ON MY MIND : In whose interest will this National Land Policy be?

The Draft National Land Policy, 2016, has recently been released by the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development for ‘external consultations with stakeholders’ including civil society organisations and individuals in preparation for major stakeholders review meetings which are scheduled to take place later this month, involving, separately, government departments, civil society organisations and the commercial private sector.

What is at stake? Access to and control over land and related resources, especially water and forests, is vital for the livelihoods of the majority of Tanzanian women and men. There is a major conflict of interest between large-scale commercial companies and small-scale producers (including cultivators, livestock-keepers, hunters, gatherers, fisher people).

This conflict reflects two different approaches in agriculture/rural development, the promotion of sustainable small-scale agriculture using modern agroecology, which would ensure viable livelihoods and livable incomes for small family producers; or the large-scale petrochemical agro-industrial model espoused by giant transnational agribusinesses like Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Yara, Unilever, Nestles, and other partners in the country’s SAGCOT project, which will lead to transformation of the majority from independent producers to dependent tenants, sharecroppers and cheap farm labour.

The land policy reform reflects the enormous pressure coming from the financial sector, and banks in particular, and agribusiness, to provide more access to land for large-scale commercial investments with land security and government protection against local, community protests.

Are the objectives of the National Land Policy 2016 compatible? The revised policy aims to achieve “equitable allocation of and access to land by all citizens” with “economic development and .. social harmony” on the one hand, and “optimal utilisation of land resource and enhanced land revenue collection systems” on the other. Neoliberal economists and agriculture specialists would argue that optimal utilisation of land requires large-scale production using petrochemical farm inputs which is organised according to capitalist principles.

This connotes the removal of small-scale producers/villagers from their land with “full, fair and prompt compensation: and an “effective and efficient land dispute settlement system”. But what if small-scale producers do not want to give up their land and all of the resources on the land, namely water, trees and vegetation – the basis of their social reproduction as a community? Is the government prepared to support alternative approaches based on sustainable agriculture with organic farming principles, integrated cultivation and livestock-keeping and multicrop instead of monocrop plantation systems? Alternatives which rely on the creativity and indigenous knowledge of small-scale producers combined with modern agro-ecological technology?

Why is the document still in technical English? The draft Land Policy is written in technical English, and consists of 76 pages of text. In spite of previous suggestions from many different sections of our society, including Parliamentarians, a Kiswahili translation is not available. Even more alarming, a popular version has not been prepared yet or circulated – a popular version is necessary in order to allow ordinary citizens to review the policy for themselves and provide their views.

Who has participated in reviewing the National Land Policy, 1995 and designing the new NLP, 2016? According to the Policy, “wide-ranging public consultations” were held in eight Zonal Land Offices during one month in 2015, with workshops in two villages per zone, or a total of 16 villages for the whole of Tanzania, plus zonal workshops involving participants from all regions. To my mind, this was not sufficient, given the significance of land for the livelihoods of nearly all Tanzanians.

Moreover, ‘consultative’ processes which are conducted by government authorities or their consultants at local level are perceived with mistrust by local residents, in part due to the ‘know it all’ attitude of those involved in the process. Indeed, in areas of land conflict, villagers ask potential researchers two questions before agreeing to participate in their work: ‘who is funding you?’ and ‘where are you staying?’

To be continued