September - 2001

EDITORIAL

Recent developments in some African countries leave no doubt that the land question is a time bomb waiting to explode. Zimbabwe is a case in point, with the landgrab by war veterans threatening the country's very survival. Actually, the tragic happenings in Zimbabwe have put a whole new perspective on the agrarian question, especially in former British colonies such as Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa. In some countries, notably Zimbabwe, land reform has assumed political dimensions, while in other countries - such as South Africa and Kenya - it has become a human rights issue. All these undercurrents are an indication that land reform is too urgent an issue to be put aside in the wake of the new century.

Unfortunately, some African leaders, backed by foreign governments, are adamant that the land question has to be solved in a certain way, which they argue is the right way. The most common approach has been that of "willing-buyer-willing seller," yet, it is a fact that the majority of people who deserve land cannot afford it. It is against such a background that civil societies across Africa have been calling for comprehensive reviews of the historical context of land ownership.

To most Africans, land is a matter of life and death, and denial of it is tantamount to loss of self-identity, dignity and a gross violation of their human rights. In this issue AFRICANEWS' Managing Editor Cathy Majtenyi, who attended the just-concluded World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, relates the story of Griffiths Aaron Molefe, 84, a poor black South African who worked all of his life as a farmhand hoping one day things will change. However, for Molefe, now in the twilight of his life and living in an independent South Africa, the rewards he has received for his patience are a tent and a roadside shack. Cathy reports that even after the end of apartheid, glaring land inequalities stick out like a sore thumb in South Africa.

In Botswana, matters aren't rosy either. A week before the Durban conference, it was victory for the San people of Botswana after the government finally decided to allocate to this tiny ethnic group huge tracts of land, which was originally theirs. Our correspondent Rodrick Mukumbira reports that the Botswana government gave the San some 24,000 square kilometres in the country�s Central Kalahari and Khutse National Parks. But this was not delivered to the San on a silver platter. It came following decades of resistance from forced resettlement and struggle for recognition and for their right to land.

Further north, in Tanzania, our correspondent Zephaniah Musendo examines the country's agrarian policy, arguing that it is one that vests the control of land in the executive hands of the all-powerful state. Zephaniah argues that such a situation has contributed to the denial of millions of peasants, pastoral communities and urban dwellers from owning land, which they urgently need. With foreign investors trooping to the country since the 1980s, poor Tanzanians have witnessed a proliferation of large acquisitions of Tanzanian land by foreigners mainly through government allocation. The main victims in this process have been the pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and hunter-gathering communities.

Tanzania's northern neighbour, Kenya, isn't doing better with one of the country's smallest ethnic groups, the Ogiek, suing the government. The Ogiek have accused the Kenyan government of seeking to dispossess them of land that they consider their ancestral. As AFRICANEWS Editor Clement Njoroge reports, the case filed in 1997 could prove to be a milestone in solving the country's teething agrarian problems.