have combined to hinder progress on this front. It remains to be seen what the declarations about land reform will come to, after the Presidential elections in March this year.

The LSCF sector employs some 300 000 or 25 percent of the workforce. However, this figure has remained static during some 20 years due to mechanization and the slow expansion of cropped areas (Moyo, ibid: 98). In fact, the LTC noted that this figure has been declining during the past few years. There is a need to stimulate growth, enhance productivity and increase participation in the sub-sector.

There is a need to expand employment in order to stem the rural-to-urban migration. This requires greater investment in decentralized rural agro-industries. The LTC called on the government, the LSCF farmers and the trade unions to work together to produce reasonable retirement packages for farm workers. This would ease the land pressure in the CA and RA sectors as workers are forced into these sectors upon retirement.

CONCLUSION

AGRICULTURE REMAINS A LEADING SECTOR IN the economy of Zimbabwe although it has suffered greatly from falling real producer prices, low investment, the effects of the economic reform programme (markets liberalization, budget cuts, de-subsidization of parastatals, and privatization) and a severe drought in the 1992/93 period. This affected the economy because the export-led strategy on which the economy is dependent is based on the dynamism of this sector. Agriculture supplies more than 40 percent of export earnings annually.

The country needs to diversify into the production of middle-income items such as textiles, furniture and crafts derived from major agri-products which it can produce more cheaply than its major competitor, South Africa. South Africa remains a strong challenger on the industrial frontier and Zimbabwe cannot win. Agriculture, therefore, has to remain the basis of the competitive strategy.

This means that Zimbabwe must program a policy which supports agriculture and aims to arrest the rural-to-urban drift, improve rural incomes, increase land productivity, invest in irrigation technology in Cas, improve roads and telecommunications and invest in research and development and in human and capital development etc. A deliberate policy of transferring land to the most qualified farmers would relieve land pressure. But equitable land distribution is fundamental on all grounds - political, moral, social and economic. Therefore, a well-articulated agricultural and rural development policy is required for the long-term development of the country.

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