Экзамен зачет учебный год 2023 / Dickerman, Land Registration in Africa

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them title to the farms, "they saw no reason for paying stamp duties to obtain a certificate of ownership; they thought they had spent quite enough in re-paying their debt to the government" (p. 223). The exception to this are the master farmers. In Uganda a similar problem was found, with farmers reluctant to take the necessary steps to have formal title granted and even less likely to see that successions and other transfers are recorded (see OKec, U21).

Access to capital is especially important given the fact that despite the availability of limited amounts of credit, fanners often choose not to take out loans for improvements. Provisions exist for obtaining credit through cooperatives or from special loan funds, but many farmers do not participate while others have not repaid their loans and so the amount of money available has declined. Farmers may also prefer to avoid cooperatives because they wish to market their crops themselves rather than through the coops. Many sell surplus directly to the TTLs rather than through tormally constituted market-

ing channels. Weinrich also notes, though, that substantial portions of the farmers' crops are not marketed at all.

overcrowded and there is a real threat of landlessness.

Weinrich concludes that most successful farmers share several character- istics: they are younger, better-educated, strongly influenced by Christian beliefs, and specially trained in modern agricultural methods. (Acceptance of

a master farmer's certificate. To raise production levels of African farmers throughout the country, she recommends, among other things, the introduction of individual land tenure with minimum permissable holdings; legislation to allow the government to tax heavily or evict all farmers, olack or white, who do not develop their land; and the establishment of more training courses and extension services for African farmers.

Angela Cheater, a sociologist by training, did field research in the 1970s and again just after independence in 1980 in one of the African Purchase Lands, and her work is especially valuable for its perspective on changes in the area over time. Results of her first period of fieldwork are presented in:

ZI8 Cheater, Angela P. "Small-Scale Freehold as a Model for Commercial Agriculture in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe." Zambezia 6 (1978) : 117-127.

Drawing on her researcn in 1972/73 in Msengezi Purchase Area, located 96 kilometers west of present-day Harare, Cheater considers the question of what would be the most efficient and productive size of farm if land in Zimbabwe were to be redistributed to African farmers. Her premise is that individual tenure is the most productive form of landholding, and she argues that the allocation of medium-sized plots will, on the one hand, help alleviate land pressure and landlessness in the reserve areas and, on the other, provide

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recipients with an opportunity to raise their agricultural production and income beyond subsistence levels. Medium-sized plots, she believes, are the most productive, allowing holders to apply the experience gained from subsistencelevel production while permitting them the opportunity to improve their situ- ations. But she also quite rightly stresses that simply allocating freehold plots of more than 10 acres will have little positive impact without improve- ments in infrastructure and communications, marketing and pricing policies,

if this is not done, she predicts, most of the new rural freehold farms will be purchased by urban workers who see their situations as insecure and wish to provide for themselves ana their families for the future. (This is what oc- curred when Native Purchase Areas were first established and made available in the 1930s.)

Nor will it be adequate merely to transfer mecium-sizea plots to African farmers; some form of security of title must be provided. This need for secu- rity of tenure in land is crucial, and in her interviews of Msengezi farmers Cheater found that a desire for security was the single most important reason for purchasing a freehold farm. The popularity of tnese freenold farms is evident from rising prices for them. She also suggests that land purchases and individualization of title are not radical departures from customary land tenure practices and that steps in this direction are already spontaneously occurring among various groups.

Cheater followed up her earlier research in Msengezi with a restudy, done in 1980-81, soon after Zimbabwean independence.

ZI9 Cheater, A.P. "Formal and Informal Rights to Land in

Zimbabwe's Black Freehold Areas: A Case-Study from Msengezi." Africa 52 (1982): 77-91.

This later research is concerned to measure the effects of the liberation war in Msengezi, a "relatively well-developed rural area." Although the extreme

Freehold farms in the African Purchase Lands cannot be subdivided, a restriction contained in the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and one which remains in force today. Despite this legal prohibition, however, de facto subdivision does occur. Cheater found that informal allocation of freehold farms not only occurrea with some frequency but actually increased during periods of unsettled conditions. In her original survey, done in 1973-74, sne found that of the 329 farms in the area, roughly half were cultivated by one or more people in addition to the owner. By 1980-81, the first growing season after independence, three-quarters of the farms fell into this category. Arrangements between farmowners and tenants varies: in some cases the addi- tional cultivators were wives and relatives, while in other instances non-

lack of alternative economic opportunities in troubled times and a shortage of

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cash to pay wage labor, an explanation which takes into account the persistence of this pattern into the first growing season after independence.

Cheater writes that these subdivisions are temporary, whether to relatives or unrelated individuals. Among kin, allocations to siblings may be made during the first years after a new owner has inherited the land; in later years, inheritors often manage to rid themselves of these relatives and obligations to them. Landowners "are not overwhelmed by customary expectations, nor flooded by hordes of demanding relatives seeking to sponge off them, as colonial administrators tended to believe. The allocations made follow a definite pattern which sloughs off collateral kin increasingly distant from the landowner's own line of descent, except when such kin are necessary to his

own interests . . ." (p. 88). Allocations to unrelated individuals are even more temporary, often made only from season to season.

Yet despite the fact that these subdivisions have no legal validity and are only temporary, Cheater believes that they are likely to persist. A new minimum wage law, enacted by the new government, sets wage levels too high for most black farmers to afford hired farm labor. Farmers are likely to continue to pursue strategies which demand little cash outlay and instead allow them to exchange use rights in land for labor. Although the government can legislate against share-cropping (as it has against subdivision of freehold land), such measures are difficult to enforce. Cheater concludes that informal rights in land will not only continue but also grow in both extent and complexity.

Cheater's most recent publication from her Msengezi research draws on both fieldwork experiences.

ZI 10 Cheater, Angela. Idioms of Accumulation; Rural Development and Class Formation among Freeholders in Zimbabwe. Gweru: Mambo Press, 1984.

Using data collected in her two periods of fieldwork in Msengezi purchase area (and discussed in the two articles above), Cheater focuses on farmers' means of accumulating and expressing wealth and on class formation and aiffer- entiation among them. Data for her survey were originally collected in 1973/74 and supplemented by further research carried out in 1980-/1, snortly after fighting had ended and Zimbabwean independence been achieved.

Cheater's work is in many ways complementary to that of Richards et al. in Uganda (see U17). Like the Ugandan researchers, she is concerned with economic differences between farmers with freehold title to their lands, but she is also interested in how these differences are expressed, whether farmers choose to invest in traditional ways {e.g., in extra wives) or in a more "modern" fashion (e.g., in farm equipment) and how they view their best economic interests--as aligned with other commercial farmers (Europeans) rather than as akin to those of peasant farmers (Africans) in the reserve areas. These two factors--idioms of accumulation and feelings of common interests with European farmers rather than with African peasant producers--Cheater sees as not only statements of economic differentiation among inhabitants of the purchase areas but also as evidence of class formation.

Cheater's study is a valuable contribution to the literature dealing with African agriculture in the purchase areas for several reasons. The first chapters of the book provide detailed information about changing official policies toward the purchase areas from the 1950s on, a period in which the

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government first began to provide greater assistance to African farmers in these areas and then later, in the 197us, gave consideration to abolition of African freehold altogether on the grounds that the purchase areas had al- legedly failed to promote African development. The evidence that Cheater has collected, however, shows convincingly that this is not true, that a class of commercial farmers has emerged in at least one purchase area and that the economic interests and strategies of these farmers are more akin to those of European farmers than to those of cultivators in the reserve areas. Purchase area farmers show a willingness to innovate and recognize the need to preserve and even improve the fertility of land. Farmers have introduced new crops and invested in fertilizer. Between 1961 and 1972, increasing amounts of land in Msengezi were devoted to cash crops, most especially cotton. Moreover, farmers' use of fertilizer shows careful attention to both agricultural needs and economic realities: because fertilizer is expensive and scarce, farmers

"squatting" on purchase area farms. Subdivision of farms in the purchase areas is of course illegal, and many investigators have charged that it occurs de-spite its prohibition, with large numbers of squatters (as all non-titleholder cultivators are termed) allocated use rights to land in exchange for labor. Cheater argues that the relationship between land use ana the supply of labor is far more complex than merely a question of who has land and who does not. Sources of labor vary, from family and resident kin, to cooperative work groups, to hired laborers, and may be seen as points along a continuum. The decision to employ a particular form of labor is based upon the scale of crop production, the idiom of accumulation (traditional or modern) chosen by the farmer, and the family's developmental cycle. Resiaent laborers are more likely to be strangers, from outside the area, and farmers who hire labor generally prefer outsiders to their own relatives--choosing not to mingle economic considerations with social relations.

Several characteristics are common among successful commercial farmers: they crop more land and are less likely to allocate use rights to others; they employ more permanent resident workers; and they are older (and therefore have more capital) and better-educated than most. None of the farmers in Cheater's survey came to Msengezi directly from subsistence farming in the reserves. Rather, they first worked elsewhere, and in the course of their employment were able to accumulate capital (and sometimes experience) that directly fed into their success as commercial farmers.

Cheater writes that ownership of freehold title--or as she characterizes it, private ownership of the means of production--is a key factor, if not the most important one, in the high level of agricultural production and, it fol- lows, the economic differentiation of these farmers. These same farmers, however, now believe their position threatened by the agricultural policy of the new Zimbabwean government, which emphasizes collective farming and resettlement and which they fear ignores their particular needs and interests.

A very harsh judgment of the African Purchase Lands in general is presented by Roger Riddell, who believes that radical land reform is the only solution for land distribution in Zimbabwe and the only way to prevent a situation in which severe inequalities in wealth are perpetuated.

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ZIll Riddell, Roger C. The Land Problem in Rhodesia; Alternatives for the Future. Gwelo: Mambo Press, 1978.

As part of a wider work dealing with land and agriculture in Rhodesia and proposals for radical land reform in the future, Roger Riddell discusses the African Purchase Lands (APLs) and their economic and social role. He provides an overview of the purchase areas and, in contrast to other authors such as Cheater (see above), is much more negative in his assessment of their impact and sees little role for them in a reformed economy.

Riddell points out that as of 1977, less than 1 percent of Rhodesia's African cultivators lived in the 66 APLs, comprising only 9 percent of the land area open to Africans and producing only 2.3 percent of the country's total agricultural yield. The purchase areas, he charges, have acted as a cushion, creaming off the more progressive cultivators and providing them with larger

farms while condemning the vast majority or African farmers to subsistence-level production in the reserves (or Tribal Trust Lands, TTLs). But not all purchase area farms are commercially successful. Production figures mask great differences in yields between the various purchase areas and between individual farms, and some areas show even lower yields than neignboring TTLs. Moreover, "the creation of the Purchase Areas has done very little to solve the basic problems of the African rural areas. A large proportion of the land is not used and the individual tenure system has not proved to be an adequate base for promoting agricultural development or for making an efficient use of the land within the present economic structure" (p. 53).

In considering how land issues are to be addressed in the future, the Rhodesian National Farmers Union has advocated that new land be opened up to African farmers to relieve land pressure in the reserves, and that these new areas be made available on a freehold basis. The African Farmers Union of Rhodesia, whose membership is largely composed of purchase area farmers, shares the view that freehold tenure be granted. Riddell, however, rejects this position, claiming that individual freehold title will not only perpetuate the inequalities in Rhodesian society but actually create even greater divisions

between rich and poor, landed and landless. d i s argument is based both on what he sees as the failure of the APLs to address and alleviate the very real divisions in the country and on the negative example of the Kenya land registration program begun in the 195Us. Quoting from a 1957 working party on land tenure, Riddell charges that "'it has been proved in many countries that the surest way to deprive a peasant of his right to land is to give him a secure title and make it freely negotiable.'"

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COUNTRY IDENTIFICATIONS

303

Land Reform

NI30

N118 N I19 N I20

SU17

S6

S A13

K15

K30

K12

T2 T3

Organization.

BO 2

U17

SA 20

ZA8

Comite Special pour la Reforme