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Land and natural resource management system assessment in Bie Province, Angola
A Report for CARE International Angola
Simon Norfolk
Posted with permission of Doug Steinberg, CARE Angola.Comments on this report can be sent to: Steinberg@care.ebonet.net
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Executive Summary
It is widely felt that the ending of war in Angola should bring rapid improvements for agriculture, reopening the crucial trade links between the rural and urban areas. Who gets to participate and benefit from this anticipated growth, however, will depend upon the adoption, or not, of a set of policies and support programmes that are based on an understanding of the vulnerability context of livelihoods in the Angolan countryside. The rural areas of Angola were the most heavily affected by the long periods of conflict. In those areas where populations were not forced to flee for safety and humanitarian assistance to the urban areas, a large number of households lost most of their assets and were cut off from markets, retreating to a rudimentary subsistence economy.
In a context where rural livelihoods are heavily dependent upon natural resource use, and particularly on access to suitable land for agriculture, an understanding of how tenure issues are being dealt with at both community level and in formal policy development processes, are important elements in the design of appropriate support programmes.
Essentially, Angola now stands at a crossroads in respect to the future scenario for the livelihoods of the vast majority of rural dwellers. There are important elements in the newly proposed land law that go some way towards removing the duality inherent in the land policies to date, whilst at the same time recognising and building upon the strengths and flexibility of the existing customary norms and values. However, there are many limitations to the law as proposed that would still prevent local communities from being able to break out of the paradigm in which they are considered to be second class occupiers and users of land, whose usufruct rights merit protection, but whose capabilities do not merit entrance into the modern formal system of property rights that would enable them to realise the value of the large stock of natural capital available to them: their land. There are, too, many circumstances under which even the protected occupation and use rights of local communities can be withdrawn or cancelled by the state and many instances where the law introduces ambiguities rather than clarity.
The form and nature of the integration of traditional authorities and the exercise of their powers as envisaged in the new land law will be crucial. There are important questions related to the identification of legitimate traditional institutions at community level and the nature in which customary norms and practises become encapsulated in formal law.
Given the conditions of extreme poverty and stress such as persist in Angola, the immediate social relationships within families and communities are likely to be crucial for survival both in peoples' daily lives and at times of particular hardship and stress. How these social relations work and how they may have changed in respect to land and natural resource access were the main focus of this study. Fieldwork in Bie province, consisting of a mix of open ended interviews with key informants (particularly traditional and formal authority figures), semistructured interviews with randomly selected families, and group discussions and participatory mapping exercises with different interest groups, was conducted by a team from CARE International and MINADER. A total of 111 interviews and 22 group discussions were held in six study sites in three different municipios.
Generally speaking, access to land has not been a problem and almost all families in the survey reported that they had recognised access and tenure over more land than they were presently able to cultivate; in most cases this was land, in addition to areas of fallow land, that had never been cleared or cultivated (i.e. virgin bush land). At all of the study sites respondents reported that all land within the community/village area was owned by one family clan or another, including all the land that was not in cultivation and had never been cleared. A small percentage of people reported that they did not have access to an onaka plot (only in Andulo Municipio) but ownership of ongongo and otchumbo plots was universal. The overwhelming majority of respondents in the survey reported that they had inherited their land plots from their families.
In all of the study sites the sobas play an important role in terms of land administration, testifying to transactions and acting as intermediaries on behalf of those who need access to land. In many ways their role appeared to be that of a local `registrar of lands' and, in conjunction with the sekulos, they were seen as the custodian of historical knowledge relating to land ownership and of contemporary transactions. In all of the areas, however, people were quick to draw a distinction between the performance of this function and actual ownership and transfer rights over the family lineage land holdings. These rights were vested very clearly in the context of the extended family and the sobas were not empowered to make decisions over land holdings except in consultation with and with the agreement of the recognised owners.
Ownership of land through the family lineage is therefore the norm and there would appear to be no areas that are considered as under the communal jurisdiction of broader community entities. However, this did not extend to control over the use and collection of other wild resources (except some trees). The collection and gathering of wild fruits, edible insects, firewood, water, honey, etc. could be practised freely on all land.
In none of study sites did we encounter situations in which returnees, ex combatants or newcomers to the area were encountering particular difficulties in respect to land access. The vast majority of people who had been displaced had taken up occupation of their hereditary lands without problems; many appeared to have family members who had stayed in the village and had acted as guardians of their interests. If this was not the case, the fact that the customary ownership of land was a deeply embedded reality and widely acknowledged probably served to prevent the usurpation of land in an owner's absence. In general, the customary norms and systems in respect to land appear to have been durable and flexible enough to withstand what has been a period of considerable disruption and upheaval.
Women's tenure rights are precarious at best in most areas. Most women did not have land tenure security in their own right but only through their husbands or their parents, or were considered to be holding land in trust for their children. There was in fact a notable difference between Andulo and the other two municipios. In Catabola and Camacupa many people were of the view that a widow would be able to remain in possession of family plots, except in cases where she decided to remarry. In Andulo there was a much more consistent view that widows, irrespective of the circumstances, would be expected to return to her own family and leave the land to the husband's family. An explanation advanced for this difference was that there had been much more integration in Catabola and Camacupa between the Ovimbundu and Ngangela language groups (as a result of past conquests) and that the traditional practises of the Ngangela language group, which favoured women's rights to land after the death of a husband, had impacted upon the Ovimbundu norm under which women would lose these rights.
One of the most important functions performed by the traditional authorities is that of conflict resolution and they were overwhelmingly the forums of first choice for people who needed help in this regard. In all of the study sites the credibility of the traditional authorities in respect to conflict resolution was extremely high, including amongst the younger generation. Although a few respondents mentioned the alternative of the church (mostly in Andulo) the vast majority indicated that the traditional authorities provided the quickest, most accessible and most enduring solutions. The majority of conflicts over land, however, were occurring within family groups and related to tussles over inheritance, rather than being conflicts between different families. As such, most of these conflicts would be resolved within the family grouping, without the formal involvement of the traditional authority. Many people referred to the fact that all parties would normally be happy with solutions provided by the traditional authorities; this was an indication that this route emphasised mediation and conciliation between the parties.
Respondents often referred to the reaching of solutions that ensured that people were able to co exist peacefully.
Nothing in the research findings would appear to indicate that at the moment access to land represents a limiting factor to the re establishment of agricultural production or food security. None of the families interviewed during the process indicated that they had encountered problems in getting access to land for cultivation, or for housing, and this was the case for settled residents, returnees and displaced people. It would appear that the traditional mechanisms for land allocation have been sufficiently durable and flexible to both maintain their legitimacy for the vast majority of people and to ensure that social conflicts over land, where they have occurred, are resolved.
However, there are areas related to land tenure security and the recognition of land rights that could be usefully integrated into ongoing CARE programmes in the region. Given that CARE are already working in partnership with the local MINADER structures, and are keen to deepen this arrangement, there is considerable potential for the design of a programme of assistance that supported community groups in the identification of the boundary areas within which they considered themselves to have user rights and to support the local state structures to provide the necessary services to formalise these.
This would be pioneering work if CARE were to design such a programme and would assist the state in the piloting of suitable methodologies for implementation of the law as well as immediately helping to secure the land rights of rural communities. Given that the study has indicated a highly developed sense of ownership by family lineages within a community area, great care would need to be taken to ensure that the process did not result in a transfer of de facto control from people themselves to broader institutions at community level. Individual titling of family lineage land holdings at the outset is likely to be expensive and beyond the capacity of existing institutions, both internal and external to communities. However, the initial recognition and registration of the community land area as a whole could be a valuable first step towards the further registration of family lineage land holdings within this area.
The area of most concern arising from the field study has been, not unsurprisingly, the findings in respect to women's rights to land which, with some exceptions in Catabola and Camacupa, are subject to customary laws that are highly prejudicial. However, even within this framework, there was evidence that shifts are occurring: several widows testified to the fact that there were support mechanisms available within communities that facilitated their access to land and that performed a kind of welfare function. As the shift from emergency to development programming continues it might be the case that access to land and other resources becomes a suitable focal point for CARE's continuing work with the Community Development Committees and that discussions that begin to address structural problems in this respect are encouraged. Many respondents in the field study, irrespective of their background, identified that fact that the position of female headed households and widows was weak in relation to land access and, as indicated, some communities appear to already be taking steps to mitigate this. CARE might therefore be able to identify ways in which these processes can be supported and formalised.
The central policy issue around which lobbying efforts ought to be directed in the future concern the need for the law to allow for, protect and register the recognised rights of community and family groups such that they become subject to transfer and transaction on terms and conditions suitable to the community or the family. This would certainly be preferable to the present formulation, which offers protection of broad community rights only to the extent that they will be compensated in alternative land, or unchallengeable one off payments, in the event of their expropriation.
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