The social dynamics of competition over land

by Pauline E Peters, Harvard University

Presented to the members of the Society of Malawi, Blantyre, October 2006

The discussion of the pervasive competition over land is set against a twenty-year longitudinal study, that is, a study of the same 200+ families in an area of southern Zomba district. The research site covers an area of about 200 square miles. The first study in 1986-7 revealed smallholders engaged in a highly intensive form of hoe-based agriculture on permanently used land that was formerly part of the Bruce estate. The villages are within reach of the major urban centres of Blantyre-Limbe and Zomba, as well as numerous rural market centres where crops are bought and sold. The initial study in 1986-7 showed that virtually all farmers sold portions of food and non-food crops; that families who had the highest cash income from commercial agriculture also had the largest amounts of stored maize; and that the level of malnutrition as measured through anthropometry of children under six, was positively correlated with income, irrespective of the source (that is, there was no significant statistical difference in levels of food security and children's nutrition between those growing tobacco and those not). Between 1986 and 1997, two 12 month studies were conducted in 1990 and 1997, and shorter visits were made to the village sites between 1993-6.

The surveys and ethnography from 1990 and 1997 showed that while the market liberalization policies removed ADMARC's monopolistic control so that farmers were able to sell to the many traders that came flocking into the villages at harvest time, the liberalization did not lead to a similarly active market in the deficit season - that is the months from October to February when most people are short of food and of cash. Instead, it became more difficult to guarantee getting enough food in the deficit season than before and the buying price of maize was much more volatile than before.

Perhaps the most significant change came when smallholder farmers were able to grow burley tobacco and to sell it on the Auction Floors; this was observed at first hand since the research area was part of the pilot programme in 1990, and it has remained an active burley-growing area since then.

Household income per capita in the sample as a whole improved over ten years (1986-1997), but income distribution became increasingly skewed. In 1986, the income of the top 25% was 3 times that of the poorest 25%, this increased to 9 times in 1990 and to 11 times in 1997. This is a huge increase in income disparity. Poverty markers were insufficient food, especially in the deficit months of November-February when agricultural work demands peaked but food was at its most scarce and most expensive, and morbidity levels high; inadequate shelter, often a single-roomed, grass-thatched hut of unfired mud that was vulnerable to being literally washed away in heavy rains; very few clothes - often only one set, and perhaps one thin blanket for all to share; and very low levels of assets (from basics like hoes, mats, kitchen utensils to 'extras' like radios, tables, bikes). The comfortable families were limited to only about one in six. The other families were all pressed for part to all of the year.

Let me now turn to the issue of land. The research families follow matrilineal kinship that is, inheritance is through the maternal line, and have uxorilocal or matrilocal marriage, that is, most husbands move to live in their wives' villages. This has clear positive effects for women who are the inheritors of virtually all the land under customary tenure. This system of landholding is typical of the Shire Highlands, and large parts of rest of southern region and central region. Over the twenty years of study, I have found increasing competition over land. The outcomes include the following. First, there is net migration out of area - to Balaka, Machinga, and further afield. Second, there is an intensification of conflict within families that leads to splits in matrilineal groups. Research in the 1940s and 1950s talked about splits between cousins or mother's sisters' daughters, but now they take place between sisters' daughters as well. This means that families are being defined in narrower ways in relation to claims on land.

A third response is an increase in renting land. The first to be rented were dimba - gardens along streams or in wetlands. This can be related to their very high value in that they are used for growing and selling vegetables and, increasingly after 1990, for burley nurseries. I have documented an increasing incidence of renting, a rise in the level of rents, and this year, 2006, in some of the villages where there are not many dimba, people are telling me that they can't even find any to rent this year! There is also an increase in the renting of dry-land fields (minda).

A fourth response is an increase in sales of land. I had learned of a few sales in earlier years but there has been a definite acceleration over past 10 years in both the incidence of sales and in the level of prices. The first cases I came across were around the bigger market centres, where the land was often used for stores, rental accommodation, or for brick kilns, and so on. All these trading centres have been growing in the 20 years I have been studying that area. But during the past five plus years, land is being increasingly sold and bought for cultivation. The buyers frequently are buying not just for their own current use but in order to have land to give to their daughters. [Here I give cases].

Even as I discuss the increase in sales of land I must immediately problematize the use of the term 'sale'. From a simple notion of supply and demand, these land "sales" do resemble market transactions: as land becomes less available relative to the number of people needing it, those with the ability to raise cash in a desperately cash-short environment are able to make a bid for land. Yet, even as the selling and buying process goes forward, disputes are arising over the sales. [Here I give some cases of dispute over sales of land]. Not all sales are being challenged but there is enough evidence to suggest that while sales are increasing, so is the question being raised over who has the right to sell, a question that concerns the definition of 'family' or 'mbumba', 'ntundu' and so on.

I want to point out that while I am talking about an area in Zomba district, much the same situation is being documented by other colleagues, such as Professor Paul Kishindo in another district. I now turn briefly to similar processes of competition over land, and new types of transfer of land in the Chilwa Basin. Here I draw on research completed by my colleague, Dr Daimon Kambewa.

The area around Lake Chilwa used to be largely for grazing and for hunting small animals and birds. But over the past 20 years, more and more of the land has been converted into cultivated gardens. As more people have sought plots in the wetlands for cultivation, particularly for rice though also for maize and vegetables, several consequences can be seen. The first is conflict between claimants who are being distinguished as "strangers" or "latecomers" (obwera, literally, those who have come), and those claiming status as locals and first settlers/owners. A second response to the mounting demand for wetland gardens is that some of the chiefs are allocating the gardens in return for a payment in cash or more often, a bag of rice. The Chinyanja word used for these payments is chothokoza, literally "thanks". Though this might be translated as a gift, Dr Kambewa uses the word 'tribute' to indicate the different meaning of the transactions in that they resemble rents. The use of the term chothokoza signals a reinvention of an older tradition by the chiefs. In the past, those allocated plots by a village head or other chief would give a chicken and/or brew beer as a token of thanks. The transaction of dimba gardens in the wetlands is well established but is not practised by all chiefs, nor is it condoned by all chiefs or by all residents. The competition over the wetlands is also profoundly affected by the current programmes of 'handing over' the formal irrigation schemes to farmers, as well as by the discussions about the impending new land policy.

In brief conclusion, the research shows that the current land policy lags behind actuality on the ground. I'll make just three points: first, there is a mistaken assumption underlying the policy that 'customary' tenure operates in the abstract, ideal way imagined in law whereas in many areas there is increasing renting, sales and conflict. Second, village heads and higher level chiefs are not neutral 'trustees' but political actors and making them chairpersons of the new land allocation/management committees is a step backward. Third, the policy has a misperception that wetlands are like common property whereas in crowded areas like Chilwa, they are already privatized in several different ways.