Improving tenure security in a context of inadequate land policies and laws

introduction

• A framework to strengthen Land Rights Enhance Productivity and Secure Livelihoods’ argue that there are mainly four critical issues in land policy development;

• 1. State Sovereignty over land • 2. Confronting unequal distribution of land

resources • 3. Confronting the duality of property systems • 4. Improving land tenure security

Katuba Women’s Association

• The organization has made a paradigm shift evolving from advocacy to alliance

• building for sustainable development using the resilient diamond which can be illustrated as follows:

• 1. Harnessing grassroots women’s potential to organize and lead

• 2. Promoting locally led initiatives and resilient development

• 3. Build networks and coalitions • 4. Influence change of policy and processes.

Zambian situation

• Land laws are archaic and need to be reviewed so that they are in line with challenges of today

• 2. Some legitimate land tenure rights are not recognised by law should be recognised and protected by law

• 3. Law and systems should engender land rights • 4. Land audits if performed should be engendered and published so that land administrators

are able to provide a yardstick on which they can argue how they have managed land allocation

• 5. Culture must be dynamic to incorporate solutions to the new challenges when administering land

• 6. There is need to ensure that laws and policies are implemented. The gap between theory and praxis is very wide. Laws and policies should be effectively implemented. It is imperative to note however, that Zambia has no land policy, only a draft which has existed since 2003.

• 7. Access to justice should be increased and readily available. Alternative dispute resolution mechanisms should be encouraged in a country where the legal system is clogged with legal battles.

• Traditional land administrators have a weak position in as far as ensuring security of tenure for majority of their subjects. Their power to legally administer land is inadequate. For this reason, traditional institutions should be given adequate powers to administer land in a transparent and accountable manner, making sure that the minimum standards or guidelines are adhered to. These guidelines should in include implementing equitable, engendered, and sustainable women’s land rights.

• 9. Zambia should overcome the rhetoric reviews in laws and policies; the back and forth tours of reviewing laws and policies and never getting at the end of the journey where everything and nothing is done. Our constitution review started over fifteen years ago, yet we have seen that some countries with bigger populations than Zambia have reviewed their constitutions within five years.

• 10. The economic, social and political status of women in Zambia should be upgraded. Women in this country to tag a consciousness that does not transcend achievement of real power. It should be noted that women’s land rights is a political struggle and must be noted as such. Women must wrestle to obtain this political power if they are to be liberated. Unfortunately, socialisation does not provide a solution for this.

rationale

• Pilot STDM in order to ensure security of tenure in Mungule Chiefdom

• 2 Make recommendations to government on how grassroots women and the poor can have security of tenure.

• 3 Improve inclusive planning by identifying social services required for sustainable development

methodology

• Researchers to administer a questionnaire to collect data for profiling of the Chiefdom and villages and mapping boundaries using a GPS gadgets for the Chiefdom and the villages

• 2. Researchers or Enumerators who numbered the structures, administered the questionnaires mapping out land parcels of homesteads and collecting engendered information on the status quo of village

• 3. Researchers who numbered the different land parcels • 4. Researchers who entered data into the computer using the

STDM software

tools

• It is important to note that several strategies and tools have fashioned and informed this research. STDM is the bigger component. Other tools include Local to Local Dialogues with various stakeholders, local and international exchange visits, focus group discussions and questionn

Gist of paper

• Secondly this paper will discuss the tool itself and how it has changed the seven villages as this is the gist of this paper – to inform land policy. It took quite a bit of time for STDM to be internalised by the 23 participants that were trained.

Profiling team explaining STDM

niche

• THE NICHE • Researchers have found a niche that no one can take

away from them. Grassroots women and men involved in this research in Mungule Chiefdom have acquired skills and are shaping their own destiny. They have become masters of their own plans to shape their own world on how they want to live as a people. People often think that they are helpless and cannot do anything about their situation. Who would have known that a grassroots woman would use a computer, or GPS gadget to map out land using the least expensive method to survey land.

• What has been interesting is that this method of mapping has been accepted by the community and traditional leaders. No wonder the many call backs by the community to the researchers for people who were missed out during the data collection to be included in this survey. Information acquired from Petauke Land Alliance and Malawi Federation became a starting point in which organising for development is taking place- the bottom-up approach to development.

conclusion

• STDM in Mungule Chiefdom has opened up communities to acquiring information that can shape their development and destiny which the country and the Zambian government can take a leaf from. 15

• STDM has become a method for land auditing and land development which the Zambian government government can learn from. Mungule STDM pilot project can shape government policy on how land can be surveyed using the cheapest means. In the first few chapters of this paper, it was noted how expensive it is survey land and that traditional land is not documented. STDM does just that.

• The village registers will also be updated from time to time making it easy for the government to know how many people to cater for in terms of service provision. There is also this consultation niche of the bottom-up approach which development will not evade. Analysing this information also gives critical information that would shape gender dimensions of what kind of services the female and male folk need in terms of development.

continued• Hence the four critical issues in land policy development (according

to WE EFFECT will be dealt with, and these are; State sovereignty over land, confronting unequal distribution of land resources, confronting the duality of property systems, and improving land tenure security. Communities have accepted this land tool especially for land demarcation and boundary formations which would greatly reduce and tackle land disputes. During the research there have been no major disputes on who owns what land because information is sought and witnesses are consulted on the boundaries. This paper talked about the ‘infinity’ uses of such kind of informationespecially for government. It might as well work as a data base for people in a certain village. There is strong empirical evidence to suggest that this study can inform land policy in Zambia