UTAFITI (New Series) Vol. 3 No.1, 1996: 67-90
                     Land Issues and the Democratisation
               Process in Tanzania: A Review of the Report
                of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry
                                     Horace Campbell •
         Abstract
         This article is a critical review of the Report of the Presidential
         Commission of Inquiry into Land Issues in Tanzania (otherwise known as
         the Sbivji Report (URT, 1994». The review provides a global perspective
         within which the process of the compilation of the report as well as its
         contents may be assessed. An assessment of the ujamaa period in
         Tanzania's socio-economic history is also offered as part of the global
         perspective. Also discussed are issues of gender inequality and the role of
         the World Bank, and how Ibese impinge on discourses on land issues in
         Tanzania.
 Introduction and Context
        For native Americans, land defines who they are, shapes their histories
        and their culture, and is their tie to the past and the future. Their land
        also contain wealth.
                    Stotement of Native Amerlctms in their fight for land Tights.
        For the small holder in Tanzania and elsewhere, land is much more
        than simply a factor in economic production. It is hislher lifeline. One
        would risk loss of one's land if there was a potential alternative means
        of livelihood, fur example on the labour market. That hardly exists.
        Therefore, in the rural areas, loss of land means virtual marginalisation
        and eventual~.
                                Statement of the Presitkntialland Commission.
The above statements underscore the conceptual outlook of Africans and Native
Americans with respect to land and land use. In both cases these peoples view~
land as a connection between humans and nature. Human beings were taught
that they. were guardians of the land and the animals, and a whole cosmology
* Department of African American Studies, Syracuse University, New York, USA.


 68      H. Campbell
 developed to concentrate the minds of the peoples on how to preserve, the
 environment. lust as now it was reprehensible to sell other humans, so it was
 reprehensible to sell land. The value systems of the African and the Native
 American was severely affected by the transatlantic slave trade, and the
 subsequent rise of capitalism. Commodification of all spheres of human
 existence took place in Europe after the 18th century, and there has 'been an
 attempt to generalise this form of social organisation. After the era of monopoly
 and the rise of modem imperialism, when capitalisni became a global system,
 there was the view that the ideas and practices of Europe were equal to
progress, and hence the attempt to export the models of production and property
relations. The relationship between commodity production and progress has been
presented as one of the co~rstones of present-day civilisation.
     In Africa, in general, there has been resistance to the commodification of
 land. The idea of private property became interwoven with the philosopbica1'
traditions of Western Europe where capitalism was equal to democracy, and the
market was equal, to rationality. In the 18th century, 10hn Locke had refined the
ideas of individualism and private property. Since then the place of ground rent
has been central to the transformations of the mode of accumulation              of
capitalism. From' the era of mercantilism to industrialisation,          and from
monopoly to the present period of just in time (lean) production, private
ownership and social production has been a fundamental contradiction of human
existence.
     When 10hn Locke was writing his treatise on government, Africans were
considered sub-human, and therefore did not have the rights to property. In the
Western world, Africans were held as slaves (Rodney, 1972; Anderson, 1995)
and there had to be major struggles for the descendants of Africa to achieve the
basic democratic rights such as the freedom of assembly, right to industrial
arbitration, right to the franchise, and the right to education. The wealth
accumulated from the black holocaust enriched Europe and the capitalist class
internationally, in the same proportion that Africa was underdeveloped (Rodney,
1972; Anderson 1995). It is now fashionable to repudiate the theories of
underdevelopment, but in the period of the debates on recolonisation, it is timely
to reassert the fact that it was the state of underdevelopment that facilitated the
conquest of Africa., Conquest and the partitioning of the continent was
formalised by the conference of Berlin. 'Germany was the first colonial power in
Tanganyika, and the force and violence of their colonial policies has led the
more thoughtful of historians to document the contradictions of development for
exploitation (Koponen, 1994). In Southern Africa, where partitioning was


                Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania            69
   accompanied by the implantation of settlers,. land alienation from African
   farmers was one of the central features of imperial rule. This form of social
  relationship was based on conquest, and Africans had no democratic rights.
       Cheik Anta Diop has argued that there are two forms of states: those borne
  out of consensus, and those which were formed out of cOnquest. Present-day
   forms of democracy in Europe are predicated on the "consensus" of rational
  individuals operating in the market. This involves the participation of citizens in
  the political life of the society. The complete separation of producers from their
  means of subsistence, and the need for the working population to sell their
  labour power to survive, ensured that there was competition in the market place.
  The cOncepts of democratic elections and voting were developed as instruments
  to mediate the political struggles in these societies. Notwithstanding this
  separation between economic management (which was dictatorial) and political
  management (which was based on elections), the working people had to wage
  major battles for the right to exercise the franchise. Africans (especially in the
  USA), the suffragettes, environmentalists, feminists and other social forces have
  deepened the concept of democracy far beyond the horizons of the thinkers of
  liberal democracy.
      'While Europe was fighting for democracy during the twentieth century, all
  countries in Africa (with the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia) were under
  colonial rule. In many countries Africans were dispossessed of their land.
  Algeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa were the outstanding
  examples of this dispossession (Moyo, 1995). The Maji Maji revolt in
  Tanganyika, along with the fact that the society changed colonial masters after
  World War I, impeded the plans for largescale,              alienation of land. By
  independence in 1961, less, than one per cent of the land had been alienated by
  the settlers. Yet, despite their numerical weakness, the settler elements of the
  colonial society enjoyed the political support of the colonial authorities in their
  coercive demand for labourers; and access to other resources for this form of
, agricultural production. The traditions of resistance among the T8D1.8nian poor
  enabled the nationalist party, TANU, to mobilise for independence, drawing on
  the strengths of the rural communities.
       The struggle for national independence in Africa incorporated a form of
  democratic struggle which can be distinguished from the imperial democracy
  which has been critiqued by Wamba-dia-Wamba and other scholars.
          Imperial democrats have been responsible, in may ways, for entertaining
           authoritarianism in many parts of the world-sometimes in the name of
          democracy. A democracy erected on the basis of colonial conquests and


70      H. Campbell
        entertaining in its midSt native people in reservations, aborigines, etc., must
        be  critiqued from the point of the view of the victims. People without rights
        in these democracies constitute a radical witness to the limitations of those
        democracies (Wamba-dia-Wamba, 1996).
Tanzania has been in the forefront of major struggles by Africans to regain
national sovereignty. As the base of the liberation committee of the Organisation
of African Unity, the Tanzanian people supported the democratic right of .self-
determination of the African peoples. In the process the people were
demonstrating that they were not helpless victims of international capitalism, but
active agents in their own liberation. It was in this context that the political
leadership sought to develop the ideas and politiqd forms which could give
meaning to the Tanzanian form of self-determinatio!l.. Despite its limitations, the
populism of the nationalist party formed a foundation on which other forms of
democratic participation could be elaborated. One-party democracy as a form
legitimising the system was articulated and given intellectual substance by the
then nationalist leader, Julius Nyerere.
    In the first years of uhum, the nationalist leadership sought to draw positive
lessons from the egalitariap nature of the pre-colonial societies, despite the
patriarchal and gender biases which were embedded in these relations. The
avowed egalitarianism of the party did not interrogate the power which was
wielded in the village community by men, and the subordination of women in
the name of "tradition". Because the nationalist movement was the echo of the
male voice in the society, it could present itself as retaining egalitarian ties and
communal practices. This self-image was consistent with the contradiction which
had emerged between the colonial state and the emergent African- leadership.
Because of the low level of social differentiation in the village community, it
was at that time possible to present a united front against the entrenched settler
and Indian commercial elements. The result was an experimentation with the
idea of establishing ujamaa villages (Frehold, 1979). In the process more than
80 per cent of the Tanzanian society was organised into village communities,
with over 8367 registered villages.
    The nature of the integration of the Tanzanian economy into the international
system, with its agriculture dependent on the hoe and unpaid female labour,
could not lead to the development of the productive forces, regardless of
ujamaa. There were radical initiatives in the form of the Arusha Declaration,
along with the nationalisation of the settler farms and the villagisation process.
However, the whole thrust of the Arusha Declaration did not emerge from
consultations with the poor and the leadership. It did not seek to use the


                Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania            71
   knowledge of science and agriculture which has been dormant in the heads of
   cbc people, especially the rural women. Education for self-reliance as one of the
   cornerstones of lfiomaa incorporated a school tradition which was imported from
   Europe. More importantly, lfiamaa as an all-class idea did not interrogate the
   fact that the bulk of the work in the rural areas was done by women, while they
  bad UUlecontrol over the decision-making process in the villages.
       This presented the society ~th a contradiction. The social and political lives
  of cbc majority of the people depended on agriculture and natural resources for
  cbcir social reproduction, while the government was tied to the export of cash
  crops for the reproduction of the bureaucracy. Productivity was low, and the
  majority of ~ society eked out a low level of existenCe with the power relations
  in ~ society fav~             a smaIl elite in the urban areas. This elite used the
  resOurces of the bureaucracy to build up their resources so that while they were
  supporting ideas of egalitarianism, they were also enriching themselves. With
  the support of external forces which were uncomfortable with the ideas of
  African sociaUsm-or any form of socialism-this emergent class accumulated,
  but were stifled by the fact that the main dynamic behind the society laid in the
  anti~lonial struggle in Africa. The growth of this stratum in the society and
  their search for levers 9f influence and power provided the space for the
  decomposition of the ideas of ujamaa, and the recomposition of the ideas of
  capitalism and exploitation as the basis of development.
      It was in this context of the decomposition of the ideas of ujamaa and a
  cJeUgitimisation of the ideas of African liberation that there were pressures on
  the allocation of land, with tussles between the emerging social forees and the
  ordinafy T8IJ7.llpian.This resulted in tensions between different sections of the
  bureaucracy, partiCularly local governments and the Ministry of Lands, as to
. their respective powers. In practice the Ministry of Lands managed,
  administered, and allocated land on behalf of the President, but in the era of
  1iberalisation, the economic, ideological and political struggles over land
  demanded that there be a clear policy on land tenure and land use in Tanzania.
  The arbitrariness of the allocation of land of those forces which were emerging
  created insecurity for the vast majority of the population, especially the poor
  peasants and pastoraIists.
      It was in this context that in 1991 the President of Tanzania announced the
  formation of a land commission with the following terms of reference:
           1..To hear complaints from the general public conceniing land and plots
               in the rural areas and urban centres, and to make recommendations
               for solutions thereof.


  72     H. Campbell
         2. To, identify basic causes of l~        disputes and to propose remedial
              measures for solving the same and to recommend ways and means,
              including the establishment of machinery and procedures, for settling .
              land disputes.
         3. To review matters of policylland laws, currently in force concerning
              allocation of land, land tenure, land use and land development and
              recommend changes thereto wherever ~.
         4. To analyses the functions, jurisdiction and organisational structures of
              institutions involved in land matters, its allocation and development,
              and in the settlement of land disputes with a view to identifying any
              deficiencies and problems of overlapping            of powers and to.
             recommend clear demarcation of the jurisdiction of the existing
             organs.
        5. To look into any other matters and issues connected with land which
             the Commission deems fit for investigation.
 The breadth of the mandate covered contentious issue in the Society, and at the
 end of the si~g ~ Presidential Land Commission (hereinafter referred to as
 the Commission) came up with two major recommendations.
        1. Village land shall be vested in the Village Assembly,                    the
             democratically elected body of the village, and
        2. National lands, shall be vested in the Board of Land Commissioners
             to be held in trust for the benefit and use of the people (Chapter 5).
 These central recommendations reinforced the position of the centrality of the
villages in the lives of the people, and demanded a form of democratic
governance in the village assemblies which could have profound implications for
the forms of democracy to be developed in Africa. In response, the World Bank
and other internatiomiI consultants sought to hastily develop a land bill which
would undermine the recommendations of the Commission, and strengthen the
social forces which wanted to see the alienation of land to the point where there
was a class of landless labourers. This review seeks to highlight the importance
of the recommendations of the Commission, underlying the need to link the
issues of democratic access to land to democratic access to water resources; and
the importance of a gendered perspective on land in a society where the majority
of the producers are locked in traditions which reinforce their exploitation and
marginalisation. The important departllre of the Commission has stirred an


              Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania               73
important debate from the intellectuals and consultants of the World Bank and
others who believe that the individualisation of land tenure will be the way for
the future.
     The language of commodity associations, farmer's unions, and the market
for agricultural goods has been the discourse on land reform in Africa.
Generalised resistance to the capitalist form in the mral areas has led some
commentators to speak of the "uncaptured" peasantry. The dream is to have the
form of labour tenant relations which threw Southern Africa into the war of
national liberation. Settler land ownership and labour tenancy with privileged
access to seeds, water and energy has been at the crux of the African liberation
struggle in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Yet, in spite of the contradictions
embedded in this form of land ownership, there are now new schemes of
Afrikaner farmers from South Africa seeking to establish this form of land
ownership and agricultural production in other parts of Africa. This is the thrust
of a policy agenda now being formulated with the active support of the
European Union. Initiatives for a Southern Africa regional agribusiness forum
seek to reinforce the idea of individualisation, titling and registration as the basis
for a dynamic land market wpich would support a dynamic capitalist society.
     This is the social context in which we review the Report of the Commission.
In Tanzania, the ideas of ujamaa had taken deep roots, and despite the turn to
liberalisation in the 1990s, there were elements who wanted to sow the seeds for
a different path, based on the democratisation of social relations in the villages
and the vesting of real powers at the grassroots. This is the basic thrust of the
Commission's report. This report has called for a national land policy, and the
components of this policy are sources of heated debates. In an effort.to broaden
the debate to reach the ordinary Tanzanian, a Kiswahili version of the
Commission's      findings, Ardhi Ni. Uhai, has been produced by Georgios
Hadjivayanis. The very act of ensuring the production of the report in a
language accessible to over 80 per cent of the people outlined the intention of the
Commissioners.
     This review seeks to underline some of the democratic issues of the Report,
stressing that its recommendations simply provide an important starting point for
reconstruction which is based on the skills and ideas of the working poor. There
have been many criticisms of the Report, and some women have pointed to the
limitations of the chapter on gender inequality. Intellectuals and consultants of
the international financial institutions have also studied the Report, and are
pressing for a new land bill in the society. This review contributes to the larger
debate on land and democracy in Tanzania.


  74       H. Campbell
  The CommJssion's Work as an Exercise in Democratic Consultation
  The social composition of the Commission mirrored the stnJCture of the society.
  All of the members were Tatl7.8nian.'1, a reflection of the fact that during the
  ujamaa years the society had tiained a cadre of technical experts who could hold
  their own in any international gathering. The Chairperson of the Commission
  was Issa Shivji, a professor of law at the University of Dar es Salaam.
      The Commission set itself the task of developing a new form of democratic
  discourse in the society. In the process, the Commission worked out a rigorous
  itlneraty for visiting regions and holding public hearings at the district and
 village levels. It created a form of assemblies of the people which had been
 theorised in the past but never put into practice in societies where the act of
 voting every five years mocked the idea of democracy. In the process of holding
 277 public meetings in 145 villages and 132 urban centres, the Commission was
 giving meaning to its recommendation that the decisions at the grassroots be
 made in consultations with the ordinary person. The Commission, therefore,
 reversed the old colonial method of investigating social issues where the study of
 the law and the examination of expert witnesses took precedence over the views
 of the producers.
      The Commission attempted to meet all sectors of the community: experts,
government officers,. as well as individuals of the relevant institutions. In
logging over 300 working days on regional tours, however, the Commission was
hoping to establish a new tradition where the views of the ordinary TaDZ'.sniJln
became as important as those of legal experts or government officers. In his
preface to the report, Shivji admitted that the ultimate source of the major ideas
were inspired by the ordinary wananchi.
            What we did was to systematise, articulate and present in a coherent
          manner what we had gathered from the people in the language of their daily
        I experience and practical wisdom. Whatever is good and meritorious in our
          report, therefore,. is rooted not in some grand theory but in the great
          wisdom of the peqple.
The work of the Commission was a sterling lesson of deIn<lCfaCY             in action. It
was not insignificant, therefore, that one of the contributions of this land
commission was {l pointer to the possibilities of greater participation by the
ordinary Tlln7.lmill1lS in decisions of matters affecting their lives.


               Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania            75
      The Commission and its work can be conipared with the work of a prevl9US
  major comnrlssion in East Africa in the early fifties as a response to the
  struggles of the land and freedom army in Kenya.' That commission, the East
. African Royal Commission, was hastily called in order to defuse ibc militant
  call for the return of the land to the Kenyan people. In essence, the East African
  Royal Commission's report, following an earlier report by D.P. Corfied on the
  origins of the Mau Mau, was an exercise in political pacification. The findings
  of the East Africa Royal Commission (1953-1955) luid considered the forms of
  land, ownership which could lay the foundation for the progressive African
  yeoman farmer separated from the "tribal system of land tenure". Using the
  language of efficiency, that Report made a case for the indivirlualisation of land
  tenure in East Africa. It w~ in Kenya where the recommendations, with respect
  to capitalist agriculture, were pursued with the social consequences of the nature
 ,pf present day Kenyan society.
      In its capacity to influence future government policy on land tenure and land
  law in Tanzania, the Tanzania Presidential Commission findings are significant.
  The Report itself is divided in two volumes: Volume 1 contains
 recommendations on land policy and land tenure structure; and in Volume 2
 there are recommendations for the possible resolution of existing land conflicts.
      Part 1 of the first volume covered the evide~ presented along with a
 historical overview of the particularity of Tanganyikan society, the allocation of
 land, demarcation and the impact of the policies of ujamaa. One can grasp from
 the outline that while there were "problems of villagisation" , the guiding
 principle in the society was to provide "land to the tiller". However, the various
 issues relating to land use, urbanisation, land disputes and the issue of
 individualisation, titling and registration required a clear policy, much as the
 state was making some efforts to give direction to the different forms of
 customary use and existing regulations.
      The Land Use Ordinance passed by the colonial state in 1923 had been the
 guiding principle used to consolidate the early efforts of the Germans to exploit
 human resources, land, and minerals. Juhani Kuponen (1994) outlines the force
 and coercion which lay behind the banal legislation of the Germans in
 designating colonial authority over the disposal of land. Though there has been
 vacillation between whether there should be settler agriculture or small scale
 peasant cultivation, resistance of the poor shifted the balance in favour of the
 colonial trade economy, viz., where the peasant planted cash crops and the
 exploitation was effected via the circulation process. The peasants were left to
 cultivate the land, but the policy was to give the colonial state the right to


   76       H. Campbell
   aIienate land either by sale or lease. This legal position of the German colonial
   government introduced a new concept of buyiJ)g and selling land into the
   society.
       The British, who were the colonial masters after World War I, continued the
   German tradition of alienating land, but set down a legal basis for alienation in
   the 1923 Land Ordinance. Under this ordinance, the ultimate ownership of all
   land was vested in the colonial state, with the governor having the right to
   dispose of land in accordance with the demands of British "entrepreneurs".
            Eventually in 1928, the Ordinance was amended to give customary law
            titles a statutory recognition. The definition of the .right of occupancy was
            extended to include for the first time, the title of a native or a native
            comnumity lawfully using or occupying land in accordance with native law
            and custom. Since that time customary law titles have come to be called
              deemed rights of occupancy' (pp 11).
       This declaration was to be a source of limited protection for Tanvmian
  villagers by then. Thus while the ordinance vested the "radical title in the state
  so as to allow it to control land ", giving the governor power to dispose of land at
  will, the social and economic situation at that historical moment did not force the
  issue of granting customary rights legal tenure. The issue of individual titling
  came to the forefront after the war in Kenya, and was endorsed by Government
  paper No. 6 of 1958 entitled "Review and Land Tenure Policy". After the
  second world war, the British government had the dream of creating large scale
  agricultural projects in Tanzania. Colonial administrators proposed to introduce
  a "form of tenure which is individual, exclusive, secure, unlimited in time and
  negotiable." At that time the proposals of the British were firmly opposed by the
 nationalist movement, and thus the proposals were never translated into law.
       Since the 1990s, however, there has been a social base for the
 individualisation of land tenure, and it is in this context that the World Bank has
 made an alliance with the local forces calling for individualisation, registration,
'and titling. In pointing out some of the major obstacles, the Commission cited
 the absence of technical competence for establishing land rights revolving
 around specific boundaries of a parcel or POrtion of land. Foreign consultants
 have been paid to draft a bill to strengthen supporters of the World Bank: within
 and outside the government who were acting with haste for the enactment of a
 land bill. Inthe context of this review, however, the main thrust is to underscore
 the problems, not only with respect to the gendered nature of the positions of the
 numerouS authorities, but the fact that the discussion of the Land Bill is being


                Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania                          77
 uridertaken outside of a larger debate on the nature of transforming                  agricultural
 production in Tanzania.
 The Decomposition          or the Ideas or Ujamaa
 One of the most important asPects of the post-colonial                  Tal12'Jlnial) society bas
been the attempts by the state to enfranchise the customary tenants. Though
 there has been 110 explicit land tenure policy, the independent government
attempted to guarantee protection to the tillers of the soil in three areas related
to: freehold tenure; the semi-feudal tenure called Nyarubanja; and landlord-
tenant relationships. The post-independence government inherited the powers of
the British governor, including, the powers of the 1923 ordinance over land. The
most significant amendment of the Land Ordinance was to replace the term
 "Governor", wherever it appeared with the term "President". One positive
aspect of this inheritance was that the President did not represent a landed
aristocracy, and as such the fact that the lands of Tanzania were declared public
lands did not privilege an aspiring class. In fact, in the aftermath of the East
AfPcan Royal Commission Report in 1958, when the colonial administration
had issued Government Paper No.4 proposing a move towards the freehold
system and abolishing the customary land tenure, Julius Nyerere had argued
against the proposal.
     In a powerful article called Mali ya Taifa (Wealth of the Nation), Nyerere
argued against the freehold system both on philosophical and equity grounds,
and on the fears of landlessness and social upheavals such a system might
generate. The Commission quoted extensively from that article, and in
philosophical terms the arg\lIllents are as valid today as they were in 1958.
         If people are given land to use as their property, then they might have the
         right to sell it. It will not be difficult to predict who, in fifty years time will
         be the landlords and who will be the tenants. In a country such as this,
         where, generally speaking, the Africans are poor and the foreigners are
         rich, it is quite possible. that, within eighty or a hundred years, if the poor
         African were allowed to sell his land, all the land in Tanganyika would
         belong to wealthy immigrants, and the local people would be tenants. But
         even if there were no rich foreigners in this country, there would emerge
         rich and clever Tanganyikans. If we allow land to be sold like a robe,
         within a short period there would only be a few Africans possessing land in
         Tanganyika and all others would be tenants.
            If two groups emerge-a small group of landlords and a large group of
         tenants-we would be faced with a problem which has created antagonisms


 78      H. Campbell
         among peoples and"led to bloodshed in many countries of the world. Our
         forefathers saved themselves from this danger by refusing to distribute land
         on freehold basis (p. 114).
 This position of the leader and the party guided the philosophy behind the one-
 party democracy, and the acquisition of political independence in Tanganyika.
     The political direction of the Tanzanian society changed significantly in the
 aftermath of the Zanzibar revolution, and the launching of the armed struggled
 in Mozambique in 1964. By 1967 the political leadership had articulated the
 Arusba Declaration, with far-reaching consequences for the independence of
 Tanzania. The positive and negative results of the Arusha Declaration has been
 the subject of numerous commentaries, conferences and books, but what needs
 to be underlined in this review is the then commitment to protect the basic rights
 of the poor in the society. Nationalisation of land and villagisation were two of
 the important policies with respect to land use in Tanzania. Villagisation led to
 the resettlement of 70 percent of the rural people of Tanzania, and in many
cases brute force was used to move the people. Forced villagisation was given-
legal sanctity by the Rural Lands Act of 1973, which gave the state control over
village lands and the right to ,declare any part of Tanzania a specified area.
     The Commission rightly used the question of the Arusha Declaration and
villagisation as the major rupture in the development of the politics of Tanzania.
The major problem in the villagisation exercise was the use of force and the
unplanned nature of settlements. Hence, though ujamaa and villagisation was
supposed to be a progressive departure from the colonial forms of agricultural
production, the Commission underscored the fact that there were two major
issues with the effecting of the villagisation policy.
         (a) The top-down approach to land tenure reform and land administration
             apparent in the pre-Arusha attempts at village settlements and range
             development persisted in post-Arusha programmes of villagisation
             and village titling; and
         (b) Attempts at abolishing diverse customary land tenure and applying
             uniform, centralised statutory tenure have continued in different
             forms in spite of the earlier failures.
     The point here is that the thrust for communal land ownership could not lead
to better agricultural    production without the means of production required to
improve the conditions of productivity on the land. Moreover, the whole thrust


                 Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania                  79
  of ujamaa did not address the issue of who commanded the labour power of
  women and children in the villages. The relations between men and women
  were of crucial importance in a situation where the dominant instrument of
  labour was human energy, and female labour was central to the survival of the
  society in the process of social reproduction.
       In essence, there was a recognition of the centrality of female labour, and
  the legitimacy for clustered villages was predicated on the fact that clustered
  living would give greater accessibility to social services, and to the limited
  infrastructure in the society. It was the official view that collective villages
  would increase production, but there was little regard for the existing land
  tenure systems and the culture and customs in which they were rooted. Hence,
  in the words of the Commission, there was:
           ... Lack of clarity of villagisation as a reform of the land tenure on rural
          lands. Hence there was virtual absence of a systematically worked out
          tenure system in the relocated villages which could have provided it with
          riecessary certainty and security in law.
              In the absence of legal security of tenure, land problems in villages after
          villages increased manifold and village lands became the subject of
          arbitrary encroachment, invasion and alienation in favour of outside
          individuals and institutions (including government) against the interest and
          wishes of the villagers.
 This was the crux of the decomposition of the ideals of egalitarianism. Finding
 space in the lack of a systematically worked out system, those SQCialforces
 inside. and outside the society which were opposed to socialism worked to
 undermine the system as a whole. The Commission rightly pointed out that the
 management of village lands was in practice vested in the village councils,
 which felt responsible and accountable to district authorities and the organs of
 central government rather .than their village assemblies. Village assemblies had
 virtually no control over village lands, and no say over ~ir leaders in land
 matters. This led to many abuses and malpractices on the allocation, alienation
 and use of village lands.
      In effect, the malpractices reinforced the growing class differentiation, and
 undermined whatever elementary forms of participation that existed in the
-village assemblies. The proliferation of land claimS which came from the
 confusion and malpractices of villagisation ,created the .conditions which
 necessitated the establishing of the Commission~ The land claims by divergent
 forces led' to a record number of law suits in the courts, and a lack of clarity in


80       H. Campbell
the nineties when the government began to move away from the principles of
socialism and self-reliance. It is important to quote the Commission here.
         Ad hoc and other measures to resolve land claims. such as the attempts to
         ex.tinguish customary law rights, have been unsatisfactory. Their legal
         validity is doubtful in that they are price facie burdened with the legal
         deficiencies and lack of social legitimacy grounded in culture and custom.
In this state of confusion the government gestured toward the idea of village
titling but without the fmancial means to carry out the exercise. The original
problems of force and coercion was compounded by legal and procedural
problems in seeking how to resolve the question of land tenure regime in the
country.
     It was in recognition that the Tanzanian population was still overwhelmingly
rural that the Commission sought to make its main recommendation that land
should be vested in the village. But this suggestion was backed up by the call for
democratic participation of the people at the village level. After examining the
evidence, the Commission drew the conclusion that a considerable number of
land problems and disputes can be directly traced to the non-participation of
villagers in the administration of village lands. The villagers attributed the
problems to the absence of democracy at the village level.
Land titling or Democratisation
The problems associated with villagisation, settlements on alienated land, and
urbanisation were compounded by the ideology of private property and
individual accumulation which arose in the period of the process of liberalisation
(Campbell, 1991). The opening up for the economy and the shift in terms of
resources allocation away from social services had a profound impact on the
producers, especially the rural women. With Iiberalisation, both legal and illegal
practices had an impact on land held under customary and village based tenure,
especially in the urban areas.
     There were public officials in the bureaucracy and in the parastatals who
were turning public property into private property, and organised to grab land
for themselves and their allies locally and internationally. In the chapter on Land
Disputes, the Commission outlined the numerous and varied forms of disputes
which arose, highlighting the fact that in one region there were one thousand
complaints. In the area of disputes, Arusha Region stood out both in respect to
fact that the dispute settling machinery was inaccessible to the majority, and the


                  land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania                  81
   fact that there were long delays in the settlement of disputes. It was not
   insignificant that this region became a political base for the opposition to the
   government of the ruling party in 1995.
       The festering of land disputes gave succour to those who were undemocratic,
   while the society needed a policy which gave due consideration to the interests
   of the producers, especially the women. It is on the question of how to give
   security to all in the society where the issue of individualisation, titling and
   registration received a rigorous analysis by the Commission. This aspect of
   "land reform" is so prevalent in Africa that it is important to underline the
   approach of the Commission in analysing this issue, which led to their
   concluSion that land should be vested in village assemblies.
       The idea of individualisation is foreign to Tanzania. The Commission, in its
   analysis, first outline the idea of individualisation, titling and registration:
           Individualisation, titling and registration (for short ITR) refers to a system
           of land tenure based on individual land ownership guaranteed by the state.
           Titling and registration is the process by which such ownership is recorded
           on one hand, and which record is held out to the public as reflecting the
           true state of ownership on a parcel of land, on the other. Once the title is
           issued and registered, it is said to be indefensible, meaning that it cannot be
           forfeited on grounds of claims of, inter alia, rival ownership (with a few
           exceptions such as forged titles).
  The Commission went on to show that in the context of a land tenure structure
  like that of Tanzania, what is implied by the advocacy of ITR are usually three
  major changes: individualisation of land ownership, withdrawal of largely rural
  and periurban lands from the domain of customary law and placing them
  exclusively under the statutorylEnglish law of real property; and the creation of
  free land markets, i.e., making land a marketable commodity, more or less
  without restrictions ..
      The plan for the creation of land markets is one of the most pressing goals of
. the World Bank in Africa. Through intellectual centres and think-tanks, there
  have been a bevy of studies which deal with the matters of "creating market
  forces" and "providing incentives for entrepreneurs", The main point of the
  thinkers of the World Bank has been that indigenous land rights. systems have
  been a constraint on development. A Kenyan sociologist in the World Bank has
  been one of the foremost exponents of the need for individualisation. so that
. African farmers can use their title as collateral (Migot-Adholla, et. aI. 1991).
      In looking at ITR, the Commission went back to the powerful 1958
  arguments of Julius Nyerere, citing the process of class differentiation which has


 82       H. Campbell
 taken place, and the einerging classes of landlords and tenants. In closely
 studying the literature on ITR and the result in Africa, the Commission also
 looked at the experience of Kenya since the days of the East Africa Royal
 Commission. The Tanzania Commission actually carried out a sitting in Kenya
 in order to get a fIrst hand account of the effects of individualisation of land
 tenure, and its relationship to the landlessness and deprivation in Kenya. In a
 situation where Kenya has moved from the success story in Africa to one where
 basic human rights are violated by an undemocratic regime, the lessons of land
 reform in that society were relevant and sobering. It was this kind of
 investigation which showed that ITR was negative in Africa, along with the
 major rethinking in academic literature on ITR which led the Commission to
 reject this as a solution to the land tenure regime in Tanzania.
     The academic literature and practical experience on the ground allover the
continent showed that ITR has created more problems that it has solved.
         This is especially applicable to women, pastoralists and other groups who
         have traditionally enjoyed subsidiary or usufruct rights to land. In fact, one
         outcome in many LDC where ITR has been effectively implemented is that
         it creates a rural or :asset-Iess' class in the rank of the ultra poor.
         Experiences in Kenya, Senegal and the Ivory Coast reveal that land
         registration constitutes a mechanism for the transfer of assets from the poor
         to the educated, economic and political elite (plateau, 1995).
This kind of evidence on the negative effects of ITR made the World Bank and
their experts retreat, even though the objective of foreign capital is to create
landless peasants completely separated from their means of subsistence, by
saying that "the issue is not whether ITR should be resisted, but that it should be
allowed to evolve rather than be accelerated by compulsory policies which are
most likely to end up doing more harm than good" .
     The issue of security of tenure, whether for the individual or for the
community, is a matter of urgency in Tanzania, especially for those who want to
use the land as a means of accumulation. There were two forces calling for
security of tenure: fIrstly, the small holder poor peasant and pastoralists; and
secondly the well-to-do, especially from the urban areas. In the submission
before the Commission, the poor peasants showed that it was important to
disentangle two senses in which the term security of tenure is used. First, it
refers to security against risk of loss of land. Secondly, its refers to security of
investments, in and on land. The Commission argued that,


               Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania                      83
         Villagers fear loss of their land-their means of livelihood-through
         various means and mechanism. Alienation of land to outsiders, govermnent
         acquisition of village lands, expansion of urban boundaries and boundaries
         of reserve lands engulfing village lands, etc., are some of the examples we
         received in evidence causing insecurity. Titling itself does not necessarily
         provide security against risks of loss of land of the smallholders. As a
         matter of fact, given the negotiability of titles, titling further facilities loss
         of land by smallholders, as the Kenyan example amply demonstrates (pp.
         118).
 The Commission then went on to discuss the cultural reasons militating against
 the land alienating effects of ITR. It was the whole question of African cultural
 values which guided the recommendation of the new land tenure policies.
 According to the Commission, the following were the guiding principles:
         1. While taking custom as the base and a point of departure, to devise a
             broad policy, legal and structural framework which will facilitate this
             organic evolution from below. In short, to borrow Mwalimu
             Nyerere's perceptive phrase, to modernise tradition, as opposed to
             imposing modernisation on tradition.
        2. To democratise land tenure control and administration by locating
             control over land at the level of village assemblies, elected local
             committees, and the national parliament.
        3. On the economic level, to facilitate accumulation from below by
             releasing organic social forces from within the smallholder
             community, mainly rural, but also urban.
        4. Security and safety of land rights ftrst should be the underlying
             tenurial principle as crystallised from the evidence from the people.
        For the village communities and neighbourhoods, security of tenure
        precedes planning of land usage while, for the individual user, security is
        contingent on use (pp. 122).
     These conclusions were to be an important departure in the legal and social
history of Tanzania. The issue of the Commission was to deal with the
outstanding issues which arose from taking the viliage community and the
village assembly as the base. This was manifested in the discussion after the
release of the Commission s report on the issue of gender inequality and the
                                I
problems of female succession.


84      H. Campbell
The Gender perspective on the Land Question.
The Commission report brought out into the open one of the most contentious,
and potentially one of the most liberating issue for the African continent, that is,
the issue of the tranSformation of gender relations. During the struggle against
colonial rule, one of the issues which had been silenced in the call for umoja.
uhuru na kazi was the subordination of women. In the slogan it was not pointed
out that the kazi in the societY was carried out mostly by women. However, in
the past ten years, the feminist movement-internationally and in Africa-has
begun to break the silence. In Tanzania, there have been numerous centres for
gender training, and they have forcefully articulated the fact that,
        gender differentials can be seen in the social and economic inequalities
        which we see everyday; the gender division of labour, the general division
       ,of access to resources and unequal power relations between men and
        women. Gender analysis can be used as a tool to uncover basic inequalities
        qn all levels. Gender often intersects with other axes of differentiation such
        as age, class, religion ethnic group, and race as a crucial variable in the
        human situation (Mbilinyi, 1993).
    One of the principal criticisms of the Commission has been that it simply
stated the reality of gender inequalities without delving into the issue of the
control of land and its produce by women. In the chapter on gender inequalities,
the Commission stated that there were three issues that needed more attention.
         I. Gender inequalities and biases against women under customary tenure
            render land inaccessible to women both in terms of ownership and
            control.
        2. The laws on inheritance embedded in customs work against the
            interests of widows and daughters; and
        3. The traditional male domination result in major decisions on land
            being taken by men.
    One critic who has taken the Commission to task on the matter, pointed to
the underdeveloped understanding of the Commission in its attempt to take
account of these pJ:'oblems. The vesting of the radical title in the village
assembly was to be the expedient to render clan land unnecessary. This is what
the Commission recommended:
        As to the allocation of land within the village land tenure committees,
        women members of the village shall have equal right to allocation of land.


                Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania          85
          The Commission in its recommendation understood that one cannot simply
          legislate against tradition so it emphasised the need for a minimum
          percentage of female presence in the village institUtions.
      These recommendations of the Commission were severely critiques by
 Magdalene Rwebangira who argued that, calling for equality is not enough,
 stating that, "when custom, or religious beliefs contradict fundamental human
 rights, the latter should prevail" (Rwebangira, 1995).
     WorId Bank consultants have long realised that the discourse on gender and
development can be a tool for the support of capitalist relations while seemingly
championing the rights of women. In this enterprise the discussion on
inheritance, while being a legitimate claim for women who are disinherited, has
become another vehicle for the long term goal of the WorId Bank to introduce
individualisation, registration and tenure in the society. The big push for studies
on inheritance all over Southern Africa has this long term goal in view.
     Marjorie Mbilinyi has critiqued the women in development theories which
have been the inspiration behind the present legal studies and workshops .on
inheritance. She has argued that:
         Women in development programmes tend to concentrate at the level of
         immediate causes, and provide welfarism services which may help reduce
         women's work in the short run, for example, but do not empower the
         people to create a long term solution. WID characterises the approach
         adopted in most women projects supported by women focal points in
         government and donor agencies, and in many non-governmental         and
         community based organisations. (Mbilinyi, 1993 (b».
     The crucial point in the critique of the World Bank position of empowering
women at the grassroots and to ensure that they inherit land is that the
concentration is to empower women within the confines of the present structures
of agricultural production. It is in this sense that the more perceptive see the
issue of women' s access to land nqt only in respect to the short term needs of
inheritance, but in the talk of democratisation of society and the development of
a gendered perspective of power relations which would change the conditions of
both men and women in the society.
     Experience elsewhere in Southern Africa has pointed to the fact that most of
the legislative changes in favour of women appear in practice to favour largely
urban, middle and upper class women, given that the enforceability and
applicability of these legal norms has more empirical and practical relevance
among s~h classes of women. Sam Moyo, in outlining how the struggle for


86      H. Campbell
mheritance in Zimbabwe ha.:;favoured the middle and upper classes of women,
drew attention to how this call could overshadow the call for more fundamental
changes in the power relations in the society:
        The call for land titles in Communal and Resettlements Areas to be
        registered in the names of both husband and wife, for example, focuses on
        atomisation of land tenure towards individuals within families. rather than
        challenging wider rural power bases and institutional aspects such as
        chieftaincy. lobola, and local council control and administration. Equally,
        the collaboration of some middle class and elite wives in promoting the
        existing conservative land reform policy, and the benefits of black elite
        families in procuring large farm estates at the expense of the rural and
        urban poor, reflects a co-optation dilemma confronting the women's
        struggle for land. Conservative elite females, by promoting the
        conservative policies and political party ideologies, contribute to the slow
        movement towards security, an egalitarian and gendered land reform
        process (Moyo, 1995).
    Moyo went on to argue that the main challenge is to broaden the analytic and
policy basis of current calls for both land reform and women's rights to land in
order to realise a more equitable, gender fair, agrarian program. He reinforced
the call that it is essential to promote a wide economic rational, for land reform
based on the search for broadly based economic and social transformation.
Conservation and the Environment.
The call for social transformation in all of Africa is a recognition that the issue
of transformation of social relations and changed patterns of land use are key to
the agrarian question. The Land Commission opened up the issue of
conservation, environment and habitat by pushing further the call for democratic
participation by the poor in matters of conservation. The Commission
underscored the fact that the growth and transformation of concern for the
conservation of nature, concern for the pollution of the environment,
culminating in the concern for the paucity, or inadequacy, of human living
capacities, is an organic development which has its origins in the admiration of
nature and the natural, and respect for life as a divine right.
    This position on conservation and the environment that sought to rise above
the crude materialism of the West. and to bring back the land, represents a link
between those who are deceased, those who are alive, and those not yet born. In
that sense, land in Africa represents spiritual values and a whole host of other


             Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania               87
 non-material values. Land for the people includes both market and non-market
 forces and values, including agricultural uses, biotechnological resources,
 energy resources, building materials, medicines, water-related resources, and
 others .
   . Though the Conunission left issues of conservation and the environment to
 the end of their report, the whole discussion pointed to how much more the
 ordinary Tanzanian had to be drawn into the process of consultation and decision
 making. Questions of water, forests, pastoralists, the Petroleum Act, the Mining
 Act-all these are questions that need thorough examination. In raising the
 questions, the Commission also pointed to the crucial requirement of the
 democratisation of information in the society. Such a democratisation process
 would inform the national land policy of Tanzania.
 Conclusion
The Presidential Commission of Inquiry into land matters came forty year after
the East African Royal Commission(EARC). This Commission was different
both in form and content fr'om the latter, and it observed the effects of the
privatisation and individualisation of land in Kenya recommended by the EARC.
  There was also the realisation that the haphazard policies in villagisation and the
confused urbanisation policies would not lead to social peace in the society. It
was the reality of both the undemocratic results of the Royal Commission
Report, along with the dead end of villagisation, which informed the report.
     The finding that land should be vested in the hands of the producers brought
back the old line of land to the tiller. However, there was also the recognition
that the ownership and control of land by the poor was not enough; that there
has to be changes in agricultural techniques and the choice of crops.
Significantly, the Commission pointed to the inequalities based on class and
gender in the rural areas. There was the call for a thorough discussion of the
findings of the Commission by the society.
    The imperial democrats who consume more than two-thirds of the worlds'
resources are uncomfortable with the [mdings of the Commission, and the
suggestions for village assemblies making decisions at the grassroots. This form
of popular democracy has the potential of opening up the imagination and skills
of the people. This form of democracy could provide the counterweight to the
bloated bureaucracy, and those who go to tqe people once every five years for
their votes. The democratic recommendations of the Commission is a
recognition that power does not lie in the administrative organs but in the


 88        H. Campbell
 people. This reality has led to a rush of meetings and employment of consultants
 to divert attentiod from the report of the Commission. Specialists from Europe
 have been brought in to draft a land bill in Tanzania in a way which would allow
 market forces to dictate the land tenure regime in the country.
     These specialists are aware that the expansion of market forces could further
 marginalise the poor-and       women-further     reinforcing current inequities and
 distortions in land allocation and alienation. In a smug fashion, the World Bank
 has argued that "individualisation is growing and is. the way for the future".
 Though they argue that in the long term this process would take its "natural
 course', the army of consultants and experts deployed in the society is meant to
 ensure that individualisation is backed up by the force of law.
     The haste is itself a manifestation of the reality that despite the
 implementation of liberalisation, the conditions of the poor have worsened. In
 less than ten years the poor can make comparisons in acceSs to water, the
 quality of schools, and cost of health care. Poverty alleviation programmes are
orchestrated to divert the $tention of the academic community from the fact that
the conditions of structural adjustment are not neutral, but reinforce the
exploitation of the people. The Commission understood the alternatives in the
 sOciety. In making the call for direct democracy, the Commission understood
that it was very likely that the assemblies would be controlled by the male to the
prejudice of the female gender. But the Commission underlined the fact that,
          the oppression of the women is age-old and cannot be done away
          with through a tenurial policy by the stroke of the pen. Yet, here
          too our provision for a minimum presence of women built into the
          mandatory quorum does make some inroad and facilitate those
          tendencies and forces already present in our SOciety struggling for
          gender equality.
The concept of equality was one reminder that the Commissioners themselves
were operating in the context of the" liberal concept of liberty and equality, and
the concept of equality has never benefited Africa. Despite its limitations, the
objective of the Commission was to shift power relations in favour of the
redistribution of wealth at all levels. Essentially, the report of the Commission
opened up the whole. issue-OL~ transformation of the labour process, and. the
transformation      of gender relations as an integral part of the struggle for
democracy in Tanzania. Tanzania is a large country with surplus land, aDd at the
moment the society is relatively underpopulated. A democratic society could
unleash the vast potential in wealth which lie beneath the soil. Despite its


              Land Issues and the Democratization Process in Tanzania           89
 limitations, ujamaa had promised wealth to the poor by arguing that the people
 had  been "exploited a great deal", "disregarded a great deal" and that they now
 needed a "revolution". At that moment, the discourse silenced the majority,
 especially women. At this historical moment the voices Qf women are being
 heard.
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