by Chido Makunike
Ethiopia
seems to feature more than any other African country in the charges of
accommodating large land deals or land ‘grabs’ (choose depending on your bias)
by foreign farming investors.
There is controversy about almost every aspect of them. Are
the terms of the deals not too much in favor of the investors? What are those
terms exactly? Will the host countries benefit much from them, or will they
mostly be another type of resource plunder? How can Africa’s
mostly communal land tenure systems be made compatible with commercial land
leasing and ownership systems? Does the big new role of foreigners in answering
that long outstanding question not create resentment and foster resistance to
these deals?
Controversial as the deals may be, is it not necessary and
unavoidable that at least some communal land gives way to high-intensity
commercial use of one type or another? Has this not happened everywhere else in
the course of ‘development?’ In respecting traditional communal land tenure
indefinitely, would governments not actually be condemning many of their most
vulnerable citizens to perpetual poverty, given declining soil fertility,
increasing population pressures, climate unpredictability and so on; all
factors that increasingly threaten the viability of rural life?
But then again, in countries where many have little else on
which to sustain themselves except subsistence farming, is removing rural
communities from their lands and livelihoods, no matter how basic, to make way
for commercial farming not condemning them to an even more uncertain fate in new,
unfamiliar territory?
These are just a few of the questions that face nearly all
African countries, even those not currently in the news for ‘land grabs.’ These
are issues that long preceded the current wave of land deals. None of the range
of answers is as easy or straightforward as either supporters or opponents of
the current deals would suggest.
Governments, investors and many others in between have often
taken very simplistic positions on the land deals that leave out many of the
complicated nuances. Media and various non-government organizations with their
own rigid ideological or commercial interests at stake in supporting or
opposing the land deals have only added to the confusion.
In making aggressive moves to develop a commercial
agriculture sector, in many ways Ethiopia
is going where Zimbabwe
has been.
In certain media, any mention of Zimbabwe
must automatically go hand in hand with phrases such as ‘Mugabe’s land grabs’
and the country ‘went from regional farming breadbasket to basket case.’ The
idea is to emphasize the recent disruption of a system of title deeds-based
farmland tenure that was long taken for granted, and a sophisticated, thriving
commercial farming sector that was widely admired. ‘Mugabe’s land grabs’ from
white farmers from about the year 2000 changed much of this. The country experienced
several years of economic decline which it only arrested a few years ago, and
is still battling to rise from.
As successful as the ‘breadbasket’ was, the considerable
emotion that events in Zimbabwe
elicit in a surprising number of people even far removed, means that there is
little interest in going back a little in history to see the roots of the
eventual dismantling of the land tenure system that gave rise to it. How did
that commercial, Western-style farmland tenure system come about?
It came about in ways somewhat similar to what is being
alleged the present Ethiopian government is doing in displacing rural
communities to make way for foreign farm investors.
From the early 1900s, white settlers in the then Rhodesia
were given by the colonial governments huge parcels of land from which Africans
had been uprooted. The ‘villagization’ that the Ethiopian government is
said/accused to be embarking on today sounds vaguely similar to the ‘tribal
trust lands’ to which Africans were forcibly moved by colonial governments from
the early days of Rhodesia.
In both cases, the main reason was to give prime land to the
favored elite of the time, whether white settlers then in Rhodesia
or investors in Ethiopia
today. However, incidental benefits for the displaced communities were also cited as justifications for the land grabs. In Rhodesia,
it was said that the concentration of once widely scattered communities into
fewer, smaller areas would make it easier for the colonial government to
provide them various services, such as agricultural extension, schools and so
on. In Ethiopia
today, relocations which critics say are forced and violent, but which the
government insists are voluntary, are explained as being to better enable
access to schools, clinics and other basic social services.
Few of Rhodesia’s
early white settlers had any farming experience at the time of getting land which
had been grabbed from Africans. Many were rewarded with land for their role in
African conquest, and some as thanks from then colonial power Britain
for their service in Europe’s early 20th
century civil wars.
Title deeds-based land tenure on the grabbed land replaced
the traditional communal tenure system of the dispossessed Africans. It was on
this grabbed land that successive colonial governments supported the new land
holders to develop into the impressive commercial farming sector that powered Rhodesia’s
economy, and later Zimbabwe’s.
From a distance and from outside, and for a while even in
the country itself, all that appeared on the surface was the farming and
economic success. Below the surface, the sense of grievance on which
these successes were built was muted as long as the Africans enjoyed some of its crumbs,
as farms workers or in the many downstream industries that resulted. But it
never went away. It might have appeared as ancient history and finished
colonial business for the then well-established descendants of the original
white settlers, but it was a quietly present and continuing ‘issue’ for many
Africans. The period from the colonial land grabs of the early 1900s to
independence in 1980 was short enough that there were still many people alive
who had personal memory of how they were chased from family lands, their cattle
expropriated; forced labor and various taxes imposed on them. These stories
were passed on from generation to generation in every African family.
The sense of African grievance that continued to fester over
the land issue meant that all recognized the need for some type of land reform
after 1980. One reason mostly polite discussion dragged on about the issue was
the difficulty of how to raise the money to compensate the white land owners
for any ceding of land to Africans they might agree to. In other words, the
title deeds they held on land that had been grabbed from Africans several
decades before were by most people seen as inviolate.
There was no talk, or very little, of invalidating the land
deeds of black-ruled Zimbabwe
because the land had been grabbed from Africans several decades before. It was
sort of accepted that land reform negotiations would start on the basis and
from the starting point of the colonial, title-based land tenure system, not
the traditional African communal system that existed before that.
One of the reasons that ‘Mugabe’s land grabs’ have been so
controversial, even emotional for many people, including those not directly
involved, is that he invoked not the colonial title deed as the basis for land
ownership legitimacy, but the land ownership rights of Africans before that;
the ones that were grabbed from those Africans by the colonial governments.
This was a very new post-colonial precedent that worries and outrages many
people for all sorts of reasons not necessary to get into for the purpose of
the present discussion.
Zimbabweans of all types were proud of their relatively
developed, diversified economy and the ‘breadbasket’ commercial farming sector
that underpinned it. All Zimbabweans suffered from the economic crisis that
followed the recent land ‘re-grabs’ that were not well thought out. But it is
interesting and important to note that there wasn’t/isn’t any significant African sentiment for those land
re-grabs to be reversed. Most Zimbabweans want the land reform process and commercial
agriculture fixed, but probably very few would advocate for the status quo to
go back to the system of title deeds that originate in the era of colonial
land grabbing.
If the old system of title deeds-based security of tenure is
deemed illegitimate on the basis that they were issued on grabbed land, how is
a new system of security of tenure to be built to give people the incentive to
invest in land and ‘commercial’ farming again? Once today’s communal land has
become a fully tradable commodity, how do poor rural farmers gain access to
land and avoid being further marginalized by the few who can afford to buy it
and acquire title deeds? Despite the
increasingly apparent problems plaguing it, is Africa’s
communal land tenure system really outdated and to be discarded, or does it
still serve useful functions that no other system can fully do? Could the
traditional communal system and a new title-based system co-exist in the same
area?
There are many answers proffered, but none that are
universally accepted or that address all the related historical, legal,
cultural, political and economic issues easily.
It is easy to see the mess that this presents. For example, suppose
you were a white farmer with a title deed in 2000 that lost his farm to the most recent ‘land grab.‘ What about if you had not
inherited the land from an early 1900s British settler ancestor, but had bought
it from the son or grandson of such a settler? Is ‘Mugabe’s land grab’ not
clearly, obviously illegal and unfair to such a title holder? But what about if
you were an African farm laborer on that same land, whose grandfather had been
the early 1900s land holder from whom the land had been grabbed by the colonial
government. It was then given, with title deed, to the white settler whose progeny
then eventually sold the land and its title deed to today’s white farmer of my
example.
Whose ‘ownership’ and whose ‘justice’ should prevail, and
why?
If the colonial land tenure system was widely seen as unjust
and illegitimate, clearly it is no longer possible or desirable to go back to
the pre-colonial communal system, at least not on what had become ‘commercial’
farms. The people and times have largely changed. The need for that land to
remain ‘commercially’ useful is recognized by all. Having demolished the system
that existed for decades for its political/historical incorrectness, how do you
build a new one that is politically correct while also giving land holders the
room and incentive to invest and be productive? It is very far from straightforward.
To get back to today’s Ethiopian ‘land grabs,’ what is or
isn’t happening in that country is from a distance very murky. It is almost
impossible to accurately gauge the objectivity of the reports of those who slam
or support the new land deals.
However, part of the lesson of Zimbabwe
is that particularly in mostly agrarian societies, perceived ‘land grabs’ can
set up a multiplicity of new problems decades after it appears they have been
accepted as irreversible. Regardless of what impressive modern edifice is built
upon land that there is majority consensus was unfairly ‘grabbed,’ especially
in favor of ‘outsiders,’ there for a very long time will remain the explosive potential
for conflict. All it needs is some small spark to set it off.
Leading Indian agro-investor in Ethiopia, rose
grower/exporter Karuturi Global, has been perhaps the most prominent
beneficiary of what many people say are the government’s ‘land grabs ’ from its
citizens.
Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, the company’s founder, dismisses
the attacks. In a recent interview, he gave some of his perspectives on land
and farming in his host country.
”Land is an emotive and contentious issue. Of the 300
million hectares of land we have, only one-third is arable. Africa
is better in terms of productivity, costs, taxes, duty-free access to European markets because of their least developed
country status. A rose from India,
when it lands in Europe, will cost about 14 euro cents
and it will be about 30% less from East Africa,“ said
Karuturi.
Clearly he is a bold entrepreneur, and no doubt that alone
rubs some people the wrong way. As he repeatedly points out, his company is
doing nothing without the approval of the Ethiopian government. But if the
investment is seen by many Ethiopians as being because of a closeness to the
sitting government rather than as being of benefit to the country, Karuturi is
inevitably breeding long-term local resentment in addition to roses.
As seen in Zimbabwe,
the ‘security of tenure’ and economic success that is built on the mistreatment of the local people may not be as secure as it
seems, even if the comeuppance is many decades later. If the political
situation suddenly changes, land tenure based on a perceived crony relationship
with the previous ruling political dispensation will be one of the first
things to be reformed.
Karuturi has also been quoted as scoffing that many of the
attacks on his and others’ land investments in Ethiopia and other African
countries is by Western critics who have yet to come to terms with how China
and India are displacing the West in many areas of engagement in Africa. While
this cannot be dismissed entirely, Karuturi is ironically also making some of
the same colonial - style moves that created long-standing resentment not only
in Africa, but in his country India
as well.
For example, it is quite likely that even for Ethiopians who
basically support the investment thrust of their government and welcome the
contributions of companies like Karuturi, the company’s widely publicized plan
to bring in thousands of Indian tenant farmers to its Ethiopian holdings will
be seen as a step too far. It suggests thinking and attitudes that are
amazingly reminiscent of the origins of the complicated mix of land-related
problems that plague Zimbabwe
today.
In the land grabs from Africans of a century ago, the
colonial governments obviously did not need to worry about the ‘public opinion’
of the dispossessed, disgruntled Africans. Today, no matter how autocratic a
government may be, it is neither advisable nor entirely possible to ignore
public sentiment. From a distance, in this regard the Ethiopian government
seems to have contributed to the negative perception of the current land
deals/grabs by poorly explaining them, and riding roughshod over critics. For
both investors and host governments, these too are issues that may have an
expensive belated political cost.
Zimbabwe is just one and perhaps the best known, most
notorious example of the explosive potential of long unresolved land issues
that Ethiopia could learn some lessons from on what to do and what not to do as
it seeks to develop and ‘modernize’ its agriculture. It will be fascinating to
watch how Ethiopia
tackles the clash of land-related issues that have defied easy solution in many
other African countries.
