ANALYSIS:
Land holding Reform
Dar es Salaam
RWANDA President Paul Kagame has once again taken reform initiative that neighbouring countries will ignore its example at their own peril, but to observers or concerned people, it at least shows what is possible. This is a second measure targeting the fostering of equity in Rwanda, the first being a step in 2006 or slightly later, to auction off all four wheel drives of the government. The government won’t be buying again.
Obviously this example was unlikely to be replicated, part of the reason being that owing to the peculiar circumstances of Rwanda, people in the government are likely to be on their toes about support levels in society. When the gesture is examined this side of the border, it would appear to be unnecessary, since there is no groundswell of opposition to four wheel drives. However, it would be among gestures that a popularity minded regime would do for governance effect; here, they nationalize.
Repudiating expropriation is key to building the sort of understanding the world over that permits investment without fearing for tomorrow, or having undue worries. Liberalism across the world removes obstacles of psychological kind, that only Europeans can defend private property; all others listen as a white man explains. It creates a psychological equality which anti-globalization combats as it detests privileges for whites, etc.
The first item of reform that President Kagame took up was eliminating four wheel drives from public expenditure, and lately he has moved to show land reform, done correctly. Of course there is a difference that the Rwanda land issue was wholly internal and relates to equity rather than to resolving colonial issues - though, if anti-colonialism and anti-globalization are discounted, no difference arises. What Gen. Kagame did was to restrict officials’ land ownership or occupancy to 35 acres, and any other extras were taken away and distributed to needy people.
These are twin pieces of reform which Tanzania could do well to take up, though it is evident that the current authorities, like the previous, have no stomach or head for either a repudiation of four wheel drives save as personal purchase, or strict limitations in acquisition of land. Instead, commentary is tied up with figuring out whether ’leaders’ are conducting business or not, whereas each new business ventures creates jobs and is therefore good for broad economic demand and uplifting of people from poverty. Seeking that ownership or direction of such trade or enterprise is relocated until one finishes being a ’leader’ is pointless.
In actual fact, the sort of land reform process required in Tanzania can pick yet another aspect which may not so far have been underlined in the Rwandan exercise, but it could still come up. The reason it could is that the EA common market is due in two or three years, in which case explicit policy will be required as to the organization of the land market. Commentators in Tanzania unhelpfully just fall over themselves rejecting all idea of ’’selling land to foreigners’’ as if they can leave with the land.
The policy requirement that is supposed to be taken up or cultivated in time with the formal start of EA common market is privileging sales of land (presumably on freehold basis, or long right of occupancy of 33 years or 66 years to whoever is the purchaser) of local people. The focus of the administration especially during the third phase was to allow local bureaucrats posing as investors to take up chunks of land at will, without limitation. One hears someone saying he wants three thousand acres, etc.
That sort of land distribution hampers economic growth because it has an inclination of fostering the use of land as a bargaining chip for bank loans to facilitate either consumption (school fees, vehicles) or other types of business. When the level of holding land is tied to strict ability of developing the land, in relation to deposited capital that the buyer can show to a public authority, chances of misallocating public land declines. These initial allocations by grabbing methods need to be corrected.
The second aspect of correction that would be required is the manner in which land sales or invitation for obtaining of land is directed, in order that a wider purpose is served, that of raising the value of peasant land. While current pre-EA common market policy posts government backed credit arrangements as the key instrument in fighting poverty, it will be seen that rising value of land is the permanent and sustainable anchor for the gradual elimination of poverty. But it is unworkable unless the land is placed in the market by empowering each peasant to sell the plot.
To raise the value of peasant land, it means people seeking land below a certain threshold, to which is tied specific purposes (whether plantation is one of them, or research requiring special location, etc) should seek it among local residents. While radicals post this situation as unacceptable it is in actual fact the panacea to raising the value of the land, enable the peasant to inherit the land - obtain the cash equivalent of the land and embark on other activity, not hoe tilling. It is like selling a six-room Swahili house for 60m/- close to the city centre; no amount of small loans can replace a realization of the total market value of the house. That way, public land can be retained for special needs, or resettlement.
One reason why countries like Uganda and Rwanda seem to be making rather rapid progress after intense conflicts in comparison with the far more stable scenarios of Tanzania or Kenya is that there is a perennial use of the instrument of land renting, also common in West Africa. This relationship of peasant to land was abolished as exploitative in the post-independence period, as the ’party of independence’ sought to anchor its roots in the lower classes of people, feeling the threat from the more pro-colonial upper classes. In many countries it is the upper classes which inherited government, and in Zanzibar they had to be overthrown.
When land is rented the peasant is compelled to be productive, for it isn’t just necessary to produce the means of livelihood for his family, but must also meet the rent, either in hard cash or in specified amounts of produce. That is evidently exploitative, but it heightens productivity and modifies the culture of peasants, in comparison with situations like in Tanzania where they aren’t troubled by rents. At the same time it is easier to introduce economic reforms since rented land is easy to alter ownership and transfer, and removal of peasants by sale of land or by its acquisition is similarly easier. Rents diminish the tribal ties that arise out of free peasants interacting, inheriting land on a strict clan basis. They also build calculating mentality, mindset that reform sorely needs.
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