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Land rights in Africa - Southern Africa

Land Rights	Introduction	Key principles
Africa General	West Africa	East Africa
Horn of Africa	Southern Africa	Links

The Next Great Trek? South African Commercial Farmers Move North NEW
Source: PLAAS Working Paper 19 (Ruth Hall)
Summary: Analyses the shifting role of South African farmers, agribusiness and capital elsewhere in Southern Africa and the rest of the continent. Explores recent expansion trends, investigates the interests and agendas shaping such deals, and the legitimating ideologies and discourses employed in favour of them. Now it is being more centrally organised and coordinated than in the past, is more frequently taking the form of large concessions for newly formed consortia and agribusinesses, and is increasingly reliant on external financing through transnational partnerships. Paper documents and analyses their impacts and implications for land rights, livelihoods and the changing shape of agriculture. Addresses the degree to which South Africa is no longer merely exporting its farmers, but also its value chains, to the rest of the continent and what this means for trajectories of agrarian change.
Date: August 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 1.43MB) from the PLAAS website

Differentiation of women’s land tenure security in Southern Africa NEW
Source: International Land Coalition, Working Paper 12 (Gaynor G. Paradza)
Summary: Includes sources of differentiation among women - type of land, age, life course, marital status, termination of marriage, economic status, AIDS; policy implications.
Date: March 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 860KB) from the ILC website

The many faces of the investor rush in Southern Africa: towards a typology of commercial land deals NEW
Source: Ruth Hall (ICAS Review Paper Series 2)
Summary: IIncludes a broader view of the global land grab; Southern Africa: under-utilised and opening up for business?; biofuels everywhere, but not enough to eat; extractive industries: mining and forestry; reversals and state capitalism in Zimbabwe; the next Great Trek? South Africans head north; where is the food?; towards a typology; reflecting on these trends: what fresh insights?; conclusions.
Date: February 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 164KB) from the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) website

Review of Land Reforms in Southern Africa, 2010 NEW
Source: PLAAS (Karin Kleinbooi)
Summary: Review comprises an introduction and country surveys of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe. It reflects on countries’ experiences up to the first part of 2010 and highlights lessons for land policy and practice.
Date: February 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 2.92MB) from the PLAAS website

Southern Africa and Land: Justice Denied?
Source: ACTSA (Position Paper)
Summary: Includes increased priority to land reform, development versus redistribution, an economic-oriented land reform, support following land redistribution, gender, securing land tenure, poverty and marginalisation, HIV/AIDS, mineral rights and land rights.
Date: May 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 156KB)

Women's Land Rights in Southern Africa: Consolidated baseline findings from Malawi, Mozambique, , Zambia and Zimbabwe
Source: NiZA and ActionAid
Summary: Includes the legal and policy situation relating to women's land rights in Southern Africa; women farmers speak out on which land rights are being enjoyed, or not; potential springboards to the realisation of women's land rights; baseline trends and key conclusions; recommended action points.
Date: October 2009
Download the full paper (PDF 621KB) from the Netherlands institute for Southern Africa (NiZA) website.

Contested paradigms of 'viability' in redistributive land reform: perspectives from southern Africa
Source: Ben Cousins and Ian Scoones (PLAAS Working paper for the Livelihoods after Land Reform Project)
Summary: Includes modernisation and agricultural development in southern Africa (, Zimbabwe, Namibia) past and present; framing viability: frameworks for assessing land and agrarian reform; viability in redistributive land reform in southern Africa; rethinking viability in southern African land reform.
Date: June 2009
Download the full paper from the PLAAS website.

Challenges in Asserting Women’s Land Rights in Southern Africa
Source: Robin Palmer (Mokoro Ltd)
Summary: Includes the challenges at different levels; some historical trends which have not helped women; some suggested ways forward; all very worthy, but hard to achieve; conclusions from the literature; fighting on the correct battlefield; pragmatic lessons from a book on Eastern Africa; will women lose even more as a result of the biofuel revolution?; women’s land rights in Rwanda.
Date: 4-7 May 2009 (PLAAS Workshop on Decentralizing Land, Dispossessing Women?)
Download the full paper (110K.pdf file)

Land Reform in the Broader Context of Southern Africa
Source: Robin Palmer (Mokoro Ltd)
Summary: Contains introduction; global – a new threat to poor people’s land – biofuels, older threats, decentralisation; regional – ten years ago, regional land policy review, 2006-7, donors, governments and civil society, the policy-implementation gap, decentralisation, your research programme – DLRSA; conclusion. Argues that since policy engagement at the national level in the past decade has not brought too many successes, more might be achieved in future at the decentralised local level.
Date: 22-23 April 2008 (PLAAS Workshop on Land Reform from Below: Decentralised Land Reform in Southern Africa)
Download the full paper (131K. rtf file)

Children’s Property and Inheritance Rights, HIV and Aids, and Social Protection in Southern and Eastern Africa
Source: FAO HIV/AIDS Programme Working Paper 2 (Laurel L. Rose)
Date: November 2007
Summary: Focuses on the social protection aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights in southern and eastern Africa. Discusses the relationship between HIV and AIDS and agriculture, food security, and rural livelihoods (including children’s property and inheritance rights). Considers factors that render children’s property rights more vulnerable than adults’ property rights. Reviews literature on social protection of children, emphasizing historical developments, types of child social protection, and recipients and providers of child social protection. Presents a rights’ framework for the social protection of children and assesses children’s social protection and property/inheritance rights in the context of international agreements and national instruments, including National Plans of Action, as well as succession and land laws. Presents and analyses several case studies of programmes concerned with children’s property and inheritance rights and social protection issues in southern and eastern Africa, including two case studies from Rwanda. Offers recommendations regarding priority policy and programmatic areas for children’s property rights and social protection in the context of HIV and AIDS.
Download the full paper (1,322K.pdf file) from the FAO website

Independent Review of Land Issues, Volume III, 2006-2007, Eastern and Southern Africa
Source: Martin Adams and Robin Palmer (eds)
Summary: This review of land issues in twenty countries in Southern and Eastern Africa is the third since 2004. The idea of conducting a regular review arose in an informal meeting of land rights activists in Pretoria in 2003 concerned about the seeming lack of progress with land reform in the region and what might be done to improve land rights delivery. It was recognised that there was a lack of systematic information as to what was actually happening and the need to track the progress of the various national programmes underway, as well as monitor land rights under serious threat. The countries covered here are Angola, Botswana, Burundi, DRC (Eastern), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Somalia, , Sudan, Sudan Transitional States, Southern Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe. Ends with concluding thoughts.
Date: June 2007
Download the full paper (1,118Kb.pdf file)

Children’s property and inheritance rights and their livelihoods: the context of HIV and AIDS in Southern and East Africa
Source: FAO Livelihood Support Programme Working Paper (Laurel L. Rose)
Summary: Focuses on legal and institutional aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights in Southern and East Africa. Discusses violations of those rights and how the spread of HIV and AIDS has contributed to this. Assesses some norms of customary law that aim to protect these rights and some which complicate and limit children’s ability to maintain their rights. Reviews and assesses selection of international and national laws. Identifies several gaps in law and policy. Reviews National Plans of Action for orphans and vulnerable children. Looks at effectiveness of government structures, emphasizing institution of the public trustee. Outlines and evaluates some stakeholder initiatives. Presents eight case studies of children whose rights were violated. Makes recommendations on preventive and corrective methods to protect children’s rights and on future research and development priorities.
Date: November 2006
Download the full paper (1,498K.pdf file)

Land Tenure Security for Poverty Reduction in Eastern and Southern Africa: Workshop Report
Source: IFAD
Summary: Contains review of land policy formulation and implementation, land tenure challenges and activities in poverty reduction programmes and projects, stakeholder perspectives, lessons learned for mainstreaming land tenure security in poverty reduction.
Date: 27-29 June 2006
Download the full paper (529K.pdf file)

Reclaiming our lives. HIV and AIDS, women's land and property rights, and livelihoods in southern and East Africa. Narratives and responses.
Source: Edited by Kaori Izumi (FAO)
Summary: A serious study of a neglected field, drawing on research, workshops, and personal and organisational testimonies. Covers Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, , Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Aims to raise awareness of the heavy impact of HIV and AIDS on women’s property rights and livelihoods, and the active steps being taken by many grassroots organisations to respond to the crisis. Looks at a number of creative initiatives such as the Memory Book Project in Uganda.
Date: July 2006
Download the full paper (1,984K.pdf file)

Note: Oxfam is grateful to HSRC Press. , for permission to reproduce this important book in electronic form on this website.

Report of the Regional Workshop on HIV and AIDS and Children’s Property Rights and Livelihoods in Southern and East Africa
Source: FAO Southern Africa (Edited by Kaori Izumi)
Summary: The focus of the workshop, funded by FAO, Oxfam GB, and Women Land Link Africa Project (WLLA), was on children’s property rights. The report covers presentations by children, key issues and inspiring initiatives by CBOs, messages from the UN to children, experiences from Zimbabwe, very moving testimonies by children, and key recommendations. Following the launch of a UNICEF and UNAIDS global campaign, FAO has been initiating work in the neglected area of children’s property and inheritance rights. The development of child-friendly tools, documenting best practice, and sensitizing the public were stressed during the workshop.
Date: 7-8 March 2006
Download the full paper (468K.pdf file)

Critical Reflections on the Role of an International NGO seeking to work globally on Land Rights - with specific focus on Oxfam's experiences in Southern Africa
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Global Land Adviser)
Summary: Explores some dimensions of an international NGO seeking to work globally on land rights. Draws upon the author's own work as well as Oxfam's historical experiences. The first part looks at some of Oxfam's recent work on land rights, at the involvement of DFID on land rights in Africa, at Oxfam's engagement with the World Bank, and a brief word on USAID. The second part examines some of Oxfam's work on land rights over the past two decades in Southern Africa - in Zimbabwe, , Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Angola. There are concluding thoughts at the end of each section.
Date: January 2006 (for International Conference on Social Movements Perspectives: Land, Poverty, Social Justice and Development, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, 9-10 January 2006)
Download the full paper (242K. rtf file)

Land Reform Highlights in Southern Africa, 2004-5
Source: Independent Land Issues Review, Volume II, Number 1
Summary: A second volume in this series covering this region, building on that of June 2004, also published on this website. Designed to be useful for planners, programme designers, advocates, practitioners, citizens and subjects engaged in land reform. Contains an introduction, followed by land reform highlights in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, , Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Date: December 2005
Download the full paper (276K.pdf file)

Human Rights, Formalisation and Women’s Land Rights in Southern and Eastern Africa
Source: Ingunn Ikdahl, Anne Hellum, Randi Kaarhus, Tor A. Benjaminsen, Patricia Kameri-Mbote (Institute of Women’s Law, University of Oslo, Studies in Women’s Law No.57)
Summary: Contains chapters on formalisation of land rights; women’s land rights - a human rights-based approach; a market-based approach to land rights, followed by country studies on Tanzania, Mozambique, , Zimbabwe and Kenya.
Date: June 2005
Download the full paper (817K.pdf file)

Reforming Land Rights: The World Bank and the Globalisation of Agriculture
Source: Elizabeth Fortin (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex)
Summary: Includes globalisation and agriculture – policies and effects in sub-Saharan Africa; globalisation of agriculture and land; land reform in Southern Africa and the World Bank; World Bank critique – tenure security, land transactions, redistribution. Analyses the World Bank’s policy position on land reform and argues that its approach does not address the structural reasons for the distortions of landholdings in Southern Africa and that such inequality is likely to be reaffirmed and reproduced by the Bank’s proposals. Further argues that the model of market-based land redistribution favoured by the Bank will be insufficient to dissipate the pressures of ever-growing inequality. With considerations of efficiency given prominence over other concerns, concludes that the Bank’s policies are unlikely to meet its overarching goals of poverty reduction and growth.
Date: January 2005
Download the full paper (167K rtf file)

Note: this article is to appear in the SAGE journal Social and Legal Studies, 14, 2, 2005 and Oxfam is grateful to the publishers for their permission to allow it to appear on this website.

Land Reform Highlights in Southern Africa, 2003-4
Source: Independent Land Newsletter (June 2004)
Summary: An independent newsletter providing news of new developments in land reform in Southern Africa in 2003-4. Covers Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, , Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Date: June 2004
Download the full paper (89K.rtf file)

Women’s Land Rights in Southern and Eastern Africa: A short report on the FAO/Oxfam GB Workshop held in Pretoria, , 17-19 June 2003
Source: Birgit Englert (University of Vienna) and Robin Palmer (Oxfam GB)
Summary: Short (4-page) report on this workshop covering why a successful workshop?, why this workshop?, what were the main themes?, key issues raised in presentations, discussions and working groups, the follow up, website links to the full report of the workshop.
Date: December 2003
Download the full paper (40K .rtf file)

Report of the FAO/Oxfam GB Workshop on Women’s Land Rights in Southern and Eastern Africa held in Pretoria, , 17-19 June 2003
Source: FAO (Kaori Izumi) and Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer)
Summary: This was a major and highly successful workshop on women’s land rights in Southern and Eastern Africa, organised by FAO and Oxfam GB. It attracted an unusually diverse range of participants. This official report summarises the papers, presentations and discussions in the original order of the programme. It covers the conceptual framework and women’s land rights in the contexts of: legal issues, natural resources, inheritance rights, post-conflict situations, pastoralist communities, HIV/AIDS, land administration, legal aid, rights to housing, land and property, the working group discussions, action points, and includes a number of appendices providing details of participants and their organisations.
Date: October 2003
Download the full paper (560K.doc file) | PDF (1,405K)

Seeking Ways out of the Impasse on Land Reform in Southern Africa: Notes from an informal ‘Think Tank’ Meeting
Source: Informal ‘Think Tank’
Summary: Comprises notes from an informal meeting in Pretoria addressing the impasse on land reform in Southern Africa. The main focus is on overcoming problems and constraints, including on redistribution, tenure reform, the land rights of women, HIV/AIDS and donor support. Has sections on the viability of small-scale farms, post-transfer support, mobilising support for land reform, and proposed follow up. There are two main appendices; one on the status of land reform in each of the countries in the region, the other a matrix of current land issues in each country.
Date: 1-2 March 2003
Download the full paper (403K . rtf file)

The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Rural Households and Land Issues in Southern and Eastern Africa
Source: Human Sciences Research Council of (Scott Drimie)
Summary: Paper prepared for the FAO’s Southern and Eastern Africa Office. Covers the impact of HIV/AIDS on sub-Saharan Africa; the underlying causes of HIV/AIDS; its economic impact; its impact on the household livelihood strategies; and a conceptual framework. Looks at HIV/AIDS and poverty, regional migration, poverty-driven commercial sex work; the impact on the macro economy and the rural economy, on agricultural production and coping strategies, and women, children and the elderly and HIV/AIDS.
Date: September 2002
Download the full paper (771K. pdf file)

The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Land: Case Studies from Kenya, Lesotho and
Source: Human Sciences Research Council of (Scott Drimie)
Summary: Paper prepared for the FAO’s Southern and Eastern Africa Office. Contains introduction to the impact of HIV/AIDS on land issues – land use, land rights, land administration; country studies; the impact of HIV/AIDS in Lesotho, in Kenya, in , and general findings and recommendations. Latter include land use strategies, land rights and land administration, and developing solutions.
Date: September 2002
Download the full paper (298K. rtf file)

Integrating Land Issues and Land Policy with Poverty Reduction and Rural Development in Southern Africa
Source: Michael Roth (Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin - Madison)
Summary: A synthesis of land issues and land policy constraints in Southern Africa prepared for and revised since the World Bank Regional Workshop on Land Issues in Africa in Kampala, 29 April - 2 May 2002. Synthesises key points made in commissioned papers, plenary comments, and facilitated discussions from a Southern Africa working group. Topics include an overview of land issues and special problems and constraints affecting Southern Africa including land administration, community ownership, financial capital and investment, HIV/AIDS, land markets, conflict, and redistribution. Compares the performance of selected countries in linking land policy with poverty reduction and concludes with steps for better incorporating land issues in country level Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers being endorsed by donors.
Date: September 2002
Download the full paper (179K. rtf file)

HIV/AIDS and Land: Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi and
Source: Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria (Scott Drimie) and Oxfam GB (Dan Mullins, Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Coordinator). Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance Conference, Pretoria, 1-4 September 2002
Summary: Presentation summarising recent research work on HIV/AIDS and land in Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi and . Includes the effect of HIV/AIDS on household and livelihood strategies, impacts on land use, land rights, and land administration, current land policy framework (none of the countries are actively considering current and future impacts of AIDS), recommendations.
Date: 1-4 September 2002
Download the full paper (165K. ppt file)

Papers of FAO/SARPN Workshop on HIV/AIDS and Land, 24-25 June, Pretoria
Source: FAO/SARPN (Southern African Regional Poverty Network)
Summary: Series of country papers on HIV/AIDS and land in Lesotho, Kenya, , Malawi, Tanzania, with concluding paper on methodological and conceptual issues. The key questions addressed include: The impact on and changes in land tenure systems (including patterns of ownership, access, and rights) as a consequence of HIV/AIDS with a focus on vulnerable groups. The ways that HIV/AIDS affected households are coping in terms of land use, management and access, e.g. abandoning land due to fear of losing land, renting out due to inability to utilise land, distress sale of land, etc. The consequence of such coping strategies on security of access and rights to land. The changes in land tenure, access and rights to land among different categories of people as a consequence of HIV/AIDS are affecting agricultural productivity, food security and poverty with a focus on women. The future implications for land tenure arrangements for HIV/AIDS affected households and individuals particularly of AIDS widows HIV orphans. Priority areas for policy interventions with concrete recommendations for securing the land rights of people affected by HIV/AIDS. The areas for research.
Date: 24-25 June 2002
The papers are available on the SARPN website

Land Reform in Southern and Eastern Africa: Key Issues for strengthening Women’s Access to and Rights in Land
Source: Cherryl Walker (for FAO)
Summary: Report on a desktop study commissioned by FAO. Contains introduction; the context for land reform (the legacy of colonialism, women’s access, women in agriculture, HIV/AIDS and land reform); an overview of land reform issues and debates (policy issues, gender equity as a policy goal); land reform and women (case studies from Kenya, , Uganda, Zimbabwe); conclusion (key findings and recommendations); synopsis of land policies by country.
Date: March 2002
Download the full paper (862K. rtf file)

Report of the Southern African Regional Conference on Farm Workers’ Human Rights and Security, Harare, Zimbabwe
Source: Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe
Summary: An in-depth report including a regional overview; summaries of country presentations (Swaziland, , Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe); thematic papers (including implications for land reform, HIV/AIDS, the global agri-food industry, implications of agricultural and trade liberalisation, lessons from the farm worker programme in Zimbabwe); running themes (conditions of service, citizenship and citizen rights, globalisation, land reform, farm visits, the way forward); annexes (communiqué, proposed regional network of NGOs and working strategy for trade unions, list of participants).
Date: 10-14 September 2001
Download the full paper (758K. rtf file)

Communiqué of the Southern African Regional Conference on Farm Workers’ Human Rights and Security
Source: Conference Delegates, Harare, Zimbabwe
Summary: Delegates at the Harare conference on farm workers in Southern Africa noted with concern the continued marginalisation of farm worker communities and made recommendations on: weak labor legislation, citizenship rights, basic human rights, women farm workers/dwellers, HIV/AIDS, child labor and child abuse, globalization, debt cancellation, xenophobia, farm workers and land reform, the need for a regional summit.
Date: 10-14 September 2001
Download the full paper (11K.rtf file)

Off the Map - Farmworkers in Southern Africa: some partly Historical Thoughts on their Invisibility and Vulnerability
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Paper at the Southern African Regional Conference on Farm Workers’ Human Rights and Security, Harare, Zimbabwe
Summary: Covers the author’s surprising lack of knowledge of farmworkers; the extensive labour migration in Southern Africa in the 20th century, but the lack of concern about citizenship or nationality then; the historical vulnerability, isolation, and invisibility of farmworkers; the current tightening of borders, increasing xenophobia, greater vulnerability of farmworkers, and failure of government attempts to improve things, that farmworkers have been largely ignored in new land reform programmes, with Zimbabwe illustrating the dangers of this, and the possibility that forced evictions could escalate dangerously.
Date: 10-14 September 2001
Download the full paper (48K.rtf file)

Report on a Regional Consultation on Land Reform
Source: Martin Adams
Summary: Report on a Southern African consultation of donors and civil society organisations held in Benoni on 3 May 2001. Its purpose was to review progress with land reform and what donors might do in its absence. Traces current developments in Zimbabwe, , Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi. Argues that donors should not walk away when things turn sour, that land reform is a long-term iterative process, needing the involvement of many stakeholders. Unequal ownership of land is an increasing threat to political stability. Strengthening civil society during periods of government inaction is of value for what follows. Includes a problem analysis, analysis of donor support, rationale and principles of regional support for land reform, proposal for a regional land reform fund, proposed follow up, list of participants, appendix on the SADC Food Security and Rural Development Hub.
Date: 6 June 2001
Download the full paper (73K.rtf file)

Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation in Southern Africa: towards Greater Impact: Conference Report and Analysis
Source: SARPN (Scott Drimie and Sue Mbaya)
Summary: Covers purpose of the conference, proceedings, overview of land reform in the region, facilitating policy recommendations, general policy recommendations - policies and programmes complementary to land reform, policy processes and political dynamics, the role of civil society, state capacity - the way forward, references, country tables, and keynote address by Martin Adams.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (218K. rtf file)

Southern African Regional Poverty Network Conference Programme: Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation in Southern Africa
Source: SARPN (Scott Drimie)
Summary: Introduction to the SARPN Conference with list of papers, themes and issues.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (22K.rtf file)

Tenure Security, Livelihoods and Sustainable Land Use in Southern Africa
Source: Martin Adams
Summary: Includes the sustainable livelihoods framework, critical tenure-related livelihood questions, tenure insecurity in Amhara Region of Ethiopia and in Southern Africa, a country-by-country assessment, and discussion of what can be learned to illuminate post-transition land tenure reform.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (72K.pdf file)

Land Reform, Poverty Reduction and HIV/AIDS
Source: Oxfam GB (Dan Mullins, Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Coordinator)
Summary: Includes introduction, some lessons of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, impacts on people, implications for land reform – impacts on institutions, relationships between affected people and affected institutions, some proposals. Argues the need to understand how the pandemic affects the work of organisations such as Oxfam and to anticipate its future directions and their likely impacts on land reform.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (438K. pdf file)

Redistributive Land Reform in Southern Africa
Source: Martin Adams and John Howell, ODI (Overseas Development Institute) Natural Resource Perspectives No.64
Summary: Reviews redistributive land reform in Southern Africa (especially Zimbabwe, Namibia and ) against the background of the current land crisis. Describes dilemmas created for governments and donors and attempts to grapple with them. Seeks answers to: what has been experience with land redistribution over the past decade, what has been the impact on people’s livelihoods, how are the redistribution programmes expected to develop in future, what might be the role of donors in the process?
Date: January 2001
Full paper on ODI website

Networking on Land Issues in Southern Africa: Operationalising the Land Rights Network of Southern Africa
Source: Land Rights Network of Southern Africa
Summary Report of the Interim Steering Committee meeting of the Land Rights Network of Southern Africa in Harare. Contains summary of outcomes, background and objectives, progress report, network establishment, operationalising the network, planning the sub-regional conference, fundraising, next steps.
Date: 16-17 October 2000
Download the full paper (530K.rtf file)

Networking on Land Issues in Southern Africa: Operationalising the Land Rights Network of Southern Africa: Annexes
Source: Land Rights Network of Southern Africa
Summary 5 Annexes to Report of the LRNSA Interim Steering Committee meeting in Harare: agenda; networking activities undertaken by IUCN’s regional policy programme; by the SARIPS land programme; by the Mwengo land project; and under the CBNRM network.
Date: 16-17 October 2000
Download the full paper (344K.rtf file)

Land Policy: its Importance and Emerging Lessons from Southern Africa
Source: Sue Mbaya, Paper presented at the Uganda Land Alliance Workshop on Land Tenure and Land Use Policy, Kampala, Uganda
Summary: With examples from throughout Southern Africa, examines the objectives, impetae, importance, principles and important elements of a land policy; the policy development process and policy implementation; the relevance of a national land policy for Uganda and emerging lessons.
Date: 29 May 2000
Download the full paper (131K .rtf file)

Land Tenure Reform and Rural Livelihoods in Southern Africa
Source: Martin Adams, Sipho Sibanda and Stephen Turner, ODI (Overseas Development Institute) Natural Resource Perspectives No.39
Summary: Reviews land tenure reform on communal land against the background of the repossession of private land occupied by white settlers. The purpose and scope of the proposed tenure reform in the former homelands of are described, as are attempts by 's neighbours to resolve tenure problems in their communal areas.
Date: February 1999
Full paper on ODI website

Land and the Pursuit of Sustainable Development Pathways for Southern Africa: an Overview
Source: Joseph Matowanyika, Paper given at the DFID Workshop on Land Tenure, Poverty and Sustainable Development in sub-Saharan Africa, Sunningdale, Berkshire
Summary: Oxfam GB was closely involved in the planning of this workshop which brought together 75 practitioners from all over Africa. The author formerly worked for the Oxfam America supported regional organisation ZERO and has written widely on Southern Africa. This regional survey covers a number of sustainable development issues and future challenges for Southern Africa.
Date: 16-19 February 1999
Download the full paper (87K .rtf file)

Natural Resource Tenure in Southern Africa: An Overview of Key Issues and Policy Options for Communal Areas in Southern Africa
Source: Elizabeth Rihoy, SADC Natural Resources Management Project
Summary: Summary of issues arising from the SADC Workshop on Land/Resource Tenure and Decentralisation, Johannesburg, , 7-9 July 1998. Focuses on introduction to key concepts and terminology, an overview of current trends, and critical policy issues and options.
Date: October 1998
Download the full paper (45K .rtf file)

ZERO focuses on the Land Question in Southern Africa
Source: ZERO News no.1
Summary: First newsletter from Oxfam America-supported ZERO-Regional Environment Organisation, which has embarked on a 5 year research and advocacy programme on land in Southern Africa. This provides details of the programme and of ZERO's regional activities.
Date: 1 October 1998
Download the full paper (23K .rtf file)

Land Tenure in Southern Africa: Context, Trends and Lessons
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser, Africa). Paper at the SADC Workshop on Land/Resource Tenure and Decentralisation, Johannesburg, .
Summary: Presentation on context, trends and lessons in land tenure in Southern Africa written in the form of a series of large-print acetates designed to be of use to others who might find them helpful as explanatory aids.
Date: 7-9 July 1998
Download the full paper (71K .rtf file)

Top

Southern Africa: Angola

Women’s Land Rights in Post-Conflict Angola
Source: Robin Nielsen (RDI Report 125)
Summary: Includes formal and customary land systems for property rights; legal and customary rights for women; formalization and documentation of land rights; women’s involvement in land transactions; governance and institutions; access to information about women’s land rights; recommendations.
Date: July 2008
Download the full paper from the RDI (Rural Development Institute) website

Harvesting Hunger in Angola’s Diamond Fields
Source: Rafael Marques
Summary: Argues that the seizure of farmland for commercial diamond mining in Angola’s Lunda provinces is causing widespread hunger and deepening poverty. Fields are destroyed where crops are cultivated and arbitrary measurements taken to determine how much to pay the peasants; only US$0.25 per square metre of land seized. The law which ought to provide some protection is routinely ignored. Report calls on the companies involved to start negotiations with farming communities to ensure fair compensation for people who lose access to their land through the granting of diamond mining concessions.
Date: 30 July 2008
Download the full paper (1952K.pdf file) from the Rafael Marques website

Land rights in Angola: poverty and plenty
Source: HPG Working Paper (Conor Foley)
Summary: Includes land rights and conflict, humanitarian challenges, the political and legal framework, economic reform and governance issues, human rights and humanitarian organisations in Angola, corruption and forced evictions, the demobilisation process, rural land grabs, recommendations.
Date: November 2007
Download the full paper (253K.pdf file) from the ODI website

“They Pushed Down the Houses”: Forced Evictions and Insecure Land Tenure for Luanda’s Urban Poor
Source: Human Rights Watch and SOS Habitat
Summary: Includes the context of forced evictions in Luanda; the right to adequate housing; forced evictions and demolition in Luanda; national and international responses; recommendations. Argues that a critical underlying factor was insecure land tenure, which made residents particularly vulnerable and was derived from inadequate land legislation and lack of public information about land rights and urban management policies, inadequate registration procedures, and a consequent false perception of security of tenure by residents.
Date: May 2007
Download the full paper (1Mb.pdf file) from the HRW website

Terra: Urban land reform in post-war Angola: research, advocacy and policy development (chapters on land policy)
Source: Development Workshop (Angola) and the Centre for Environment and Human Settlements (Edinburgh). Development Workshop Occasional Paper 5.
Summary: This extract from the book Terra contains the contents page, introduction, and executive summary of the whole book, and chapters 10 and 11 on land policy in Angola. The book presents research on post-war urban land management options and the use of action research as an advocacy tool in drafting the 2004 Land Law. Chapter 10, on land policy and land legislation, covers the legal background, a chronology of Angolan laws and the legal revision process, the draft land law, specific recommendations on intermediate and evolutive rights. Chapter 11, on action research as an advocacy tool to influence Angola’s land policies, covers the background, the need and focus for research, disseminating the findings, land firmly on the agenda, lessons learned.
Date: October 2005
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Note: Oxfam is especially grateful to Development Workshop for permission to post these chapters from its book Terra on this website, given the dearth of material in English on current land issues in Angola. The book itself is available in the UK from One World Action owa@oneworldaction.org

Land Reform in Angola: Establishing the Ground Rules
Source: Jenny Clover (in Chris Huggins and Jenny Clover Eds, From the Ground Up: Land Rights, Conflict and Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa, ACTS and ISS, June 2005, pp.347-80)
Summary: Includes regional context, history of land tenure in Angola, the 1992 land law and its implementation, the draft Land Act of 2002 and its approval, review of post conflict potential fracture points – resettlement of IDPs and refugees, land grabbing, peri-urban land, food security and revival of agriculture, and prerequisites for a new policy.
Date: June 2005
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Note: Oxfam GB is grateful to the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) for permission to reproduce this chapter from their book, From the Ground Up: Land Rights, Conflict and Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2005.

Oxfam and Land in Post-Conflict Situations in Africa: Examples from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, , Rwanda and Angola
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Global Land Adviser)
Summary: Presentation of 5 brief case studies of what Oxfam actually did with regards land in post-conflict situations in Africa, in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, , Rwanda and Angola, concluding with the common themes, conclusions and lessons that emerged from the case studies. Also includes a critique of the role of USAID.
Date: November 2004
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Land & Natural Resource Management System Assessment, Bie Province, Angola
Source: CARE International Angola (Simon Norfolk, Felisaberto Ngola, Frenanda Elaho, Edith Chivi, Joaquim Rubem, Antonio Fernando, Tiago Kaunda, Jorge Manuel)
Summary: Contains an executive summary and 3 main chapters: on national, provincial and policy context; access to land and natural resources in Bie Province; and key issues for CARE programming – the promotion of livelihood security and equity. Within these chapters are sections on the proposed new Land Law; land administration and decentralisation; land use and availability and mechanisms of access to land; land tenure systems in the study sites. Argues that the central policy issue around which lobbying efforts ought to be directed in the future concern the need for the law to allow for, protect and register the recognised rights of community and family groups such that they become subject to transfer and transaction on terms and conditions suitable to the community or the family.
Date: March 2004
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Land and the Constitution in Angola
Source: Frenando Pacheco (ADRA) translated into English by SANL - the Southern African Network on Land
Summary: Speech in Civil Society Intervention in the Constitutional Process Project. Covers a necessary historical summary; colonial legacy; social representation of land and systems of utilization; new legislation, old practices, new conflicts; some conflict cases; conclusion.
Date: July 2000
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Southern Africa: Botswana

Land Inventory in Botswana: Processes and Lessons
Source: Global Land Tools Network, UN-HABITAT
Summary: A study of Botswana’s Tribal Land Integrated Management System (TLIMS), which documented the land inventorying of customary land.
Date: June 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 2.90MB) from the GLTN website

Tribal Land Administration in Botswana
Source: Richard White (PLAAS Policy Brief 31)
Summary: Covers the Tribal Land Act, tribal land administration, customary law, Land Boards, some long-standing issues, problems encountered. Concludes that there are serious problems concerning the administration of tribal land, mainly due to poor governance and ill-advised changes to the Tribal Land Act and its regulations.
Date: November 2009
Download the full paper (277K.pdf) from the PLAAS website

Land Tenure Policy and Practice in Botswana – Governance Lessons for Southern Africa
Source: Martin Adams, Faustin Kalabamu and Richard White). Published in Journal für Entwicklungspolitik (Austrian Journal of Development Studies), XIX, 1, 2003, 55-74. This was part of a special edition devoted to land reform in Africa edited by Birgit Englert and Walter Schicho. Oxfam GB acknowledges with thanks the permission of the Journal (JEP) and its editors to post 3 articles from this edition on this website.
Summary: Like other countries in the region, Botswana inherited a dual system of statutory and customary tenure at independence. Despite the contrasting characteristics of these two systems, it has developed a robust land administration, which has greatly contributed to good governance and economic progress. Its land tenure policy has been described as one of careful change, responding to particular needs with specific tenure innovations. Botswana continues to adapt its land administration, based on customary rights and values, to a rapidly urbanising economy and expanding land market. Its approach is of interest because it is finding solutions to problems that continue to elude its neighbours.
Date: March 2003
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Botswana National Land Policy, Issues Report
Source: National Resource Services (Pty) Ltd, Gaborone (for Botswana Department of Lands, Ministry of Lands, Housing and Environment)
Summary: A review of all Botswana land-related policies in preparation for a comprehensive new National Land Policy. Covers the following issues: land rights, land markets and taxation, urban and rural land management, land use planning, legal, institutional and financial issues. Dominant theme is the need to adjust land policy, laws, management and administration to the changes being brought about by economic development and urbanisation, manifested in a rapidly emerging land market. Government concerned over rise of landlessness and hoarding by speculators.
Date: 18 September 2002
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Southern Africa: Lesotho

Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation: Lesotho’s Experiences during the last two Decades
Source: Qhobela Cyprian Selebalo
Summary: Includes abstract, introduction, the Land Act 1979, land ownership, grant of title to land, need for land policy, current land reform proposals, draft White Paper proposals, and strategic options - access to land, land markets, participation.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (96K.rtf file)

Report of Land Policy Review Commission - Summary of Recommendations
Source: Lesotho Government
Summary: Recommendations of Land Policy Review Commission. Include qualification and capacity to hold title to land and to own land; outlawing gender discrimination on land; fallow and underutilised land; surveying, mapping and registration; block farming; commercial farming; range management; protection of wetlands; urban sites; rural development; institutions involved in land matters, including District and Local Land Boards; dispute resolution mechanisms; mining; forestry.
Date: 29 September 2000
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Southern Africa: Malawi

Whose Security? Deepening Social Conflict over ‘Customary’ Land in the Shadow of Land Tenure Reform in Malawi
Source: Centre for International (CID) Harvard University Working Paper 142 (Pauline E. Peters and Daimon Kambewa)
Summary: Malawi, like other countries in Africa, has a new land policy designed to clarify and formalise customary tenure. The country is poor with a high population density, highly dependent on agriculture, and the research sites are matrilineal-matrilocal, and near urban centres. But the case raises issues relevant to land tenure reform elsewhere: the role of ‘traditional authorities’ or chiefs vis-à-vis the state and ‘community’; variability in types of ‘customary’ tenure; and deepening inequality within rural populations. Even before it is implemented, the pending land policy in Malawi is intensifying competition over land. Discuss this and the increase in rentals and sales; the effects of public debates about the new land policy; a new discourse about ‘original settlers’ and ‘strangers’; and political manoeuvring by chiefs.
Date: March 2007
Download the full paper (200K.pdf file) from the Harvard CID website

A Review of DFID’s Engagement with Land Reform in Malawi
Source: Martin Adams
Summary: Includes experience with land policy development in the region, the Malawi National Land Policy and its implementation strategy, the emerging land market, social protection and economic growth and DFID’s support to date. Among the options suggested to DFID are a more inclusive project, low cost strategic engagement or withdrawal from the land sector. Argues the need for DFID support for public information and awareness and for civil society organisations. Contains a draft legal brief on customary title in Malawian law as an annex.
Date: 10 December 2004
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HIV/Aids and its Impact on Land Issues in Malawi. Paper presented at FAO/SARPN Workshop on HIV/AIDS and Land, 24-25 June, Pretoria
Source: Sue Mbaya (research commissioned by Oxfam GB)
Summary: Shortened version of longer research report for Oxfam GB. Includes introduction, the Malawi context, summary of methodology, summary of findings, recommendations. Argues there is a need to ensure that key laws, policies and development strategies be reviewed to ensure that provisions which marginalize those affected by HIV/AIDS are amended. Need for land administration institutions to grasp the present impact and future implications of the pandemic in terms of their own declining internal capacity.
Date: 24-25 June 2002
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Report on the Malawi Civil Society Conference on Land Reform Policy and Land Law Formulation Process
Source: Sue Mbaya (for Land Rights Network of Southern Africa)
Summary: Contains rationale for the conference, attendance, key issues emerging for discussions, major outcomes, opportunities for LRNSA, the way forward - plan of action for CSOs.
Date: 20-22 March 2002
Download the full paper (49K. rtf file)

Malawi National Land Policy
Source: Government of Malawi (Ministry of Lands, Physical Planning and Surveys)
Summary: This 78-page Policy (replacing with small but significant changes earlier versions which have appeared on this website) was approved by Cabinet on 17 January 2002. A summary of main policy recommendations is followed by 10 chapters: 1. Introduction; 2. Historical evolution of land policy; 3. Overview of land problems; 4. Land tenure reforms, acquisition and disposition; 5. Land administration and resettlement; 6. Land use planning and development; 7. Surveying, mapping and cadastral plans; 8. Titling, registration and dispute settlement; 9. Environmental management; 10. Inter-sectoral coordination.
Note: the Agriculture, Land and Natural Resources Committee of the Malawi Parliament has called for written submissions by 30 August 2002 from the general public, civic organisations and any interested party on the merits and demerits of the Land Policy. These should be addressed to Mr. J. L. Mwenyeheli, Senior Clerk Assistant and Secretary of the Committee, Malawi National Assembly, Private Bag B362, Lilongwe 3, Malawi. Phone: 265 1 772 587, Cell: 265 8 867 911
Fax: 265 1 774 196.
Date: 17 January 2002
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Land Reform in a Regional Context: Malawi Experiences
Source: Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (Fredrick Kandodo)
Summary: Contains background information, historical background, problems that the new Land Policy is addressing, the Policy document, the Land Policy goal, what can we do now that the Policy is with the Cabinet?, appendix.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (54K.rtf file)

Recent Experiences of Civil Society Participation in Land Policy Planning in Rwanda and Malawi
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: Contains the background to the National Land Policy workshops in Rwanda and Malawi in October and November 2000, and discusses civil society involvement prior to, during and after the workshops. Draws comparisons between the two countries and mentions the role of international NGOs.
Date: December 2000
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Report on the Malawian Draft National Land Policy Workshop
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: Includes background to the National Land Policy workshop, discussions with civil society, and key issues arising during the workshop (the role of chiefs, the sale of customary land, and the sale of land to foreigners). Contains what next? and a postscript on the Ministry of Lands’ assessment and position one month after the workshop.
Date: October 2000
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Executive Summary of the Final Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Land Policy Reform
Source: Malawi Government
Summary: Provides brief summary of the 9 chapters of the full Report, covering evolution of land policy and law, overview of land problems, current land tenure systems, systems of inheritance and land administration, settlement of land disputes, towards a new land policy and legal framework, and strategy for policy development.
Date: March 1999
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Southern Africa: Mozambique

Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa. Country Report: Mozambique NEW
Source: Oakland Institute (Joseph Hanlon)
Summary: Includes Mozambique – war, land and poverty; land law, investors and peasants; land concessions – forests, agrofuels and other crops; are reckless land investment deals over? Traces the history of previous land concessions. A current intense debate on the proper balance between small and large-scale, foreign and domestic investment, food and other crops. Civil society and peasant organizations have successfully exposed many failures relating to recent land investments and are now working to register community lands.
Date: December 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 2,053KB) from the Oakland Institute website

The Big Picture: Land and Gender Issues in Matrilineal Mozambique
Source: Ruben Villanueva
Summary: Includes the land inheritance system, the (potential) diminishing relevance of customary norms, land rights and awareness of the law, women, customary practices and participation, DUATs and land occupation, the land market. Argues that in the current context the right of women to access and administer land is being limited not by customary social rules and law but by the adverse socio-economic context which characterises the whole peasant sector.
Date: May 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 796KB)

Commercial Biofuel Land Deals & Environment and Social Impact Assessments in Africa: Three case studies in Mozambique and Sierra Leone
Source: Land Deal Politics Initiative Working Paper 1 (Maura Andrew & Hilde Van Vlaenderen)
Summary: Examines 3 case studies of proposed biofuel developments in Mozambique and Sierra Leone in terms of social displacement. More mitigation measures could provide livelihood restitution and avoid negative food security impacts.
Date: April 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 2.1MB) from the PLAAS website

Land Moves up the political agenda
Source: Mozambique political process bulletin, 48 (Joseph Hanlon)
Summary: Includes land forum to debate tough issues, land law and land rights, resuming community delimitation, Lioma, Niassa, exaggerated plans fuelled by secrecy and speculation, poor consultations mean communities lose out, biofuel expansion slower than expected, hundreds of land conflicts, resettlement badly done, the Chinese land grab myth.
Date: 22 February 2011
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Two Faces of Change: The Need for a Bi-Directional Approach to Improve Women’s Land Rights in Plural Legal Systems
Source: IDLO Enhancing legal empowerment through engagement with customary justice systems, Working Paper Series 2
Summary: Includes the elusive path to development; land rights in plural legal systems – customary land law, law reform as a mechanism for change, current challenges in using formal law to promote change, country case studies in Mozambique and Tanzania; research-based conclusions, broader conclusions and recommendations.
Date: September 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 544KB) from the IDLO website

Biofuels, land access and rural livelihoods in Mozambique
Source: IIED (Isilda Nhantumbo and Alda Salomao)
Summary: Contains topic and rationale, research methods, socio-economic context and biofuels initiatives, policy and legal framework for biofuels production, reconciling competing resource uses, community consultations and community-investor partnerships. Concludes that the design and implementation of policy tools is riddled with difficulties. The inability to enforce progressive legislation results in threats to community rights. The effectiveness of community consultations is questionable, as is the claim that biofuels can be commercially grown on marginal land. Need for more thorough scrutiny of investment proposals and for further research and continued monitoring.
Date: June 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 440KB) from the IIED website

Land Grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique
Source: FIAN
Summary: Contains a human rights framework to analyze foreign land grabbing – the rights to adequate food, housing and standard of living, the rights to work, self-determination and not to be deprived of one’s means of subsistence, and the rights of indigenous peoples. Followed by case studies of Kenya and Mozambique and concluding remarks about land grabbing and human rights violations.
Date: April 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 825KB) from the FIAN website

Land Policy Development in an African Context: Lessons learned from selected African experiences
Source: FAO Land Tenure Working Paper 14 (Paul De Wit, Christopher Tanner and Simon Norfolk)
Summary: Includes Sudan - complex and hesitant land policy reforms in a dynamic post conflict environment; Burkina Faso - inclusive decision making and consensus building on land policy; Mozambique - participatory policy and legislative development, difficult implementation and follow through; lessons learned for land policy development - diversity of policy objectives, land policy and peace, securing land rights, the rights of women, state land and land for public purposes, conflict management, conclusions.
Date: October 2009
Download the full paper (PDF 635KB) from the FAO website

Participatory Land Delimitation: An innovative development model based upon securing rights acquired through customary and other forms of occupation
Source: FAO Land Tenure Working Paper 13 (Christopher Tanner, Paul De Wit and Simon Norfolk)
Summary: Includes setting the scene - securing land rights for the rural poor; land delimitation and registration; the field methodology of participatory land delimitation; practical aspects of delimitation; definition and development.
Date: October 2009
Download the full paper (PDF 1.37MB) from the FAO website

Children and women's rights to property and inheritance in Mozambique: Elements for an effective intervention strategy
Source: Save the Children Mozambique
Summary: Covers traditional cultural norms and values, including property and inheritance, religion and witchcraft; and learning from good practice, including advocacy, influencing customary legal culture, support services, awareness raising, children's knowledge and life skills, conclusions and recommendations. Based on studies in Gaza, Manica, Zambezia and Nampula.
Date: June 2009
Download the full paper (PDF 1.18MB)

Improving Tenure Security for the Rural Poor Mozambique Country Case Study
Source: FAO LEP Working Paper 5 (Simon Norfolk and Christopher Tanner)
Summary: Has six main chapters: the nature of land rights; public land administration and registration (implications for rural land occupiers); formalizing DUATs by occupation - participation and registration (local-level consultations and bargaining power); formalization in practice – three case studies; implications for formalizing DUATs and how they can be used (awareness of rights, attitudes, and citizenship); new challenges to implementation (making consultations work, the need to educate, conflicts and access to justice).
Date: October 2006 (updated May 2007)
Download the full paper (PDF 647KB) from the FAO website

Strengthening Responses to the Triple Threat in the Southern Africa region - learning from field programmes in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia – Mozambique Report
Source: Concern Worldwide (CW), Oxfam International (OI) and the Southern Africa Regional Poverty Network (SARPN)
Summary: The triple threat is of HIV/AIDS, food insecurity, and weakening capacity for service delivery in Southern Africa. The Mozambique paper focuses on livelihood security in Manica Province, space for social protection, using political capital to facilitate development, the Mozambique Land Law – an opportunity for sustainable livelihoods, supporting livelihoods – new approaches, treatment – the backbone of addressing AIDS, credit savings, and economic empowerment of women.
Date: July 2006
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Note: Oxfam is grateful to SARPN for permission to post this paper, which also appears on their website at http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0002070/index.php

Land Rights and Enclosures: Implementing the Mozambican Land Law in Practice
Source: Christopher Tanner (Paper presented to the International Conference on The Changing Politics of Land in Africa: domestic policies, crisis management, and regional norms, University of Pretoria)
Summary: Includes key features of current land policy, land law implementation – recording local rights, registering customarily held rights, knowing your rights, the public sector response, private sector and other non-customary land rights, historical land units, land concentration, benefits to local people – community consultations, the positive side of the picture. Argues that an historic opportunity is in danger of being lost to use the Land Law to implement a process of rural transformation with a controlled enclosure process that brings social benefits and generates an equitable and sustainable outcome for all those involved.
Date: 28-29 November 2005
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Interview with Professor José Negrão, Hero of Mozambique’s Poor, about the Land Law
Source: Oxfam America
Summary: José Negrão died on 9 July 2005, aged 49. He was one of the most important intellectuals and researchers in Mozambique, was a leading figure in the Land Campaign and a strong defender of peasant land rights. We publish this recent interview with him in recognition of and in mourning a great and truly independent fighter who did not conform to what others expected but always pursued his own way. He was hugely influential during the Land Campaign and his success then derived from the fact that people trusted his integrity and his independence. He was greatly appreciated right across Southern Africa and did much to interpret Mozambique to its English speaking neighbours. He was also great fun to be with. He will be deeply missed and his death is a huge loss to Mozambique. The interview questions asked here are: How did you get involved with the Land Law? How was the Land Law disseminated? Were there many obstacles? What are some of the other benefits of the Land Law?
Date: July 2005
Download the full paper (25K.html file - link to Oxfam America web site)

Access to Land and other Natural Resources for Local Communities in Mozambique: Current Examples from Manica Province
Source: Tom Durang and Christopher Tanner (Green Agri Net Conference on Farmers Access to Land and Resources: Land Registration in Practice, Denmark)
Summary: Includes secure resource tenure and poverty alleviation, acquiring rights over land and natural resources and how this looks at the field level, local community delimitation, sharing resource access and use benefits, partnership and other forms pf shared resource use, case study experiences at provincial level in Manica.
Date: 1-2 April 2004
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Note: details of this conference are to be found on the Green Agri Net website http://www.greenagrinet.dk/ and Oxfam GB is grateful to Green Agri Net for permission to reproduce it here.

Struggling to Secure and Defend the Land Rights of the Poor in Africa
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser). Published in Journal für Entwicklungspolitik (Austrian Journal of Development Studies), XIX, 1, 2003, 6-21. This was part of a special edition devoted to land reform in Africa edited by Birgit Englert and Walter Schicho. Oxfam GB acknowledges with thanks the permission of the Journal (JEP) and its editors to post 3 articles from this edition on this website.
Summary: Article focuses on struggles to secure and defend the land rights of the poor in Africa. A very brief introduction sketches the impact of liberalisation on land in Africa, then looks at the deeper context of land reform, and at the current role of donors. The article goes on to look at detailed case studies of Uganda, Mozambique and and examines reasons for successes and failures of pro-poor land struggles in those countries. It concludes by focusing on the issue of redistribution in Southern Africa.
Date: March 2003
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Camponeses’ Realities: Their Experiences and Perceptions of the 1997 Land Law
Source: Rachael Knight
Summary: Based on 2002 fieldwork in four rural communities in Manica Province. Divided into five sections: overview – main points; case studies and methodology; effects of the 1997 Land Law in rural communities; problems encountered during implementation; recommendations; conclusion. Includes suspicion of the legal system, effects of legal knowledge, greater awareness of rights, class inequalities, conflicts between political parties, corruption and ignorance of local officials, attitudes to investors. Concludes that the Land Law is facilitating monumental changes in the consciousness of rural small scale farmers and slowly accomplishing everything it set out to do and more, actively granting rural peasants rights and a means through which they can secure those rights.
Date: November 2002
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Promoting Land Rights in Africa: How do NGOs Make a Difference?
Source: IIED (Nazneen Kanji, Carla Braga and Winnie Mitullah)
Summary: Investigates the effectiveness of NGOs’ strategies and methods to influence land policy reform. Report based on a study of seven NGOs promoting land reform and land rights in Mozambique and Kenya. Covers country contexts – NGO sectors and land policy reform; NGOs in the policy process – roles and relationships; assessing the impact of NGOs on land policy processes; key findings and lessons. Studies show that legislation and regulations can be modified, reinterpreted or ignored during implementation, when local level power relations become critical. Thus building the capacity of community groups to take informed action is critical to long-term and sustainable pro-poor policy influence, and monitoring implementation is key for NGOs. Those in the study all feel they need to engage directly with communities if they are to gain legitimacy for advocacy and monitoring.
Date: October 2002
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Land in Africa – an Indispensable Element towards Increasing the Wealth of the Poor
Source: José Negrão (Professor of Development Economics, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique). Published in Oficina dos Centro de Estudos Sociais, No. 179, Setembro 2002, Universidade de Coimbra, pp.1-21.
Summary: Includes the dimension of poverty and the need for land; colonisation and decolonisation; the imposition of globalization; indispensable but sufficient; constructing/ building the institutional framework in Mozambique. Cites the key issues cited by Mozambican civil society – no to landless people in Mozambique; no to absentee landowners, those who let the land and do not invest; recognition of testimonial proof of land occupation by the poor; incorporation of common law systems into the legal framework; and stop the bi-modal approach for agricultural development.
Date: September 2002
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The Land Debate in Mozambique: will Foreign Investors, the Urban Elite, Advanced Peasants or Family Farmers Drive Rural Development?
Source: Oxfam GB in Southern Africa (Joseph Hanlon)
Summary: A Research Paper commissioned by Oxfam GB's Regional Management Centre for Southern Africa. Land is again the subject of debate in Mozambique, five years after the passage of a land law which won praise for protecting peasant rights while creating space for outside investment. The new debate is about whether land, or at least land 'titles', should be able to be sold and mortgaged, are whether more emphasis should be put on improving conditions for would-be investors rather than delimiting and protecting peasant land and capacitating communities to deal with investors. Argues that the debate on land is actually a proxy for a debate about rural development. There are sharp divisions within government, the World Bank, donor agencies, and Mozambican civil society. The land debate is also linked to one over rural credit and support for farmers. The paper looks a what land is available for investors and at the difference between free or vacant land and underused land. The law gives communities the right to delimit and register their land. Delimitation gives communities power, but the process can cause problems, raising expectations and sometimes disinterring old disputes. Although the process is expensive and time-consuming, it may be the only way to protect peasant rights. The paper is not intended to make recommendations. Instead, it cites proposals already made by Mozambicans and foreigners working on the land issue on: continuing the work of the land commission; improving consultation; continuing delimitation; creating a kind of community organiser, facilitator or barefoot planner; enforcement of regulations and agreements; pilot partnerships; credit guarantee funds; increased transparency. It concludes by stressing the central role of Mozambican NGOs, but raises a number of questions about their increased role as service agencies and their ability to do what may be asked of them.
Date: 12 July 2002
Download the full paper (817K pdf file)
The paper is also available in Portuguese (227K rtf file)

Challenging Conventional Wisdom: Smallholder Perceptions and Experience of Land Access and Tenure Security in the Cotton Belt of Northern Mozambique
Source: Land Tenure Center University of Wisconsin Working Paper 48 (Paul J. Strasberg and Scott Kloeck-Jenson)
Summary: Covers land use patterns in the Cotton Belt - joint venture companies, smallholders and privados; research questions and characteristics of the five study zones; smallholder perceptions of land tenure security and experiences with conflict in the Cotton Belt. Challenges widely held beliefs about land tenure and access in the smallholder sector in Mozambique. Provisions in the new legal framework will not be sufficient to eliminate or adjudicate land conflicts between smallholders. The research results reveal significant variation in the size of household landholdings. Land access was found to be closely linked to key welfare indicators such as income and calorie availability; a weak non-farm economy heightens the importance of land for the welfare of rural families. These results contradict views held by many that land access is unconstrained for Mozambican smallholders.
Date: April 2002
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The Development of the 1997 Land Law in Mozambique
Source: IIED (Nazneen Kanji, Carla Braga, Winnie Mitullah)
Summary: An appendix from a longer IIED report on Promoting Land Rights in Mozambique and Kenya: How do NGOs make a Difference? Includes the role of NGOs, the national conference on land issues 1996, the anti-privatisation demonstration, the land campaign 1997-9, implementation issues.
Date: April 2002
Download the full paper (127K. rtf file)

Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation in Mozambique
Source: Simon Norfolk and Harold Liversage (for SARPN)
Summary: Details the development of contemporary land rights policy and poverty alleviation planning in Mozambique, lessons learned from recent experiences of land reform in Zambézia Province, and challenges and strategic options for future support for land reform. Argues that the land reform programme has now reached a critical stage with senior officials believing that measures in the 1997 Land Law designed to protect community tenure are obstacles to investment, and growing support for unfettered privatisation of land rights which would mainly benefit speculators. Looks at capacity and resource issues at provincial and district levels, at community consultations and representation, and the costs of land registration.
Date: March 2002
Download the full paper (206K. rtf file)
also available in PDF format on the SARPN website

Law-Making in an African Context: The 1997 Mozambican Land Law
Source: FAO (Christopher Tanner)
Note: Oxfam GB is grateful to the FAO for allowing it to post here a Word version of this paper, which is also available in pdf format on the FAO's website (see below).
Summary: Contains arguments for a more radical approach, policy development, the National Land Policy, developing and approving the law, the political context, the Land Law Regulations, the open border model, and the persistence of old approaches. Argues that the 1997 Land Law represented a significant effort to integrate customary and formal legal frameworks, to secure land rights for communities, and stimulate rural development. Analyses from the vantage point of an FAO technical advisor the process by which the law and regulations were developed from unparalleled dialogue and collaboration between government, civil society and technical specialists. Highlights important lessons the process holds for other countries and concludes with an assessment of the challenges of implementing the law and making its promise a reality.
Date: March 2002 (FAO Legal Papers Online #26)
Download the full paper (519K. rtf file)
Available also on the FAO website (PDF file)

Land Law and Agricultural Development in the Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique and in Swaziland
Source: Peter Bechtel
Summary: Comparative study of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, and Swaziland. Includes why land?, land ownership, its use for economic benefit/survival, the Fogão Africano/Emaseko as an analysis tool, land tenure in law and practice, land use and management, conclusions and recommendations.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (78K.rtf file)

Report on an FAO Workshop on Common Property Tenure Regimes: Methodological Approaches and Experiences from African Lusophone Countries
Source: DFID Rural Livelihoods Department (Christopher Tanner)
Summary: Summarises the 12 presentations made at the workshop, 8 of which concerned Mozambique, the remainder Sao Tome Principe, Angola, Guinea Bissau and Cabo Verde. Topics include the work of the inter-ministerial Land Commission, the Technical Annex of the Land Law, DINAGECA, and a training video A Nossa Tera (available in Portuguese and English). The report concludes with a summary of the seminar outcomes and a note on their transferability to Anglophone countries.
Date: December 2000
Download the full paper (85K.rtf file)

Cadastral Politics: the Making of Community Forestry in Zimbabwe and Mozambique
Source: David McDermott Hughes (Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University)
Summary: Looks at two contrasting community forestry projects in west-central Mozambique (Gogoi) and eastern Zimbabwe (Vhimba) and the struggles over the bounding and control of land. Addresses the idea that communities, states and private companies would want to or be capable of making joint decisions on forests and other natural resources. The lesson seems to be to dispense with the ideology of sharing and join the rough and tumble of cadastral politics.
Date: June 2000
Download the full paper (99K.rtf file)

The Mozambican Land Campaign, 1997-99
Source: José Negrão, Land Campaign National Coordinator
Paper at the Workshop on the Associatve Movement, Maputo, Mozambique.
Summary: The Land Campaign (Campanha Terra), which formally came to an end in November 1999, but which will re-emerge as a Land Forum, was supported by Oxfam GB and other Oxfams working in Mozambique in their Joint Advocacy Programme. The paper describes the background to and results of the campaign and the activities in its first and second years, mentions how it was organised, and briefly outlines plans for the future.
Date: 14 December 1999 (translated January 2000)
Download the full paper (39K .rtf file)

The Land Campaign in Mozambique
Source: José Negrão, Campaign Coordinator
Summary: The Land Campaign (Campanha Terra) is supported by Oxfam GB. The paper describes how the campaign emerged and was organised, its objectives and messages, and the materials produced.
Date: February 1999
Download the full paper (21K .rtf file)

Women’s Land Rights in post-War Mozambique
Source: UNIFEM (Rachel Waterhouse)
Summary: Based on a case study of gender relations and land rights in Ndixe village, Marracuene district, southern Mozambique. Structured into: women are disadvantaged in the post-war struggle for land; most women in Mozambique depend principally on subsistence agriculture, and then on access to land, to ensure their livelihoods; women have only secondary land rights under a resurgent customary law, but the rules may be changing; women have equal land rights to men under formal law, but most rural women are ignorant of these rights and hardly make use of them.
Date: February 1998
Download the full paper (34K.rtf file)

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Southern Africa: Namibia

Elite land grabbing in Namibian communal areas and its impact on subsistence farmers’ livelihoods NEW
Source: Willem Odendaal (Legal Assistance Centre, Namibia), PLAAS Policy Brief 33
Summary: Includes a history of contested ownership; land use and the law before independence; land reform after independence; communal land enclosures; illegal fencing in Omusati Region; recommendations; conclusion. Argues that government must immediately take action against illegal fencers.
Date: September 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 258KB) from the PLAAS website.

Livelihoods after land reform: Namibia country report
Source: Legal Assistance Centre, Land, Environment and Development Project (Wolfgang Werner and Willem Odendaal)
Summary: The Namibian part of a 3-country project which also covered Zimbabwe and . Includes land reform and poverty: national policy context; regional contexts: Hardap and Omakeke; Affirmative Action Loan Scheme; Farm Unit Resettlement Scheme; group settlement schemes; rethinking viability: reflecting on the research findings; policy implications.
Date: July 2010
Download in 2 parts from the LAC website: Part A (3.4MB) | Part B (4.0MB)

Financing Resettlement and Securing Tenure: Are Leasehold Agreements the Key to Success
Source: Wolfgang Werner and Willem Odendaal (Livelihoods after Land Reform Policy Brief 2)
Summary: Includes why has it taken so long to issue leaseholds?; the Land Acquisition and Development Fund; can a leasehold be used as collateral?; the Post Settlement Support Fund and who will benefit from it?; do commercial banks recognise the leasehold agreement?; can a leasehold be inherited?; no option to purchase leased land anymore; land use; the way forward.
Date: March 2010
Download the full paper (599K.pdf) from the LALR website

Resettlement: How viable is the small-scale Farming Model?
Source: Wolfgang Werner and Willem Odendaal (Livelihoods after Land Reform Policy Brief 1)
Summary: Covers poverty reduction, the National Resettlement Programme models - group farming and small-scale commercial farming, economic sustainability of small-scale commercial faming, the way forward.
Date: March 2010
Download the full paper (682K.pdf) from the LALR website

Kessl. A New Jurisprudence of Land Reform in Namibia?
Source: Legal Assistance Centre (Land, Environment and Development Project –Sidney L. Harring and Willem Odendaal) and Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit
Summary: Includes the legal process of land reform in Namibia; the framing of the Kessl case; Article 16 and land expropriation; Article 18 on administrative justice; a new jurisprudence of land reform in Namibia? The case repeatedly upholds the legality of the principle of land expropriation, but finds that the Ministry’s administration of it has violated Namibian law on several grounds. The judgement undermines the Government’s credibility in terms of its ability to plan and manage its own land reform programme. This opinion charts the way to a new Namibian jurisprudence that can break the deadlock on land reform, moving the process forward with full commitment to the rule of law and is highly significant for the future of land reform in Namibia and Southern Africa generally.
Date: April 2008
Download the full paper (1189K.pdf file)

Protection for Women in Namibia’s Land Reform Act: Is it Working?
Source: Legal Assistance Centre (Land, Environment and Development Project - Wolfgang Werner)
Summary: Includes women and livelihoods; gender equality in land policy and policy development; the Communal Land Reform Act; women’s rights to land and livestock; conclusion and recommendations.
Date: March 2008
Download the full paper (588K.pdf file) from the LAC website

‘No Resettlement Available’: An assessment of the expropriation principle and its impact on land reform in Namibia
Source: Legal Assistance Centre (Land, Environment and Development Project)
Summary: Contains introduction, three farms - the beginnings of land expropriation in Namibia; the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act 6 of 1995; the process of land reform in Namibia; the resettlement programme revisited; farm workers and resettlement; conclusions and recommendations. Argues that Namibia has to reconceptualise its agrarian model because the present land reform programme is setting impoverished black farmers up to fail.
Date: November 2007
Download the full paper (443K.pdf file)

‘Our land they took’: San land rights under threat in Namibia
Source: Legal Assistance Centre(Land, Environment and Development Project)
Summary: A study of the San, the poorest and most marginalised minority group in Namibia, with little access to existing political and economic institutions. They have been dispossessed of most of their ancestral lands and on lands they still occupy there are major issues of resource overuse, degradation, illegal grazing, unclear legal status and ongoing threats of dispossession. Looks at threats to San lands in 4 distinct parts of the country and the legal issues raised by those threats. Recommendations cover who owns the land, land reform, reforming governmental administration, law, social change and San rights. Argues the need for prompt government action to prevent political and legal chaos.
Date: December 2006
Download the full paper (2947K.pdf file)

The SADC Land and Agrarian Reform Initiative: The case of Namibia
Source: Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU Working Paper No 111, Willem Odendaal)
Summary: Looks at the institutional framework, at current key land policy and agrarian issues, and at the impact of land and agrarian reform. Makes a series of recommendations. Argues that the resettlement programme has failed with not a single project sustainable after 5 years. Argues the need for clear criteria for expropriation of commercial farmland and for farm workers to be a priority target in land reform projects.
Date: December 2006
Download the full paper (388K.pdf file)

A Place We Want to Call Our Own. A study on land tenure policy and securing housing rights in Namibia?
Source: Legal Assistance Centre (Land, Environment and Development Project)
Summary: Chapters cover introduction and background; land tenure; housing; inheritance and marital property legislation; poverty reduction strategy; land management systems; implementation of land and housing rights; good practices; conclusions; recommendations. Argues that the challenge is to take the steps necessary to speed up full implementation of the Flexible Land Tenure System so as to revitalise the hopes and aspirations of the thousands of poor families living in informal settlements. Concludes that law reform in Namibia should focus more on the equitable distribution of property upon divorce and death.
Date: May 2005
Download the full paper (1402K.pdf file) from the LAC website

Improving Tenure Security for the Rural Poor Namibia Country Case Study
Source: FAO LEP Working Paper 6 (Ben Fuller)
Summary: Sub-title is Investing in Rights – lessons from rural Namibia. Has four main chapters: the mosaic of land and rights issues; land rights initiatives (Affirmative Action Loan Scheme, resettlement, conservancies, communal registration); threats to rights (groups with limited rights, farm workers, small-scale farmers, and illegal fencing); strengths and weaknesses in rights reform.
Date: October 2006
Download the full paper (1107K.pdf file) from the FAO website

Farm Workers in Namibia: Living and Working Conditions
Source: Labour Resource and Research Institute (Cons Karamata)
Summary: Covers farming, personal and demographic data in the sample areas, working conditions, minimum wages, ownership of livestock and tenure rights, living conditions, human and labour relations, occupational health and safety, HIV/AIDS, conclusions and recommendations. Key research questions included the impact of the 2003 minimum wage legislation on living standards and employment levels, health and safety issues, land use rights and gender-based differences in employment conditions. Almost all farm workers are employed on a full-time basis and over a quarter of those surveyed had been in their current employment for over 6 years. Labour relations are far better on black-owned than on white-owned commercial farms, where a master-servant mentality still persists and many workers are in debt to the farm shops.
Date: August 2006
Download the full paper (2,118K.doc file)

Determination of the Feasibility of Conducting an Assessment of the Impact of Farm Worker Evictions on Farm Worker Livelihoods in Namibia
Source: Legal Assistance Centre, Namibia (Land, Environment and Development Project)
Summary: A detailed study of the rationale behind farm-worker evictions and their effects on farm-worker communities in a country where there is currently no legislation protecting tenure rights. Looks at common-law evictions, District Labour Courts and their phasing out, at data extracted from court rolls, reasons for filing complaints, and at drafting legislation for Namibia. Concludes with recommendations.
Date: June 2006
Download the full paper (1,251K.pdf file)

Our Land we Farm. An analysis of the Namibian Commercial Agricultural Land Reform Process
Source: Legal Assistance Centre, Namibia (Land, Environment and Development Project)
Summary: Looks at land tax, land expropriation, foreign ownership, the National Resettlement Programme and the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme, case studies, and donor support in the land-reform process. Concludes with recommendations on expropriation, farm workers, sustainability of resettlement projects, gender issues, skills sharing and training.
Date: September 2005
Download the full paper (891K.pdf file)

Report on the proceedings of the National Conference on Women’s Land and Property Rights and Livelihood in Namibia, with a Special Focus on HIV/AIDS
Source: Namibia Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare and FAO
Summary: Report divided into 5 themes: legal issuers of women’s rights to land and property in Namibia; traditional institutions on women’s land and property rights; HIV/AIDS, land and property rights, and livelihood strategies; Namibian experiences; regional experiences (Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe). 6 group discussions on: sensitisation and paralegal training; legal and policy reforms to secure women’s rights to movable and immovable property; establishment of local institutions and mechanisms to protect and strengthen women’s land and property rights; HIV/AIDS and women’s land and property rights and livelihood; potential projects and programmes for food security and livelihood strategies; specific support to orphans and other vulnerable children.
Date: 6-8 July 2005
Download the full paper (1,380K PDF file)

Land reform in Namibia: A Bibliography
Source: Wolfgang Werner with inputs for Robin Sherbourne (for Institute for Public Policy Research)
Summary: A lists of references on research specifically on land reform in Namibia published on or after 1990, including official documents but excluding newspaper and magazine articles. This bibliography was commissioned by the Institute for Public Policy Research in Namibia and Oxfam GB is grateful for IPPR’s permission to publish it on this website.
Date: March 2004
Download the full paper (40K.rtf file)

Guide to the Communal Land Reform Act
Source: Legal Assistance Centre (Land, Environment and Development Project) and Advocacy Unit Namibia National Farmers Union
Summary: A detailed guide covering communal land boards, communal land areas, allocation of customary, grazing and leasehold ,rights in respect of communal land, general provisions.
Date: July 2003
Download the full paper (1544K.pdf file) from the LAC website

A Rich Man’s Hobby
Source: Institute for Public Policy Research Opinion No.11 (Robin Sherbourne)
Summary: Argues that the price of commercial farmland in Namibia is high in relation to the profits that can be made from commercial livestock farming. As a result, farming is rapidly becoming the preserve of the urban rich who farm as a lifestyle choice and are prepared to subsidise their farms from their principal sources of income. Government policy is trying to encourage black Namibians into commercial farming through the Affirmative Action Loans scheme. However, given the price of land, many of these farmers will struggle to create commercially viable farms. This is bound to cause frustration further down the road and new farmers will start to demand more subsidies to purchase farms and diversify into other activities that will allow them to raise their incomes. Government will then have to decide whether to increase subsidies to encourage broader land ownership or simply allow those who can afford to farm to benefit from land reform.
Date: December 2003

Note: This and other papers are available on the IPRI workshop at http://www.ippr.org.na/

Download the full paper (376K.rtf file)

Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation: Experiences from Namibia
Source: Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (Wolfgang Werner)
Summary: Covers land reform and poverty alleviation, land reform since independence, thinking on land reform before independence (in exile and internally), experiences with land reform and its connection to poverty, prospects for land reform, options for assistance.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (73K.rtf file)

Land Reform in Namibia
Source: Martin Adams
Summary: Examines the experience of land reform in Namibia over the past decade and how this might develop in the coming decade. Little progress has been made but developments in Zimbabwe have hugely increased interest and awareness. Discusses political and ethnic challenges, environmental constraints, institutional tensions, redistribution of commercial farms, SWAPO's Land Reform Policy, the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme, the resettlement programme, land tenure reform in the Communal Areas, and problems of institutional capacity.
Date: November 2000
Download the full paper (77K.rtf file)

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Southern Africa: South Africa

Rights without Illusions: The Potential and Limits of Rights-Based Approaches to Securing Land Tenure in Rural South Africa NEW
Source: Ben Cousins and Ruth Hall (PLAAS Working Paper 18)
Summary: Includes communal tenure reform – a contested terrain; impacts of the legal challenge to CLARA; ‘rights’ as a medium of local struggle, advocacy, litigation, mobilisation and research agendas. Farm tenure reform – policies and progress since 1994; declining priority and shifting politics; why the slow progress on realising rights?; ‘rights’ as a medium of struggle among farm dwellers and owners and civil society strategies; agendas for litigation, research, activism and advocacy. Evaluation – potential and limits of a rights framework.
Date: May 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 916KB) from the PLAAS website

Reconciling Living Customary Law and Democratic Decentralisation to Ensure Women’s Land Rights Security NEW
Source: Sindiso Mnisi (PLAAS Policy Brief 32)
Summary: Argues that decentralisation holds much potential for lively, participatory democratic lawmaking and enforcement through which rural women can gain greater power and secure more rights. Essential that all decentralisation policy be guided by constitutional principles. Explores the guiding principles necessary to safeguard democratic decentralisation.
Date: November 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 317KB) from the PLAAS website.

What is a 'smallholder?
Source: Ben Cousins (PLAAS Working Paper 16)
Summary: CIncludes 'small-holder' farmers as potential beneficiaries of agrarian reform in South Africa, a class-analytic approach to small-scale farming, accumulation 'from above' and 'from below', policy implications.
Date: February 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 248KB) from the PLAAS website.

Obstacles Facing Emerging Women Farmers in the Western Cape and Northern Cape, South Africa
Source: Surplus People Project (compiled by Penny Parenze)
Summary: Contains a critique of food and land reform policies in South Africa, findings, analysis and recommendations. Findings focus on women and farming: significance, roles and responsibilities, accessing and cultivating land, support from the private and public sector, reflections of emerging women farmers.
Date: January 2010
Download the full paper (PDF 4.20MB)

A fresh start for rural development and agrarian reform?
Source: Ruth Hall (PLAAS Policy Brief 29)
Summary: Contains mix-and-match ministries, separating Land Reform from Agriculture, dualism and the ‘missing middle’, rethinking rural development, what are the policy alternatives?
Date: July 2009
Download the full paper from the PLAAS website

Another Countryside? Policy options for land and agrarian reform in South Africa
Source: Ruth Hall, Ed (PLAAS)
Summary: This book is a compilation of 11 papers that explore the limits of the current approach to land redistribution in South Africa and propose policy alternatives. Centres on 3 themes: how land is to be acquired (which land, and for whom), under what tenure arrangements it is to be held, and how production is to be supported. Focus moves beyond debating alternatives to the ‘willing-buyer, willing-seller’ paradigm to the kind of agrarian change that land reform should pursue. Central to all is reconfiguring the roles of state and market.
Date: June 2009
Download the full book from the PLAAS website

Women’s Property Rights, HIV and AIDS & Domestic Violence. Research Findings from Two Districts in South Africa and Uganda
Source: HSRC Press (Hema Swaminathan, Cherryl Walker, Margaret A. Rugadya eds)
Summary: To better understand the role of tenure security in protecting against, and mitigating the effects of, HIV and violence, this book explores these linkages in Amajuba, South Africa and Iganga, Uganda. Results from the qualitative study revealed that property ownership, while not easily linked to women's ability to prevent HIV infection, can nonetheless mitigate the impact of AIDS, and enhance a woman's ability to leave a violent situation.
Date: 2008
Download the book (1.2MB PDF) from the HSRC Press website

Contextualising the controversies: dilemmas of communal tenure reform in post-apartheid South Africa
Source: Introduction to Aninka Claassens and Ben Cousins, Land, Power & Custom: Controversies generated by South Africa’s Communal Land Rights Act (Juta Publishing, Cape Town, 2008)
Summary: Includes the legacies of colonial and apartheid rule, policy dilemmas, key controversies – private ownership or customary land rights?; the nature and content of ‘customary’ land rights; transforming gender inequalities; land rights, authority and accountability; processural or rule-bound versions of ‘customary’ law; was the appropriate procedure followed in enacting the Communal Land Rights Act?
Date: August 2008
Download the full paper (229K.pdf file)

Note: Oxfam is grateful to Juta Publishing for permission to post the introduction to this new book which is being distributed in the UK by Gazelle Books http://www.gazellebookservices.co.uk/

We also want land: A PAR and Land Use Workbook
Source: TCOE (Trust for Community Outreach and Education)
Summary: Includes land issues in South Africa, Participatory Action Research, PAR in action, toolkit of activities. Addresses obstacles to land reform in the Breede River Valley, Western Cape, and how to strengthen local capacities and create awareness of rights.
Date: June 2008
Download the full paper (PDF 1.38MB)

Land Reform in South Africa. Getting back on track
Source: Centre for Development and Enterprise – (CDE Research Report 16)
Summary: Includes case studies: land market dynamics and land reform in Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Mpumalanga; current government programmes and policies; South Africa’s land market and land reform; private sector contributions to land reform; 3 agri-business sectors and land reform – fruit, timber, sugar; research conclusions: key challenges to land reform now; where are we now, and where are we heading?; getting back on track: CDE’s recommendations. Argues it is of considerable concern that the Director-General of Land Affairs recently said that at least 50% of government land reform projects have failed to make their beneficiaries permanently better off. There is much empirical evidence to show that the private sector and markets make major contributions to South Africa’s development in general and to land reform in particular. CDE believes it is vital to understand private sector perspectives on land reform and that the positive role of the private sector in land reform can and should be expanded.
Date: May 2008
Download the full paper (630K.pdf file) from the CDE website

Land Reform and Rural Territories: Experiences from Brazil and South Africa
Source: Julian Quan (IIED Gatekeeper series 134)
Summary: Despite programmes for rural land reform and redistribution around the world, inequitable land distribution and rural poverty remain profound in much of the rural South. This paper suggests a new approach to land reform and rural development. ‘Rural territorial development’ is based on and encourages shared territorial identity (distinctive productive, historical, cultural and environmental features) amongst different stakeholders and social groupings. It builds on the fact that rural people’s livelihood strategies are complex and often mostly non-agricultural in nature. It works by (1) promoting collaboration between different sectoral agencies, levels and administrative units of government, and with civil society and private sector actors, within distinctive geographical spaces; and (2) creating new, inclusive multi-stakeholder fora for participatory development planning and implementation at the meso scale - working across groupings of local municipalities, which are often too small on their own to drive economic development.
Date: February 2008
Download the full paper (159K.pdf file) from the IIED website

Tenure Arrangements and Support for Land Rights in South Africa’s Land Reform
Source: PLAAS and ICCO conference on Another Countryside? Policy Options for Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa, Policy Options 3 (Edward Lahiff)
Summary: Contains introduction – the challenge of tenure reform in South Africa; tenure issues in resettlement: redistribution and restitution; tenure security of farm dwellers – securing long-term tenure under ESTA, labour tenants, ways forward; conclusion and recommendations on resettlement and farm dwellers.
Date: 24-25 October 2007
Download the full paper (528K.pdf file)

Land Demand, Targeting & Acquisition in South Africa’s Land Reform
Source: PLAAS and ICCO conference on Another Countryside? Policy Options for Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa, Policy Options 2 (Ruth Hall)
Summary: Includes how land is currently identified and acquired; recognising and responding to demand; what do we know about land needs?; innovative ways of working with needs / demand and supply; land prices; towards alternatives; conclusion; recommendations.
Date: 24-5 October 2007
Download the full paper (582K.pdf file)

Land Use and Livelihoods in South Africa’s Land Reform
Source: PLAAS and ICCO conference on Another Countryside? Policy Options for Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa, Policy Options 1 (Ruth Hall)
Summary: Includes patterns of land use in land reform; how land use is currently planned; livelihood impacts of land uses in land reform; dynamics in the commercial farming sector; international experiences; towards alternative land uses and livelihoods; conclusions; recommendations.
Date: 24-5 October 2007
Download the full paper (894K.pdf file)

Policy options for land reform in South Africa: New Institutional Mechanisms?
Source: PLAAS Policy Brief 26 (Lionel Cliffe)
Summary: Since the 2005 Land Summit, new approaches to land reform have been on the agenda, yet there remains little clarity on the way forward. The main focus has been on means of accelerating the redistribution of land through new modes of acquiring land. Acquisition is an important matter but if treated in isolation risks mis-specifying the core problems evident in land reform in South Africa. A new phase of land reform located within a wider agrarian reform is needed and will require new institutional arrangements. Any alternative strategy will have to revise the institutional mechanisms that have been handling land reform thus far: are the procedures and the institutions that are in place to design and implement land reform adequate and appropriate to the kind of new tasks envisaged? What new farming units and activities are intended, and what post-transfer support will be required to make this agricultural system productive? This paper explores mechanisms appropriate to one kind of agricultural alternative: a vision of a productive, small-scale essentially household farm sector. Draws on experiences from Latin America and elsewhere in Africa.
Date: October 2007
Download the full paper (357K.pdf file) from the PLAAS website.

PLAAS Research Reports on Restitution in South Africa
Source: PLAAS Research Reports 26-36
Summary: Titles are: International comparative study of strategies for settlement support provision to land reform beneficiaries by Susan Tilley (RR26); Business models in land reform by Edward Lahiff (RR27); Bakwena ba Mare a Phogole (Klipgat) community restitution claim by Susan Tilley and Ntombizabantu Nkazane (RR28); Groenfontein-Ramohlakane community restitution claim by Susan Tilley, Ntombizabantu Nkazane and Edward Lahiff (RR29); Restitution and post-settlement support: Three case studies from Limpopo by Tshililo Manenzhe and Edward Lahiff (RR30); Bjatladi community restitution claim by Susan Tilley and Edward Lahiff (RR31); The impact of land restitution and land reform on livelihoods by Ruth Hall (RR 32); eMpangisweni community trust claim by Susan Tilley (RR33); Schmidtsdrift community land claim by Karin Kleinbooi (RR34); Covie community land claim by Karin Kleinbooi and Edward Lahiff (RR35); Land redistribution and poverty reduction in South Africa: The livelihood impacts of smallholder agriculture under land reform by Edward Lahiff, Themba Maluleke, Tshililo Manenzhe and Marc Wegerif (RR36)
Date: August 2007
Download the full papers (sizes vary between 1212 and 3886K.pdf files) from the PLAAS website
http://www.plaas.org.za/publications/researchreports/RR26 through to RR36

State, Market or the Worst of both? Experimenting with Market-based Land Reform in South Africa
Source: Programme of Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Occasional Paper 30 (Edward Lahiff)
Summary: Paper reviews the South African experience with land reform, and land redistribution in particular, up to the end of 2005. Looks at various aspects of market-based land reform – landowner veto on participation in land reform; payment of ‘market prices’ for land; self-selection of beneficiaries; focus on ‘commercial’ forms of production; prominent role for the private sector in provision of credit, extension, and other services. The experience suggests that market-based approaches are incapable of effecting a large-scale redistribution of land or restructuring of the agrarian economy, and are likely to be met with growing popular opposition as the crisis of rural livelihoods grows and the limitations of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ become apparent.
Date: January 2007
Download the full paper (368K.pdf file)

More than simply ‘socially embedded’: recognizing the distinctiveness of African land rights
Source: Ben Cousins and Aninka Claassens
Summary: Discusses controversies generated by recent South African legislation (the Communal Land Rights Act), shows how these echo debates in the wider African context, and explores potential solutions to reform of ‘customary’ land tenure regimes. Argues that the most appropriate approach to tenure reform is to make socially legitimate occupation and use rights the point of departure for both their recognition in law and for the design of institutional contexts for mediating competing claims and administering land. Legal frameworks should vest land rights in the people who occupy and use land, not in groups or institutions, while recognising that these rights are shared and relative within a variety of nested social units.
Date: 17-19 May 2006 (Keynote address at international symposium on ‘At the frontier of land issues: social embeddedness of rights and public policy’, Montpellier, France)
Download the full paper (247K.rtf file)

Still Searching for Security. The reality of farm dweller evictions in South Africa
Source: Social Surveys and Nkuzi Development Association (Mark Wegerif, Bev Russell and Irma Grundling)
Summary: Documents the history of evictions of rural dwellers based on a comprehensive survey of people displaced from South African farms between 1984-2004. Content includes methodology and objectives of the study, the scale of evictions, perspectives from commercial farmers, the impact of evictions on the livelihoods of farm dwellers, local impact, aspirations of evictees, possible interventions.
Date: December 2005
Download the full paper (3750K.pdf file)

Note: Oxfam is grateful to Nkuzi Development Association for permission to reproduce this survey on this website

From ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ to a people-driven land reform
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)
University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.17 (Edward Lahiff)
Summary: The concept of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ has dominated the discourse on land reform in South Africa since 1994. Now, following the national Land Summit of July 2005, it appears that government is willing to abandon this approach, but there is little indication of what this might mean in practice. This paper explores the origins and meaning of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ and the alternatives that might take its place. Headings include moving beyond the market, ending the landowner veto, just and equitable compensation, empowering the landless.
Date: September 2005
Download the full paper (634K.pdf file)

Also available on the PLAAS website http://www.uwc.ac.za/plaas/ under ‘Publications, Policy brief series: Debating land and rural development’

Perspectives on Land Tenure Security in Rural and Urban South Africa
Source: Leap (Legal Entity Assessment Project)
Summary: Subtitled ‘an analysis of the tenure context and a problem statement for Leap.’ Comprises (i) context – current analyses of tenure, the South African context, tenure security and vulnerability; (ii) multiple tenure arrangements in South Africa – customary tenure arrangements, Registration of Deeds system, local and off register tenure arrangements in rural and urban areas, transitional tenure arrangements; (iii) problem statements – multiple tenure arrangements, vulnerability and tenure; (iv) points of departure for phase 4 – understanding, recognition and integration, vulnerability. Also contains an innovative executive summary and a useful bibliography.
Date: June 2005
Download the full paper (696K rtf file)

Rural People do need Land for Farming
Source: Ben Cousins (Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape)
Summary: A critique of the CDE report, Land Reform in South Africa, which, the author claims, underestimates the potential of smallholder agriculture in a country with a large domestic market for food products. Far too much is claimed in the report for the private sector and agribusiness. Government needs new and better conceived policies. Insists that rural land reform remains an urgent priority for South Africa as does tenure reform in urban and peri-urban areas. There is need for an integrated rural and urban approach.
Date: June 2005
Download the full paper (11K rtf file)

Land Reform in South Africa: a 21st Century Perspective
Source: Centre for Development and Enterprise, Research Report 14 (Ann Bernstein)
Summary: Includes recent political and policy developments, research findings and conclusions, a wider national picture, changing the discourse, a challenge to the private sector, South Africa faces a choice. Argues that South Africa’s current land reform model is largely informed by an outmoded vision of the role of agriculture and the rural areas in South African society, so is overloaded with expectations it cannot fulfil. Land reform is now predominantly an urban challenge.
Date: June 2005
Download the full paper (552K pdf file)

Note: this report is also posted on the CDE’s website www.cde.org.za and Oxfam is grateful to CDE for permission to reproduce it on this website.

Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2004
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Research Report No.20 (Ruth Hall)
Summary: Includes a retrospective of ten years of land reform, restitution, redistribution, farm tenure reform, communal tenure reform, debating the future of land and agrarian reform, conclusions. Argues that there is a need for the state to intervene to make suitable land available to meet local needs, rather than relying wholly on land markets. Significant progress has been made, but there is a need to integrate land reform with agricultural policy, rural development and local economic development, thus locating the redistribution of land and land rights at the centre of a wider process of pro-poor agrarian reform.
Date: December 2004
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Oxfam and Land in Post-Conflict Situations in Africa: Examples from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Rwanda and Angola
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Global Land Adviser)
Summary: Presentation of 5 brief case studies of what Oxfam actually did with regards land in post-conflict situations in Africa, in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Rwanda and Angola, concluding with the common themes, conclusions and lessons that emerged from the case studies. Also includes a critique of the role of USAID.
Date: November 2004
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Budgeting for land reform
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.13 (Ruth Hall and Edward Lahiff)
Summary: The primary purpose of land reform in South Africa is to redistribute agricultural and other land to address the racially skewed pattern of landholding and promote development. Slow progress in land reform over the past decade underscores the urgency of finding ways to accelerate the process. The state has adopted a market-assisted approach to redistribution. This means that land is usually bought at full market price. In addition, substantial funding is needed for the implementation of the programme and for post-settlement support to beneficiaries. The budget allocated to land reform is therefore of central importance to the programme. This publication surveys trends in the land reform budget over the past decade, with particular emphasis on redistribution.
Date: August 2004

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also available on the PLAAS website http://www.uwc.ac.za/plaas/ under ‘Publications, Policy brief series: Debating land and rural development’

Civil society and social movements: Advocacy for land and resource rights in Africa
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.12 (Munyaradzi Saruchera and Michael O Odhiambo )
Summary: Civil society formations in Africa have historically played an important part in the establishment of organising people in the pursuit of common goals. The majority of Africa’s people reside in rural areas where they derive their livelihoods from land, and for this majority secure access to land is the foundation of any efforts to alleviate poverty. Land reforms in Africa are at various stages of development in a number of countries, partly in response to pressures for liberalisation and privatisation from the World Bank and other like-minded institutions. Civil society organisations have played an important role in the development of progressive policies in some countries. The lessons learned from those countries must be applied in continuing advocacy for reforms which increase access among the poor to land and resource rights.
Date: August 2004
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also available on the PLAAS website http://www.uwc.ac.za/plaas/ under ‘Publications, Policy brief series: Debating land and rural development’

The context of land and resource rights struggles in Africa
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.9 (Munyaradzi Saruchera)
Summary: Africa’s poor are heavily dependent on land and natural resources for livelihood, but some governments continue to resist transferring full resource management rights to them. This risks the loss or degradation of these resources, or their transfer into private hands. The continent’s development challenges are compounded by many factors, including unequal social, economic and political relations, the legacy of colonialism, globalisation, and collusive neo-liberal policy which favours capital and powerful allies. In addition, the voice of Africans in the debates which shape important processes at global, continental and national levels are seldom heard. The Pan-Africa Programme on Land and Resource Rights (PAPLRR) is a civil society initiative which sets out to address these issues.
Date: August 2004
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also available on the PLAAS website http://www.uwc.ac.za/plaas/ under ‘Publications, Policy brief series: Debating land and rural development’

A Political Economy of Land Reform in South Africa
Source: Review of African Political Economy, Vol.31, No.100, June 2004, pp.213-27. (Ruth Hall, Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape)
Summary: Land reform is one way in which the ‘new’ South Africa set out to redress the injustices of apartheid and, by redistributing land to black South Africans, to transform the structural basis of racial inequality. During the first decade of democracy, land reform has fallen far short of both public expectations and official targets. This article describes the progress of the programme and its changing nature. It is argued that a recent shift in land policy, from a focus on the rural poor to ‘emerging’ black commercial farmers, is consistent with changes in macro-economic policy and reflects shifting class alliances. The programme now appears to pursue a limited deracialisation of the commercial farming areas rather than a process of agrarian restructuring. Most fundamentally, land reform has not yet provided a strategy to overcome agrarian dualism.
Date: June 2004
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Note: Oxfam GB is extremely grateful to the editors and publishers of the widely esteemed journal, Review of African Political Economy, for permission to reproduce on this website Ruth Hall’s article, recently published in ROAPE.

Traditional Land Matters – A Look into Land Administration in Tribal Areas in Kwazulu-Natal
Source: LEAP – Legal Entity Assessment Project (Rauri Alcock and Donna Hornby)
Summary: Paper describes current land administration practices as understood by traditional structures to unpack some components of existing African tenure arrangements in KwaZulu-Natal. Hoped this will help base to understand how communal land systems operate, regardless of which structure governs them, in order to support practices that secure tenure effectively. Includes introduction, background to the research, the debate about the role of traditional institutions in a democracy, gender equity, research objectives and methodology, research findings - structure, land administration, access, use and alienation, conclusions.
Date: June 2004
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Note: Oxfam GB is grateful to LEAP for permission to publish this paper which is also available on its website at http://www.leap.org.za/traditionalframe.htm

Follow-Up Discussions on Land Reform in South Africa: A Report on Prospects for Dialogue
Source: Land Reform 'Think Tank’ Group
Summary: In March 2003 a group of land reform practitioners and researchers met informally to discuss the state of land reform in Southern Africa and to explore ideas about constructive ways forward. Following this, in late June 2003 a number of participants from the ‘think-tank’ workshop held discussions with various stakeholders in South Africa to get feedback on the report and to identify their views, with a desire to encourage debate and contribute to the building of greater consensus on the importance of meaningful, sustainable land reform. The spirit of the meetings was encouraging about the prospects for serious debate, notwithstanding the very different points of view on what equitable and sustainable land reform means in different constituencies. This report presents a summary of the discussions, states who was involved in them and summarises areas of agreement and disagreement, and areas for constructive debate and provides the names of five people who can be contacted in their personal capacities.
Date: 19 September 2003
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Land use and rural livelihoods: Have they been enhanced through land reform?
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.5 (Maura Andrew, Charlie Shackleton and Andrew Ainslie)
Summary: It is often assumed that transferring land to rural households will provide people with valuable assets that can be productively used to enhance their livelihoods. Unfortunately, few rural people or land reform beneficiaries are perceived to be using land productively because they do not engage in significant commercial production for the market. Transferring land to subsistence users is therefore seen as a waste of resources. However, an examination of land use in communal areas and amongst land reform beneficiaries indicates that resource-poor rural people do use land productively and resourcefully, but the constraints to production and participation in agricultural markets they encounter limit their livelihoods to survivalist mode. Land reform can enhance rural livelihoods beyond this survivalist mode if it is integrated into a broader rural development programme aimed at providing subsistence land users with the support they need to overcome the constraints to production, and to connect them to the markets.
Date: August 2003
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also available on the PLAAS website http://www.uwc.ac.za/plaas/ under ‘Publications, Policy brief series: Debating land and rural development’

Key Lessons Learned from Working with Six Land Reform Communities in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa
Source: FARM-Africa
Summary: Looks at key problems affecting land reform beneficiaries in FARM-Africa projects in the Northern Cape of South Africa: livelihoods, the right to settle, lack of infrastructure, too poor to farm?, development plans, the management capacity of executive committees, gaining access to technical agricultural support and credit, equitable access and grazing fees, obligations of having water rights, the responsibility for Act 126 projects, government policies and their effects on emerging farmers.
Date: August 2003
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'Land for Peace' - A Submission to the South African Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs
Source: Roger Roman
Summary: Argues the need for landowners in South Africa to draw lessons from events in Zimbabwe and to be much more radical, proactive and imaginative in promoting needed changes in land reform, failing which they will have no future, as pressures from the landless intensify. The current status quo is unsustainable and the national effort inadequate. The private sector has a key role to play to break the current logjam. Increasing number of landowners are beginning to see the light and accept political realities. Calls for a land summit to negotiate a comprehensive agrarian transformation. The entire meaning and exercising of landownership needs to be creatively revisited and redefined. Soon to launch a Land for Peace initiative to push forward these ideas.
Date: 3 June 2003
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What Went Wrong? A Perspective on the First Five Years of Land Redistribution in South Africa, with Homily for the Next Five
Source: Michael Aliber
Summary: Begins with a brief overview of South Africa’s redistribution programme. Offers an interpretation of ‘what went wrong’ with the land redistribution programme that prevailed between 1995 and 1999, followed by a scan of the problems that do or will limit the revised redistribution programme in respect of its rural development objective. Concludes tentatively with remarks about the burden of redistribution in redressing past injustices, and explains how the revised redistribution programme is especially ill suited to this purpose.
Date: June 2003
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Struggling to Secure and Defend the Land Rights of the Poor in Africa
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Published in Journal für Entwicklungspolitik (Austrian Journal of Development Studies), XIX, 1, 2003, 6-21. This was part of a special edition devoted to land reform in Africa edited by Birgit Englert and Walter Schicho. Oxfam GB acknowledges with thanks the permission of the Journal (JEP) and its editors to post 3 articles from this edition on this website.
Summary: Article focuses on struggles to secure and defend the land rights of the poor in Africa. A very brief introduction sketches the impact of liberalisation on land in Africa, then looks at the deeper context of land reform, and at the current role of donors. The article goes on to look at detailed case studies of Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa and examines reasons for successes and failures of pro-poor land struggles in those countries. It concludes by focusing on the issue of redistribution in Southern Africa.
Date: March 2003
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2002/03 Land Reform and Agriculture Budget Review (South Africa)
Source: Surplus People Project (Ricardo Jacobs)
Summary: Analyses whether the budget allocations for land reform and agricultural support services are consistent with the South African Government’s objectives of land redistribution. Stresses the need for an integrated approach to land reform and argues that if this is not achieved, the programme will hobble along producing limited redistribution and land reform projects which are likely to remain unsuccessful for many years to come.
Date: October 2002
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The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Land: Case Studies from Kenya, Lesotho and South Africa
Source: Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (Scott Drimie)
Summary: Paper prepared for the FAO’s Southern and Eastern Africa Office. Contains introduction to the impact of HIV/AIDS on land issues – land use, land rights, land administration; country studies; the impact of HIV/AIDS in Lesotho, in Kenya, in South Africa, and general findings and recommendations. Latter include land use strategies, land rights and land administration, and developing solutions.
Date: September 2002
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Radical Land Reform is Key to Sustainable Rural Development in South Africa
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.3 (Thembela Kepe and Ben Cousins)
Summary: Argues that sustainable development in 21st century South Africa will never be achieved without a radical assault on the structural underpinnings of poverty and inequality inherited from three centuries of oppression and exploitation. A large-scale redistribution of land and resources, accompanied by the securing of tenure rights in practice as well as in law, is required for long-term sustainability. Asks how is the government’s land reform performing, and how sustainable are land-based livelihoods?
Date: August 2002
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» also available in PDF format on the PLAAS website under ‘Publications, policy briefs’

Unscrambling the Apartheid Map
Source: Martin Adams
Summary: An examination of land tenure arrangements in the former homelands of South Africa and of post-apartheid attempts to deal with them. Includes a critique of the new Communal Land Rights Bill. Argues that the very limited capacity of government's over-centralised land administration has been the bugbear of land reform in South Africa and that over optimistic predictions of the speed and scope of reforms have haunted officials and politicians who made them. Fears the new Bill will undermine the opportunity to strengthen the land rights of the poor.
Date: September 2002
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Reforming Communal Land Tenure in South Africa – why Land Titling is not the Answer. Critical Comments on the Communal Land Rights Bill, 2002
Source: Ben Cousins (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape)
Summary: Includes the need for tenure reform; the draft CLRB does not provide appropriate solutions; learning from the African and the South African experiences; why titling is generally inappropriate and ineffective; the unintended consequences of titling programmes; why the draft Bill will not be able to be effectively implemented; the alternative to land titling – learning from new land tenure laws in Mozambique and Tanzania.
Date: 10 September 2002
Download the full paper (22K.rtf file)

LEAP News: July 2002
Source: Legal Entity Assessment Project (LEAP)
Summary: Newsletter of a South African research group looking at tenure security issues and legal entities, particularly Common Property Associations (CPAs). Stresses the importance of adapting rather than replacing existing institutions that already work. Provides a list of 20 research papers, conference reports etc which can be ordered by email.
Date: July 2002
Download the full paper (212K.rtf file)

Lawyers and Land Reform in South Africa: A Review of the Land, Housing & Development Work of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC)
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: An historical review of the land reform work of the South African Legal Resources Centre, a non-profit public interest law centre which seeks to use law as an instrument of justice by providing legal services for the vulnerable and marginalised. Includes the creation of the LRC; the challenge of ending apartheid – going for new laws, a new constitution, and social and economic rights; donors, the project approach and its impact on the LRC; review of the Land, Housing and Development Programme; future roles and possibilities for the LRC – relations with government, the Western Cape alliance?; the focus issue; the funding question – internal or external?; what impacts beyond the borders?
Date: September 2001, published June 2002 on the LRC’s website, with an introduction by Steve Kahanovitz, LRC Legal Director
Download the full paper from the LRC's website (285K.doc file)

An Examination of Market-assisted Agrarian Reform in South Africa
Source: Commissioned by the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF), Researched by Susan Tilley for the International Labour Resource and Information Group (ILRIG)
Summary: Includes what is meant by market-assisted agrarian reform, history of land tenure and agriculture in South Africa, framework for agrarian reform, land reform strategies, monitoring and evaluation of land reform, conclusions - land reform and social transformation.
Date: May 2002
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Tenure Reform back on the Agenda?
Source: Edward Lahiff (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
Summary: A short report on the national Land Tenure Conference. Argues that the thorny issue of tenure reform is at last being taken seriously. Land administration in the former homelands is in chaos. Those living on commercial farms have precarious tenure. Traditional leaders are digging in their heels over control of communal land. Need for robust political leadership and allocation of resources to ensure that rights become real. Hopes conference will be followed by a lively process of public consultation and debate.
Date: December 2001
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The New Land Law: A Return to the Apartheid Era?
Source: Ben Cousins (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
Summary: A short analysis of the new draft Communal Land Rights Bill and of the tenure problems in the former homelands. Argues that the bill would greatly strengthen the powers of unelected traditional leaders at the expense of ordinary rural dwellers.
Date: 29 November 2001
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The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Land Reform in KwaZulu-Natal
Source: SARPN (Scott Drimie and Deborah Heustice)
Summary: Proceedings of a seminar hosted by SARPN and the Centre for HIV/AIDS Networking, University of Natal, Durban. Contains 1. Introduction; 2. Overview of the current situation; 3. Overview of existing land reform HIV/AIDS policy and integration into Department of Land Affairs programmes; 4. Identification of key issues and challenges; 5. The challenge: developing a way forward.
Date: 23 November 2001
Download the full paper (287K. rtf file)
» This report, together with the 6 appendices and other items which are not included here, is also posted on SARPN's own website

Sustainable Development: What’s Land Got To Do With It?
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.2 (Stephen Turner)
Summary: South Africa is reviewing its plans and progress towards sustainable development ahead of the 2002 World Summit in Johannesburg. Argues that more attention needs to be given to land reform as a key component of sustainable development strategy. Raises a number of questions and concerns that need debate before the Summit and beyond. Focuses particularly on land reform, poverty and livelihoods, and on land reform and the environment.
Date: 29 October 2001
Download the full paper (29K.rtf file)
» also available in PDF format on the PLAAS website under ‘Publications, policy briefs’

Land Reform in South Africa: is it meeting the Challenge?
Source: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, Policy Brief No.1 (Edward Lahiff)
Summary: Focuses on tenure reform (as a necessary first step); securing rights for farmworkers and labour tenants; slow progress and key challenges in restitution; redistribution; what is to be done? Offers an overview of the key challenges facing land reform and suggests a number of ways in which the current reform programme can be accelerated to fight poverty and inequality. Argues there is urgent need for a comprehensive, transparent, participatory process and for widespread public debate, especially in the light of events in Zimbabwe. Also a need to revisit fundamentals, for a clear and coherent vision, and a more interventionist approach by the state, as the market alone cannot deliver land in the places, at the scale or price required for a major national programme of transformation.
Date: September 2001
Download the full paper (107K. rtf file)
» also available in PDF format on the PLAAS website under ‘Publications, policy briefs’

Land Reform requires Holy Cows to be sacrificed
Source: Ben Cousins (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
Summary: Critiques recent official statements that land reform policies are not contentious.
Argues that there is desperate need of a re-think, failing which urban and rural land invasions will increase. We need a new paradigm on the respective roles of the state and market. Argues that government must become a proactive agent of land redistribution, that high quality land along the borders of the former reserves be targeted, that land and natural resources are vital, but not the only, focus of development. Concludes that land reform is inherently complex and slow.
Date: 5 August 2001 (The Sunday Independent)
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Rural Women to fight for their Right to Land
Source: Glenda Daniels
Summary: The Commission for Gender Equality has put land restitution programme at the top of its agenda for the gender summit in August. Cites paper by Dr Funiwe Jaiyesimi-Njobe saying the big problem is that land is usually allocated to groups headed by males. Women and communities are too often viewed as homogeneous groups. Calls for encouragement of a critical mass of women entrepreneurs in rural areas. Also cites Samantha Hargreaves of the National Land Committee saying women are usually excluded from restitution programme and are unlikely to be represented on CBOs.
Date: 5 June 2001
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What Land Reform has meant and could mean to Farm Workers in South Africa
Source: Centre for Rural Legal Studies (Ruth Hall, Karin Kleinbooi and Ndodomzi Mvambo)
Summary: Covers introduction, farm workers in South Africa, tenure security for farm workers with a focus on ESTA - including the justice system, farmers’ responses and women farm workers; equity share schemes; rural housing and land redistribution; lessons to and from South Africa.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (67K.rtf file)

Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation in South Africa
Source: Sipho Sibanda
Summary: Contains introduction, the three legs of the South African land reform programme, the orderly implementation of land reform programmes, scope for further land reform, the role of other stakeholders, a table of land redistribution 1994-2000.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (139K.rtf file)

Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development: a sub-Programme of the Land Redistribution Programme
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs
Summary: Details the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development sub-Programme (LRAD), its orientation, objectives, basic principles and key features, how beneficiaries can use it, procedures for implementation, its relationship to restitution and tenure reform, and key implications for government.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (603K. rtf file)

Addressing Food Insecurity in South Africa
Source: National Institute for Economic Policy (Samuel Bonti-Ankomah)
Summary: Includes food insecurity and its consequences, unemployment, household incomes and expenditure, the food expenditure gap, nutritional programmes, land reform and food security.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (111K.rtf file)

Poverty Alleviation, Economic Advancement and the Need for Tenure Reform in Rural Areas in South Africa
Source: Durkje Gilfillan
Summary: Covers conceptual and historical background, constraints on land as a resource for development, 3 case studies, the constitutional and legal framework for tenure reform, conclusion.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
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May Farming make a Contribution to Poverty Alleviation in a ‘Deep Rural’ Area in South Africa? - Lessons from Oxfam GB’s Sustainable Livelihood Programme at Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal
Source: Oxfam GB (Nigel Taylor and Rob Cairns)
Summary: Executive summary, background to Nkandla, livelihoods under threat, potential for agriculture, Oxfam GB’s findings - a role for agriculture?, impact of HIV/AIDS, what options for livelihoods?, conclusions.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (61K.rtf file)

Promoting Development and Land Reform on South African Farms
Source: Land Bank of South Africa (Dave Husy and Carolien Samson)
Summary: Covers current situation on South African farms, current development initiatives, the Land Bank and farm workers, issues and challenges, concluding comments.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (800K. pdf file)

Farm Dwellers: Citizens without Rights, the Unfinished National Question
Source: National Land Committee (Andile Mngxitama)
Summary: Includes poverty reduction and land reform, profile of farm dwellers, access to land, the creation of farm dwellers, the National Question and land reform, non-market v. market land reform, the East Asian and Latin American experiences, consequences of reform, South Africa and the land question, can the problems be overcome?, the prospects for South Africa.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (132K. rtf file)

Land Reform in South Africa: Problems and Prospects
Source: Ruth Hall (Centre for Rural Legal Studies (CRLS), Stellenbosch, South Africa) and Gavin Williams (St. Peter’s College, Oxford)
Summary: An overview of land reform in South Africa, containing the integration of land reform and agricultural development; defining policy agenda; squaring circles - restitution, land rights, redistribution, the contradictions of land reform; going back to the beginning - reviewing reforms, land reform in historical and comparative perspectives; the ironies of the new - transferring land, policies, plans and outcomes.
Date: 12 December 2000 (Gaborone Conference on Southern Africa’s Evolving Security Architecture: Prospects and Problems).
Download the full paper (464K. rtf file)

Publication of a Guide to the Creation of Sustainable Joint Venture Partnerships in Land Reform
Source: Department of Land Affairs, Land Reform Credit Facility
Summary: Announces publication of a manual on the creation of land reform joint venture partnerships. These are commercial partnerships between landowners and historically excluded worker households or local communities. The manual is intended to assist those involved in commercial land reform ventures. Also provides details of the Land Reform Credit Facility.
Date: 20 November 2000
Download the full paper (9K.rtf file)

Creating the Black Commercial Farmer
Source: Samuel Kariuki (University of the Witwatersrand)
Summary: Looks at the problems of creating a stratum of black commercial farmers in South Africa in the light of historical experiences in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Argues that this will be a daunting challenge since apartheid tried to destroy black commercial farmers. The double challenge will be to unlock historical structural constraints within the agrarian economy and to reorient the current macro-economic climate to be more responsive to the needs of small-scale black farmers.
Date: 26 September 2000
Download the full paper (14K.rtf file)

Politics of Land Reform in the ‘New’ South Africa
Source: Gavin Capps and Simon Batterbury (LSE)
Summary: Report of a workshop at the LSE. Contains list of participants, outline of the workshop and discussion notes by Gavin Capps (LSE), report on the workshop by Simon Batterbury (LSE), and remarks prepared for the workshop by Abie Ditlhake (SANGOCO - South African NGO Coalition). The workshop aimed to grasp recent changes in land policy in South Africa and enable activists and analysts to take stock and discuss responses. Includes discussion of paper by Ruth Hall and Gavin Williams (see above) and presentation by Ben Cousins.
Date: 7 June 2000
Download the full paper (93K.rtf file)
Also see the paper at the LSE website

National Land Committee Principles on Restitution, Rural Development, Communal Tenure, Redistribution and Farm Tenure
Source: National Land Committee (NLC)
Summary: Statement of principles adopted at NLC policy summit in June 2000 on the above subjects plus cross cutting issues.
Date: 1-2 June 2000
Download the full paper (88K.rtf file)

Does Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa have a Future? And if so, who will Benefit?
Source: Ben Cousins (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
Summary: Introduction to a new book, At the Crossroads: Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa into the 21st Century, based on a PLAAS/NLC conference of July1999. In addressing whether land and agrarian reform has a future in South Africa and who might benefit, the book’s editor discusses the political context of the conference; integrated rural development; the new policy directions announced in February 2000; and the structure and contents of the book
Date: May 2000
Download the full paper (46K.rtf file)

Why Land Invasions will Happen Here too…
Source: Ben Cousins (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
Summary: Examines the current crisis in Zimbabwe, the land question in Zimbabwe and South Africa, the two land redistribution policies compared, poverty and the rule of law, populist policies and land invasions. Argues that despite the differences between South Africa and Zimbabwe, land invasions could occur in South Africa because of the failure to address deepening rural poverty and the continuing emotive issue of highly unequal and racially skewed land distribution.
Date: April 2000
Download the full paper (23K .rtf file)

Land Reform at the Crossroads: who will Benefit?
Source: Ben Cousins (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
Summary: A response to the Minister’s Briefing. Asks who is land redistribution really serving. Challenges false dichotomy between commercial and subsistence agriculture. Need for government programmes to be open to close scrutiny by civil society.
Date: 20 February 2000
Download the full paper (14K .rtf file)

Policy Statement by the Minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs for Strategic Directions on Land Issues
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, South Africa
Summary: Covers assessment, limitations, policy directive and emphasis, redistribution, compensation in restitution, tenure reform, disposal of state land, farm dweller tenure security, principles underpinning land tenure reform in the former homelands, spatial planning approach to land reform, integrated policy formation, the programme of change, moratorium on redistribution projects.
Date: February 2000
Download the full paper (76K .rtf file)

Parliamentary Media Briefing by the Minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs, Ms Thoko Didiza
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, South Africa
Summary: Mentions new food security programme, transfer of state land, land tenure, land reform grant, new approach, commonage, agricultural redistribution grants, integrated rural development planning. Will facilitate transfer of tribal land to tribes and communities. Extended deadline for labour tenant claims to March 2001. Previous overemphasis on market forces failed to produce desired effect and impact. Lifted last August’s moratorium on new land reform projects. Piloting a supply led system. New grant system aimed at redistributing at least 15% of farm land in 5 years to emergent black farmers.
Date: February 2000
Download the full paper (24K .rtf file)

Setbacks to Tenure Reform in the ex-Homelands of South Africa
Source: Martin Adams
Summary: Written on request by Oxfam GB. Martin Adams, whose work appears elsewhere, has been seconded in recent years to the South African Department of Land Affairs. Here he examines the content and fate of the Land Rights Bill and the recent political opposition to it.
Date: December 1999
Download the full paper (10K .rtf file)

Land Tenure and Economic Development in Rural South Africa: Constraints and Opportunities (Summary)
Source: Martin Adams, Ben Cousins, and Siyabulela Manona, ODI (Overseas Development Institute) Working Paper 125
Summary: Oxfam GB has close working relationships with some of these authors and was represented on a review of the South African land reform programme in August/September 1999. The paper summarises the results of recent research into tenure insecurity and policy implications. Argues that legislation is needed to confirm people's rights.
Date: December 1999
Summary on ODI website
Full paper on ODI website (pdf file)

The Institutional Arrangements for Land Reform: the South African Case
Source: Martin Adams, Sipho Sibanda and Glen Thomas, Paper at the Stakeholder Workshop on the National Land Policy, Harare, Zimbabwe.
Summary: The authors currently work for the tenure reform group within the South African Department of Land Affairs. Their paper provides an overview of South African land reform policy, its scope (redistribution, restitution, tenure reform), milestones in the institutional development of the Department of Land Affairs, and institutional issues that still have to be resolved.
Date: 14-15 June 1999
Download the full paper (40K .rtf file)

A Gender Analysis of recent South African Land Reform
Source: UNIFEM (Fanelwa Mhago and Melanie Samson)
Summary: Includes background, tenure arrangements, women and land tenure, customary marriages, the land issue after apartheid, criticisms of the legislation, the relationship of land legislation to customary law, recommendations.
Date: February 1998
Download the full paper (31K.rtf file)

Land Reform in South Africa in 1997
Source: Oxfam GB Briefing Paper written by Sue Wixley, then Oxfam GB's Advocacy Officer in South Africa.
Summary: Covers new integrated approach and new partnerships, new laws, some setbacks to land claims, targeting of church and unused land for redistribution, tenure reform, and developments with project partners.
Date: March 1997
Download the full paper (26K .rtf file)

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Southern Africa: Swaziland

A Presentation on Land Issues and Land Reform in Swaziland
Source: Coordinating Assembly of NGOs - CANGO (Alfred Mndzebele)
Summary: Includes historical perspective - native land settlement scheme, Lifa land purchasing programme, Rural Development Areas Programme, some lessons learned, prospects for land reform, Land Policy objectives and principles.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
Download the full paper (35K.rtf file)

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Southern Africa: Zambia

Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa. Country Report: Zambia NEW
Source: Oakland Institute (Felix Horne)
Summary: Includes country context, characteristics of land investment, how land is acquired, impacts. Several large hedge and equity funds are involved in acquiring land, farm blocks are plagued by problems, there is lack of consultation, no transparency, little protection for small-scale farmers, and serious concerns about conversion of land from food to agrofuel production
Date: December 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 5,702KB) from the Oakland Institute website

The Impact of National Land Policy and Land Reform on Women in Zambia
Source: COHRE and WLLA (Women’s Land Link Africa)
Summary: Includes background to women’s land rights in Zambia; policy and legal reforms of the1990s; key findings – gender insensitivity on land laws and policies, the high cost of legal fees to handle land disputes, the limited benefits of title deeds for women, lack of awareness on land policy process, land grabbing and disinheritance, lack of security of tenure, lack of access to justice; conclusions and recommendations.
Date: 3 November 2010
Download the full paper (2.07MB) from the COHRE website

Children’s Property and Inheritance Rights in the Context of HIV and AIDS – A Documentation of Children’s Experiences in Zambia and Kenya
Source: FAO HIV/AIDS Programme Working Paper 3
Summary: Based on field research conducted by two grassroots organizations, CINDI-Kitwe in Zambia and GROOTS Kenya, to map and document cases of property grabbing from children, in particular those who became orphans due to AIDS. Includes problem analysis and study objectives; presenting children’s experiences in Zambia and in Kenya; conclusions and lessons learned.
Date: March 2008
Download the full paper (499K.pdf file) from the FAO website

Land Policy Options for Development and Poverty Reduction
Source: Zambia Land Alliance
Summary: Presentation of civil society views for pro-poor land policies and laws in Zambia. Includes introduction and background; overview of the land policy options paper; context setting for policy development; policy options; implementation framework. Lays emphasis on protection of customary land, ability to convert leasehold back to customary land, need for size limits, 30% state land allocation should go to women, awareness raising on joint registration.
Date: January 2008
Download the full paper (387K.pdf file)

Migration, Land Resettlement and Conflict at Kambilombilo Resettlement Scheme on the Copperbelt: Implications for Policy
Source: Ephraim Kabunda Munshifwa
Summary: Includes migration and displacement; the issue of resettlement; policy on resettlement in Zambia; resettlement schemes on the Copperbelt Province; implementation of the resettlement scheme at Kambilombilo.
Date: 5-8 December 2007 (Southern Africa-Nordic Centre Conference, University of Western Cape)
Download the full paper (637K.rtf file)

Zambia Draft Land Policy
Source: Ministry of Lands, Zambia
Summary: A working draft which ‘should not be quoted and interpreted as the policy of the Government of Zambia or any other government ministry or department until it has been finally agreed and adopted'. Has a brief background section and a brief section on vision, rationale, guiding principles, and objectives. The bulk is devoted to ‘situation analysis, challenges and policy measures’. These cover the following issues: (1) international and internal boundaries, (2) vestment and land tenure, (3) customary tenure, (4) leasehold tenure, (5) land administration, including land allocation and land registration, (6) the Land Development Fund, (7) institutional framework, (8) legal framework, (9) surveys, (10) geo-information, (11) land information, (12) land value and property markets, (13) tax and non-tax revenue, (14) spatial planning, (15) dispute resolution, (16) private sector participation, (17) transparency and accountability, (18) cross-cutting issues, including decentralisation, gender, HIV/AIDS and other terminal diseases, persons with disabilities, youth, empowerment of citizens, environment and natural resources, tenure insecurity.
Date: October 2006
Download the full paper (710Kb.pdf file)

Land Tenure, Land Markets, and Institutional Transformation in Zambia
Source: Wisconsin Land Tenure Center Research Paper 124 (Michael Roth, with the assistance of Steven G. Smith)
Summary: A new electronic version of a classic, influential and still relevant 1995 LTC study of land tenure in Zambia, which was conceived in response to the lack of data on which to guide policy decisions for liberalising the land market. The 8 chapters cover legal framework and administration of land policy; land administration processes and constraints; agrarian structure, land markets and property transfers; land valuation and taxation; land tenure and agricultural development in customary areas – results from Eastern and Southern Provinces; settlement programs; land use patterns and growth in commercial input use, productivity and profitability by farm size category; Zambia’s agricultural data system – a review of the agricultural time series data.
Date: August 2006 (original October 1995)
Download the abstract from the LTC website at
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/abstracts/rp124abstract.html
Download the full paper (10,030K.pdf file) from the LTC website at
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/rp124.pdf

Report of the National Conference on Women's Property Rights and Livelihoods in the Context of HIV and AIDS
Source: FAO Southern Africa (Edited by Kaori Izumi)
Summary: The workshop was held in Lusaka as part of FAO’s initiative in the area of women’s property rights in the context of HIV and AIDS. The report covers legal issues of, and lessons on, women’s land and property rights in Zambia; Theresa Chilala’s case; testimonies by widows and orphans in Zambia; successful interventions to protect women’s property rights by authorities – lessons from the region; inspiring initiatives by women and grassroots groups; key recommendations; working group deliberations; press release; opening and closing speeches; strategic framework.
Date: 25-27 January 2006
Download the full paper (401K. pdf file)

Contestation, Confusion and Corruption: Market-Based Land Reform in Zambia
Source: Taylor Brown (in Sandra Evers, Marja Spierenburg and Harry Wels, Eds, Competing Jurisdictions: Settling Land Claims in Africa, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, November 2005, pp.79-102)
Summary: Following introductory historical sections, the paper focuses on the impact of land-market reform at the village level - including the extent of conversions, conversions for elites, land speculation, displacement, enclosures, conflict and resistance - and on the (mal)administration of land. Concludes that the benefits of market-based land reform have accrued to local elites and outside investors. Land administration has proved highly malleable and is subject to perversion by local elites, traditional rulers, outside investors, and government officials. Donors bear some responsibility for this.
Date: November 2005
Download the full paper (249K.pdf file)

Note: Oxfam GB is deeply grateful to Brill Academic Publishers for permission to post on this website this chapter from their recent book on Competing Jurisdictions in Africa.

The Role of the Lands Tribunal in Handling Land Disputes in General and Traditional Land in Particular
Source: Zambia Land Alliance
Summary: Examines the jurisdiction of the Lands Tribunal, its operations, composition, funding and secretariat. Urges the Government to finalise its draft Land Policy and revise the 1995 Lands Act. Recommends that the Lands Tribunal be decentralised to be accessible to poor women and men, that it publicise its work more and that its capacity and resources be increased. There is also a need to strengthen traditional structures and appeal mechanisms to provide a balance to the power of chiefs.
Date: 15 April 2005 (Memorandum submitted to the Committee on Agriculture and Lands)
Download the full paper (130K rtf file)

Zambia Land Alliance Submission to Constitutional Review Commission
Source: Zambia Land Alliance
Summary: A series of submissions by the Zambia Land Alliance on these topics: land as a right; women’s rights to land; vestment and administration of land; conversion of customary land to leasehold tenure; land and the environment; land information; mode of adoption of the Constitution.
Date: 22 November 2004
Download the full paper (244.rtf file)

Oxfam Zambia Copperbelt Livelihoods Improvement Programme, Report of Proceedings of a Partners Land Workshop, Kitwe
Source: Oxfam Zambia
Summary: Includes executive summary; the land issue – international and regional perspectives; Oxfam and land issues on the Copperbelt; land issues in Zambia; land policy review process; genesis of the 1995 Lands Act; Constitutional Review process; challenges for the future; conclusion.
Date: 29-31 March 2004
Download the full paper (285K.rtf file)

Report on Land Tenure Insecurity on the Zambian Copperbelt
Source: Oxfam GB in Zambia (Dr Michelo Hansungule, University of Lund [in 1998]; Patricia Feeney, Oxfam GB Policy Adviser [in 1998]; and Dr Robin Palmer, Oxfam GB Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: This is a new electronic version of the complete 1998 report, including the maps. Research on land tenure insecurity on the Zambian Copperbelt in the context of the privatisation of the mines was commissioned by Oxfam, and was carried out in August 1998 and the final report written in November 1998. It contains five sections: background (including historical and legal); problems (including ‘back to the land’, conflicts in the forests, squatters, Lands Act 1995, democracy); case studies (Chingola, Kitwe, Mufulira, Solwezi); some questions; recommendations. The Report has led to some very positive developments for people affected and it is hoped that some of these will be covered on this website in the future.
Date: May 2004 new electronic version of November 1998 original
Download the full paper (1613K. pdf file)

Land tenure policy and practice in Zambia: issues relating to the development of the agricultural sector
Source: Mokoro (Martin Adams)
Summary: A comprehensive review covering stages in the development of Zambia’s land policy; land administration – customary land and leasehold tenure; land titling; current land policy consultation process; outstanding land policy issues – alienation of customary land, land market issues, problems faced by the poor in securing land rights, legal framework; development aid for the land sector in Zambia and possible DFID support.
Date: 13 January 2003
Download the full paper (379K.pdf file)

The Draft Zambian Land Policy (1999) – Comments and Proposals to the Review Committee
Source: Ephraim K. Munshifwa
Summary: A critical analysis of the draft Land Policy. Contains introduction, land delivery system and accessibility to land, title deeds on customary land, vestment of land, land market, gender issues, allocation to foreigners (with particular reference to white farmers from Zimbabwe), dispute resolution, land management information systems, concluding remarks.
Date: January 2003
Download the full paper (43K. rtf file)

Civil Society Initial Position Paper on the Draft Land Policy
Source: Zambia Land Alliance and Civil Society Land Policy Review Committee
Summary: A response to the Zambian Government’s August 2002 decision to consult major stakeholders on land. Zambian Land Alliance helped form Civil Society Land Policy Review Committee which aims to ensure that the remote rural poor participate in the Government Draft Land Policy review process and present their views. This paper is an initial submission on the Draft Land Policy and makes recommendations on five areas: vestment of land, gender, land tenure security, land administration, and land disputes resolution.
Date: 16-21 December 2002
Download the full paper (87K. rtf file)

Zambia Draft Land Policy
Source: Ministry of Lands (published in Zambia Daily Mail, 21 November 2002)
Summary: Comprises executive summary, introduction, and chapters on historical perspective of land tenure, situation analysis, land policy objectives and strategies, institutional framework, and funding. The main emphasis is to address the problems of the land delivery system to ensure equitable access to land resources. Includes sections on land tenure and land allocation to foreigners, environmental issues, land disputes and gender – the Policy seeks to redress gender imbalances and other forms of discrimination in land tenure. Asserts that NGOs will assist Government to interpret and disseminate the Policy and play an active role in its implementation.
Date: 21 November 2002
Download the full paper (215K. rtf file)

Report of the Proceedings of the Copperbelt Land Workshop
Source: Oxfam GB Zambia (Copperbelt Livelihoods Improvement Programme)
Summary: Includes introduction, workshop objectives, official opening, panel presentations – current land alienation procedures, issues arising (forest management, land husbandry, land survey, titling and resettlement), small group presentations, charting the way forward, position paper and recommendations.
Date: 3-5 October 2002
Download the full paper (425K.rtf file)

Draft Position Paper and Recommendations of Copperbelt Land Workshop
Source: Copperbelt Land Workshop
Summary: Calls on Government to impose an immediate moratorium on all evictions of illegal settlers on the Copperbelt, given the economic deterioration there. Need for land allocation procedures to be simplified and translated into local languages. Series of recommendations for government ministries, local authorities, and new mine owners, and on specific topics such as gender, resettlement, traditional authorities, and the Land Policy review process. In the longer term, urges the establishment of a commission of inquiry on land, that land be vested in the State rather than the President, and that multiple ownership and land sales by the poor be addressed.
Date: 3-5 October 2002
Download the full paper (93K. rtf file)

Rural Land Management and Productivity in Zambia: the Need for Institutional and Land Tenure Reforms
Source: Ephraim Kabunda Munshifwa
Summary: Paper presented at Surveyor’s Institute of Zambia seminar. Includes the effects of a fragmented customary rural land management system; the need for both land reform and rural land management authorities; the benefits of institutional and land tenure reforms; and a case study example of Botswana..
Date: July 2002
Download the full paper (502K. rtf file)

Women's Land Rights in Zambia: Policy Provisions, Legal Framework and Constraints
Source: Zambia National Land Alliance (Henry Machina)
Summary: Paper presented at Regional Conference on Women's Land Rights, Harare, 26-30 May 2002. Examines policy and legal reforms in the 1990s; strengths of the 1995 Lands Act and civil society concerns about it; policy framework; Lands Tribunal; women's constraints in customary land, alienation of land, inheritance and accessing urban land, government attempts to promote women's access and control over land; conclusions and future challenges.
Date: 26-30 May 2002
Download the full paper (99K. rtf file)

Land Tenure, Title Deeds, and Farm Productivity in the Southern Province of Zambia: Preliminary Research Findings (Outline)
Source: Robert Smith
Summary: Addresses the research question, do different land tenure conditions affect farming systems, organisation and performance among Zambian small farmers, and if so, how? Discusses the widespread demand for title, even on customary lands, and concludes that this is a defensive measure, based on a desire for secure possession and for bequeathment and the protection of fixed investments.
Date: 19 September 2001 (University of Zambia seminar)
Download the full paper (33K.rtf file)

Land Tenure Insecurity on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1998: Anyone Going Back to the Land?
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: Outlines Oxfam’s land research on the Copperbelt in 1998. Updated version of 1998 paper examining how people whose livelihoods once depended on the copper mines have begun looking for land and the problems they have encountered on forest and ZCCM land, with the 1995 Lands Act, and with party politics. It highlights the lack of coordinated responses to the problem and concludes with the main developments following the sale of the mines in 2000 and the attitudes of the new owners towards squatters.
Date: March 2001
Download the full paper (66K.rtf file)

Land Tenure Insecurity on the Zambian Copperbelt
Source: Oxfam GB communiqué issued at a Workshop at Andrews Motel, Lusaka, Zambia
Summary: Covers the background, the numbers of people affected, the absence of a coordinated and planned approach, difficulties with the demarcation and titling process, demarcation procedures, the need for gender sensitivity, and compensation.
Date: 3 December 1998
Download the full paper (32K .rtf file)

Recommendations of a Report on Land Tenure Insecurity on the Zambian Copperbelt
Source: Oxfam GB (Dr Michelo Hansungule, University of Lund; Patricia Feeney, Oxfam GB Policy Adviser; and Dr Robin Palmer, Oxfam GB Land Policy Adviser, Africa; Oxfam GB in Zambia).
Summary: Work on land tenure insecurity on the Zambian Copperbelt in the context of the privatisation of the mines was commissioned by Oxfam GB in Zambia, the research was carried out in August 1998 and the final report written in November 1998.The recommendations cover the sale of ZCCM and legislative changes.
Date: November 1998
Download the full paper (32K .rtf file)

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Southern Africa: Zimbabwe

Land Rights and Tenure Security in Zimbabwe’s post Fast Track Land Reform Programme NEW
Source: Prosper B. Matondi and Marleen Dekker (A synthesis report for LandAc)
Summary: Includes learning from the commercial sector – freehold title deeds, pre-1980-2010; learning from Zimbabwean customary tenure systems; learning from the state resettlement programme – permit tenure, 1980-2010; fast track land reform, 2000-2010, policy implications and recommendations.
Date: March 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 662KB) from the LANDac website

A field not quite her own: single women’s access to land in communal areas of Zimbabwe NEW
Source: International Land Coalition, Working Paper 11 (Gaynor G. Paradza)
Summary: Includes evolution of communal areas in Zimbabwe, research context and findings, processes leading to matongo, vulnerability of women’s land access, bargaining for land in patrimonial governance systems.
Date: March 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 1130KB) from the ILC website

The social, political and economic transformative impact of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme on the lives of women farmers in Goromonzi and Vungu-Gweru Districts of Zimbabwe NEW
Source: International Land Coalition, Research Report 8 (Phides Mazhawidza and Jeanette Manjengwa)
Summary: Includes background; conceptual framework; methodology; research findings – security of tenure, cultural practices, gender inequalities, land utilisation, constraints to production, a passion for farming, gender bias against women farmers in access to and utilization of land; lessons learnt, recommendations.
Date: March 2011
Download the full paper (PDF 1.31MB) from the ILC website

Zimbabwe’s land reform ten years on - new study dispels the myths NEW
Source: IDS Sussex (Ian Scoones)
Summary: Focus on a new book Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities by Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba, Jacob Mahenehene and Chrispen Sukume. It asks what has happened in the ten years since large areas of Zimbabwe's commercial farm land were invaded by land-hungry villagers, and challenges the view that land reform was an unmitigated disaster. Includes interviews with Ian Scoones, a series of 6 articles in The Zimbabwean, and links to related publications.
Date: 16 November 2010
Download the full paper from the IDS Sussex website

Zimbabwe Working Papers
Source: Livelihoods after Land Reform
Summary: The results of a small grants competition aimed at generating insights into land reform based on original and recent field research by young Zimbabwean scholars. 15 grants were awarded and the results are to be found in these Working Papers.
Date: July 2010
Download the 15 papers separately from the Livelihoods after Land Reform website

Fast Track Land Reform Baseline Survey in Zimbabwe: Trends and Tendencies, 2006/06
Source: African Institute for Agrarian Studies
Summary: Chapters cover access to and distribution of land; land tenure, resource control, and conflicts; non-agricultural production strategies; agrarian labour processes and social relations; social services and reproduction strategies; local ‘grievances’ and social organisation; agrarian structure and class formation; emerging agrarian questions and politics.
Date: December 2009
Download the full paper (PDF 6.2MB)

Gender Implications of Decentralised Land Reform: The Case of Zimbabwe
Source: Jeanette Manjengwa and Phides Mazhawidza (PLAAS Policy Brief 30)
Summary: Includes land reform: perpetuating patriarchal land policies?; Fast Track Land Reform: decentralisation or recentralisation?; women's access to land in the land reform process; constraints faced by women in accessing land; who is pushing the agenda for better access to and utilisation of land for women?; conclusion: women beneficiaries of land reform; recommendations.
Date: December 2009
Download the full paper (341K.pdf) from the PLAAS website

Land in Zimbabwe: past mistakes, future prospects
Source: Africa All Party Parliamentary Group
Summary: Includes timeline of events, key findings and recommendations, understanding the legacy of Lancaster House, the impact of land reform, recommendations for recovery - land reform goals, Britain's role in future land reform programmes.
Date: December 2009
Download the full paper from the Royal African Society website

Land and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe
Source: IDS Sussex (Ian Scoones)
Summary: A website link to a series of documents on the global political agreement one year on, land reform ‘success’ and ‘viability’ in Zimbabwe, myths and realities in Zimbabwe’s land reform, adding to the evidence base, policy dialogue - charting the way forward, a panel debate, photographs, interviews with beneficiaries.
Date: 5 October 2009
Download the full paper from the IDS Sussex website

A new start for Zimbabwe?
Source: Ian Scoones (IDS, Sussex)
Summary: On the basis of work in Masvingo Province since 2000, and as part of an ongoing regional project on Livelihoods after Land Reform in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, offers challenges to five oft-repeated myths, that: Zimbabwean land reform has been a total failure; the beneficiaries of Zimbabwean land reform have been largely political ‘cronies’; there is no investment in the new resettlements; agriculture is in complete ruins; the rural economy has collapsed. Concludes that that there is urgent need for economic and political stability but that there is much to build on and positive dynamics to catalyse.
Date: 15 September 2008
Download the full paper (125K.pdf file)

Children's Property Inheritance in the Context of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe
Source: FAO HIV/AIDS Programme Working Paper 4 (Laurel L. Rose)
Summary: Includes recent research on children’s property and inheritance rights in Southern and Eastern Africa; inheritance, relevant legislation and policy and the justice system in Zimbabwe; research in Mutoko, Seke, Binga and Manjolo Districts; discussion and recommendations.
Date: March 2008
Download the full paper (663K.pdf file) from the FAO website

Multiple Realities: An Assessment of the Impact of a Generation of Land Redistribution on Food Security and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe
Source: Bill H. Kinsey
Summary: Examines the ways in which the livelihoods of resettled households have evolved over some 28 years in response to the opportunities created by access to additional, productive land. Looks both at livelihood trajectories and outcomes in the resettlement areas and at selected contrasts between the communities of origin and the new communities. Set in a context characterized by recurring drought, policy shifts, declining public sector support, long-term demographic shifts, and the rising toll of HIV and AIDS. Asks to what extent have the programme’s original welfare objectives—food security and the enhancement of rural livelihoods—been achieved. Draws both upon a wide body of empirical data from the author’s 26-year study of three resettlement areas and a set of largely unpublished materials.
Date: 14 August 2009
Download the full paper (PDF 285KB)

Emerging Land Tenure Issues in Zimbabwe
Source: African Institute for Agrarian Studies Monograph No.2/2007 (Sam Moyo)
Summary: Looks at agricultural leasehold rights, freehold tenure and land markets, foreign land ownership and tenure security, rentals and sharing of redistributed land, modifying customary rights, gender and class relations, farm workers, land administration and tenure security.
Date: 2007
Download the full paper (PDF 452KB)

Land Reform and the Political Economy of Agricultural Labour in Zimbabwe,
Source: African Institute for Agrarian Studies Occasional Paper No.4/2007 (Walter Chambati and Sam Moyo)
Summary: Provides a socioeconomic analysis of the pre and post fast track resettlement agrarian employment structure in Zimbabwe’s commercial farming sector. Finds that the extent of employment on farms prior to fast track has been overstated, while the re-absorption of former farm workers into the agricultural sector has been greater than previously understood. Job losses have not been as pervasive as widely claimed.
Date: January 2007
Download the full paper (PDF 398KB)

Land Tenure in Post FTLRP Zimbabwe: Key Strategic Policy Development Issues
Source: African Institute for Agrarian Studies Policy Brief No.6/2006 (Brian Maguranyanga and Sam Moyo)
Summary: Provides an overview of key political, economic and strategic policy development options for the consolidation of land tenure policies and strengthened property rights and tenure security in Zimbabwe following land reform.
Date: April 2006
Download the full paper (PDF 185KB)

A sociological analysis of intermediary non-governmental organizations and land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe
Source: Kirk Helliker (Rhodes University Ph.D. thesis)
Summary: The thesis offers a sociological understanding of intermediary NGOs in the modern world through a study of NGOs and land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe. Since 2000, a radical restructuring of agrarian relations has occurred, based upon the massive redistribution of land. Local empowering initiatives have dramatically asserted themselves against globalizing trajectories. These changes have posed serious challenges to land NGOs involved in land reform either as advocates for reform or as rural development NGOs. Shows how a range of diverse land NGOs has handled the heightened contradictions in their social field in ways that maintain their organizational coherence and integrity.
Date: September 2006
Download the full paper (1012K.pdf file) from the University of Rhodes website

Commercial Farmers and the State: Interest Group Politics and Land Reform in Zimbabwe
Source: Angus Selby (PhD thesis, University of Oxford)
Summary: Original new thesis which explores the history and politics of commercial farmers in Zimbabwe, their interactions with the state, and their contests for land and other resources. Using fresh archive and key informant sources, it provides a unique perspective on Zimbabwe’s much publicised land and race debates. Argues that the dismantling of the white farming sector disguised wider political contest and provided a source of land and assets for the ruling ZANU PF with which to placate its elaborate and increasingly militarised patronage system.
Date: August 2006 (PhD thesis, University of Oxford)
Download the full paper (2,816K.pdf file)

The land and property rights of women and orphans in the context of HIV/AIDS: case studies from Zimbabwe
Source: Edited by Kaori Izumi (FAO)
Summary: Covers analysis of the study sites in Seke, Buhera, Chimanimani, and Bulawayo Districts, land and property rights of widows and other vulnerable women in those sites, livelihood strategies, obstacles and options, policy issues and recommendations. The study highlights the vulnerability of widows to property-rights violations
Date: July 2006
Download the full paper (1,067K.pdf file)

Note: Oxfam is grateful to HSRC Press, South Africa, for permission to reproduce this important book in electronic form on this website.

Changes in the Livestock Sector in Zimbabwe following Land Reform: The Case of Masvingo Province. A Report of a Discussion Workshop
Source: BZ Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba, Ian Scoones, Will Wolmer
Summary: Workshop report draws on a larger research report examining the massively changed context for livestock policy following fast track land reform. Themes discussed were production, grazing, fodder and drought responses, marketing, livestock disease and veterinary services.
Date: 24 May 2006
Download the full paper (265K.pdf file)

Report of the Workshop on Housing and Tenure Security for Farm Workers in Newly Resettled Areas
Source: Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (FCTZ) for the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands and Agriculture
Summary: Focuses on the situation of farm workers after the fast-track land resettlement programme, including issues of housing and tenure security. Includes presentations from GAPWUZ, FCTZ, and some researchers, and a report of the discussions. Annexes contain full presentations. Recommendations include that under-utilised land be made available to farm workers. The Portfolio Committee on Agriculture has since asked FCTZ to facilitate public hearings on the issue in January 2006.
Date: 14-16 October 2005
Download the full paper (544K.rtf file)

The Land is the Economy: Revisiting the Land Question
Source: Lloyd Sachikonye (African Security Review, 14, 3, 2005, pp.31-44)
Summary: Revisits Zimbabwe’s land question five years after the launching of the ‘fast-track’ land redistribution programme which has created a new paradigm, the consequences of which will take many years to work through the country’s political, economic, and social fabric. Briefly defines old and new versions of Zimbabwe’s land question before outlining salient aspects of the reform process. Assesses the outcomes of the redistribution, the apparent lacuna between land and agrarian reform, and the debate the reform process has kindled. Makes recommendations on what is necessary to secure land and agrarian reform in the short, medium, and long term.
Date: July 2005
Download the full paper (481K.pdf file)

Note: Oxfam GB is grateful to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) for permission to reproduce this article from its journal, African Security Review.

Report on FAO, UNIFEM and National AIDS Council Joint National Workshop on HIV and AIDS, Women’s Property Rights and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe
Source: FAO Southern and East Africa (Edited by Kaori Izumi)
Summary: Report divided into five sections: inheritance and property rights; disability rights, HIV & AIDS, women’s property rights and livelihoods; survival strategies, nutrition, psychosocial support, economic empowerment, and self-reliance; self-reliance and economic empowerment for women in the context of HIV and AIDS; inspiring initiatives from the region (Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya). Contains a number of personal testimonies. Launched the famous T-shirt: 'property and a piece of land give women peace of mind'.
Date: 1-2 December 2004
Download the full paper (2399K.pdf file)

Some new Publications on Land in Zimbabwe (with website references where available)
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: Lists 10 items with website references where available, clustered under: fast track land reform; the MDC’s land and agrarian policy; land and livelihoods; farm workers; a new book on land, state and nation; part of an article on agrarian questions and the politics of land.
Date: March 2004
Download the full paper (28K.rtf file)

The Situation of Commercial Farm Workers after Land Reform in Zimbabwe
Source: Report for Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe by Lloyd M. Sachikonye
Summary: An executive summary and recommendations are followed by 5 chapters: on the land question, reform and farm workers; the scope and process of fast track reform; the impact of land reform on farm workers’ livelihoods; food security, vulnerable groups, HIV-AIDS and coping strategies; and after the ‘promised land’ – towards the future. Study reveals that by early 2003, only about 100,000 of the original c.320,000 farm workers were still employed on the farms, the others are jobless and landless and have lost their entitlement to housing, basic social services and subsidised food. Only a quarter received severance packages. Family structures are under severe stress. There is an uneasy relationship with land reform beneficiaries, with conflicts over housing, land, water, and food. A series of recommendations on inputs, infrastructure, coping strategies, HIV-AIDS, informal settlements, skills, compensation, the need for transparent agrarian reform, conflict resolution, citizenship, and future models in the Southern African region – in which farm workers need to be integrated from the beginning.
Date: May 2003
Download the full paper (884K. rtf file)

Delivering Land and Securing Rural Livelihoods: Synthesis and Way Forward?
Source: Michael Roth (Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Summary: Concluding chapter aiming to synthesise key findings of research papers and perspectives in a volume on land and livelihoods in Zimbabwe. Proposes a strategic policy roadmap in 4 phases for re-engaging government, donors and civil society in land and agrarian reform in Zimbabwe.
Date: March 2003
Download the full paper (198K.rtf file)

The Fast Track Resettlement and Urban Development Nexus: the Case for Harare
Source: Nelson Marongwe (ZERO)
Summary: Contains introduction and context, research methods, policy framework for urban and peri-urban development, overview of fast track resettlement, fast track and peri-urban settlement, concluding remarks.
Date: March 2003
Download the full paper (328K.doc file)

History Repeating itself in Zimbabwe? Evictions in 2002 and 1948
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: Presents two personal testimonies of eviction and dispossession to illustrate the long and complex political history of land in Zimbabwe. The first concerns the eviction of white commercial farmers from one district in December 2002, the second of black peasant farmers in 1948, to make way for the white post-1945 white war veterans.
Date: January 2003
Download the full paper (15K. rtf file)

Zimbabwe: The Politics of Land and the Political Landscape
Source: Blair Rutherford, (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada)
Summary: Short analysis of the farm invasions from the perspective of Zimbabwe’s 300,000 farm workers, who are among those excluded from the distribution of land. In the past land invaders have been evicted by government which makes those now settled uneasy. Criticises technocratic proposals by the opposition which would also disqualify farm workers. One solution is to look at the local level, where various new forms of cooperation and sharing are occurring.
Date: 10 April 2002 (Green Left Weekly, Issue #487)
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Zimbabwe in 2001: The Land Question, Farm Workers, and the September Conference Season
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: A review of Zimbabwe in 2001, focusing on the land question and farm workers. Reflections on conferences on Zimbabwe in Copenhagen and on farm workers in Southern Africa in Harare, with a section highlighting the key issues brought out in a new book on farm workers in Zimbabwe. Argues that issues around farm workers need to be seriously rethought and debated across the political spectrum and that land is a part of a much wider crisis of governance.
Date: January 2002
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Zimbabwe’s Farmworkers: from Direct Development to Politicised Advocacy
Source: CIIR - Catholic Institute for International Relations (Miles Larmer and Steve Kibble)
Summary: Work in progress. Asks who are the farmworkers? and farmworkers and NGOs - whose development? Also covers representation as workers; land resettlement - response of farmworkers, FCTZ, GAPWUZ, and CIIR; conclusions; bibliography.
Date: 16 June 2001 (Britain Zimbabwe Society Research Day)
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Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Lessons and Prospects from a Poverty Alleviation Perspective
Source: Sue Mbaya
Summary: Includes background on poverty and land, stated objectives of land reform, achievements under the land reform programme, gender considerations, the case of farm workers, lessons learnt, prospects for land reform, strategic options, the role of donors.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
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Rural Poverty: Commercial Farm Workers and Land Reform in Zimbabwe
Source: Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (Godfrey Magaramombe)
Summary: Introduction, policy issues on farm workers in the land reform discourse, current political realities, the fast track land reform programme, conclusion.
Date: 4-5 June 2001 (SARPN Conference)
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Farm Worker Communities in the Fast Track Resettlement and Land Reform Programme 1980-Present
Source: Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe
Summary: Gives details on a province by province basis of the number of farm workers resettled in the current fast track resettlement programme in Zimbabwe. Argues that farm workers need to be considered in this programme and the Farm Community Trust is closely monitoring the situation with this in mind.
Date: 18 December 2000
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Robert Mugabe and the Rules of the Game
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser)
Summary: Examines the impact of the recent farm invasions in Zimbabwe. The independence compromises forced on Zimbabwe (and Namibia and South Africa) implied the legitimation of a century and more of past white land grabbing which could only be changed with the consent of the beneficiaries of this past expropriation. But Mugabe has now torn up the old rules of the game and let the genie of redistribution out of the bottle, earning himself much popular support elsewhere in Africa and causing alarm to many governments and a hasty revision of existing plans for land reform. The likely continuation of Mugabe’s brand of redistribution confronts donors with the difficult challenge of whether to walk away or re-engage under the new rules.
Date: July 2000
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Land-Grabbers
Source: Third World Resurgence, 117, May 2000, pp.34-35 (Jeremy Seabrook)
Summary: The seizure of land by those with no legal title to it is what was done a thousand times over by pioneers, colonists and builders of empire. There is nothing new in the transformation of pirates into legitimate landholders who then invoke the law to protect what they have stolen. It all depends when history starts. The powerful have always grabbed land, but when the poor do it, all hell breaks loose.
Date: May 2000
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How Land Reform Can Contribute to Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction: Empirical Evidence from International and Zimbabwean Experience
Source: The World Bank (Klaus Deininger, Rogier van den Brink), Free University, Amsterdam (Hans Hoogeveen), SARIPS (Sam Moyo)
Summary: Examines international evidence on the relationship between asset ownership and growth and the impact of redistributive land reform, plus evidence of the impact of land reform in Zimbabwe. Asks why it appears that resettled farmers are among the poorest in the population. Concludes that asset redistribution can be a viable strategy to enhance growth, that the performance of resettled farmers in Zimbabwe is better than is conventionally believed, and that if a land reform programme is well designed, it can have a large impact on equity as well as productivity.
Date: 26 April 2000
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A Shaky Grip on Zimbabwe's Moral High Ground
Source: Financial Times (Michael Holman)
Summary: A historical analysis of the current land invasion crisis, examining the chequered past of the white farmers. Contrasts the present situation with the eviction without compensation by whites of Chief Tangwenya and his followers. Examines the different interpretations by the British and Zimbabwean Governments of the agreement over land reached at Lancaster House in 1979. Argues that the present media coverage lacks historical perspective and is doing the country a disservice. There are more questions needing to be asked about Britain's role.
Date: 14 April 2000
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Zimbabwe Land Reform Update
Source: The World Bank, Zimbabwe (Rogier van den Brink, Deputy Resident Representative)
Summary: Factual summary of latest developments, including constitutional review, farm invasions, resettlement programme, land policy, maximum farm sizes. Also covers the background: September 1998 donors’ conference, November 1997 listing of 1,471 farms, degazetted farms, compulsory acquisition’s two routes (designation and fair market value), uncontested and contested farms, acquisition orders, uncertainty, donor reactions, Government response to donor concerns, the inception phase plan, new land policy, stakeholders’ support for the Government’s economic programme, next steps, commercial farmer support scheme.
Date: 2 March 2000
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Land Resettlement in Zimbabwe
Source: DFID (Background Briefing)
Summary: A Background Briefing covering the issue, the UK’s help for resettlement, Zimbabwe Government policies, UK land resettlement policy from 1997, DFID support for land resettlement - the way forward, other DFID support for poor people in rural areas. Says the UK believes that Zimbabwe needs land reform to reduce poverty, that the principles agreed at the 1998 Land Conference should be observed, and that the UK is willing to fund schemes which are focused on helping the poor and are transparent. Announces that Britain plans to support resettlement by funding projects from the private sector and NGOs up to a total of £5 million over the next 3-5 years.
Date: March 2000
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Urban Property Ownership and the Maintenance of Communal Land Rights in Zimbabwe
Source: University of Sheffield (Beacon Mbiba)
Summary: Short summary of a Ph.D. thesis. The dominance of the white farm issue has delayed serious attention to more subtle land conflicts. Thesis focuses on the continued maintenance of communal land rights by urban property owners. Explores what would happen if these rights disappeared. In reality and in the absence of explicit state policy, poor families and women are already relinquishing these rights, which has very practical implications for urbanisation.
Date: September 1999
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Mugabe’s ‘Land Grab’ in Regional Perspective
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Land Policy Adviser, Africa), Paper at a conference on land reform in Zimbabwe - the Way Forward, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Summary: Offers a critique of Mugabe's land grab in Zimbabwe and examines the contrast between it and developments elsewhere in Southern and East Africa. Attempts to categorise different situations within this area.
Date: 11 March 1998
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Land Reform in Zimbabwe, 1980-1990
Source: Oxfam GB (Robin Palmer, Desk Officer Zambia, Zimbabwe, Southern Africa Regional). Published in African Affairs, 89, April 1990, pp.163-81.
Summary: A study of land reform in Zimbabwe during the first decade of independence reissued here because of its striking relevance to current controversies. Asks why the issue of land reform, apparently so burning at the time of independence, went so quickly off the political agenda, only to be revived in 1989 as an election approached and the 10-year Lancaster House agreement was about to expire. Examines the roles of the Zimbabwean and British Governments, their different perceptions and quarrels, and that of the Commercial Farmers’ Union. Mentions the issues of under-utilized land and a possible land tax. Assesses the first decade of the resettlement programme, including a very positive ODA review. Concludes that Zimbabweans will probably have to wait much longer for land reform.
Date: April 1990
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The Agricultural History of Rhodesia
Source: Robin Palmer (Chapter 9 of Robin Palmer & Neil Parsons (Eds), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa, Heinemann Educational Books, 1977)
Summary: Includes introduction; the nineteenth century; the era of peasant prosperity, 1890-1908; the white agricultural policy, 1908-14; the economic triumph of European agriculture, 1915-25; the political triumph of European agriculture, 1926-36; conclusion. Some of this also appears in the author’s long out of print book, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia, Heinemann, 1977.
Date: 1977
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