•A woman cries after her grass thatched house was burnt down in Shantumbu.
By JOWIT SALUSEKI –
Over the years, stories of land invasion by unscrupulous individuals in some of Africa’s poorest countries have continued to make headline news.
Observers have raised concerns that poor villagers would be forced off their land and that, agro-businesses would marginalise family farming if land incursions continue unabated.
Last year, the World Bank documented media reports of shady land deals over the period between 2008 and 2014.
The deals were for nearly 60 million hectares of land worldwide, roughly the size of a country like Ukraine – and two-thirds of such acquired land was in Africa.
While new figures continue to emerge, all evidence points to the phenomenon of unprecedented scale of land grabbing.
In many parts of Africa, local farmers, herders and gatherers only have insecure legal rights to the land they see as theirs.
Unfortunately, most have no written documents to authenticate land ownership.
While, international law provides relatively effective protection for both local and foreign investment, international human rights lawm remains inaccessible and mostly ineffective in preventing poor people from losing their land.
The global demand for food and agricultural commodities creates new opportunities for African farmers.
Subsistence farmers, mostly comprising families, have long provided the backbone of African agriculture – and, when given a chance, they have been able to compete on global markets.
In Ghana, for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that a cooperative of 60,000 cocoa farmers has run a successful business for nearly 20 years and owns 45 per cent of a
United Kingdom (UK) based company that manufactures and distributes chocolate.
However, stories of land grabbing have continued to plague many countries globally and Zambia is no exception.
Located about 30 kilometres on a dusty gravel road from the Lusaka Central Business District (CBD) in Kafue District, is a place called Shantumbu where farming is the livelihood for the many inhabitants of this settlement.
From time immemorial, the indigenous people of this community have lived and cultivated on their ancestral land without ever imagining that someone would one day think of selling the land without their consent.
Alas! Martha Hantobolo and other land owners of Kafue’s Shantumbu area were recently on the verge of losing out on their ancestral inherited land because one of the village headmen wanted to dubiously sell their farms to a Lusaka based business executive.
Ms Hantobolo and her colleagues almost lost out on their land had it not been for the intervention of a local Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) that deals with land issues in the country.
It took a sensitisation meeting from the Association of Land Development (ALD), a civil society organisation in Zambia working to promote a more consolidated approach to policy reform, advocacy and development of pro-poor solutions to problems currently being faced in the administration and development of land for Ms Hantobolo and her colleagues to get back their land from the named headman.
Speaking recently at an awareness meeting with various village headmen and residents of Chisankane, Chipapa and Maluza area of Shantumbu, ALD
Chairperson Eugene Kabilika said the organisation would continue to enlighten the poor and disadvantaged men and women on their land
rights through research, partnerships and engagements with relevant stakeholders by ensuring equal tenure security and sustainability in land development.
“Being aware that access, ownership and control of land has direct
impact on household economic, food security and poverty reduction for the vast majority of peri-urban and rural people,
ALD is determined to advocate and lobby for effective coordination among the key land players such as traditional authorities and the State, for the
protection of the poor, especially those who live on customary land,”says Mr Kabilika.
Mr Kabilika reaffirmed the organisation’s call to provide relevant information on land administration to people in the targeted areas so that they can use it to advocate for their rights to land from the buyers and speculators.
“Now that we have obtained official authority from her Royal Highness Senior Chieftainess Nkomeshya Mukamambo II to implement the project in this area, we hope that all the people in the targeted communities, especially headpersons, will work together in order to benefit from this programme,” says Mr Kabilika.
Senior Headman Shantumbu thanked the ALD for sensitising the headmen and the residents on how to avert land wrangles that had engulfed the area.
The ALD has also embarked on a programme to train headpersons in Eastern and Lusaka provinces on land rights and security of tenure by holding community discussions on systems and laws that affect land administration in Zambia.
The organisation says Kafue’s Shantumbu area land sensitisation programme was part of the Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA)-European Union (EU) programmes which begun in 2012 but could not be fully implemented due to delays in obtaining authority from the Association of Land Alliance (ALA) and Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA) from the traditional leadership to begin the programme.
Against this background, civil society groups and other stakeholders ought to have important roles to play – by demanding greater transparency from the traditional leadership who are the custodians of customary land.
Instead of being treated as helpless victims, local communities could easily be helped to become equal partners in development.
If land deals are implemented properly, they can bring many benefits to the country – including increased food production, access to improved agro-skills and development in rural communities, which in turn, would stem the tide of urban migration, one of Africa’s most pressing issues.
