Community Land and Land

Reforms: How is Community

Land best Safeguards
Odenda Lumumba
Kenya Land Alliance

Community Land & Land

Reforms
Review of Land Reforms between
1945 & 2015
There have two types of Land
Reforms to debate i.e.
- Traditional Land Reforms undertaken
before 1990s
- Market-based Land Reforms after
1990s or in the 21st Century

Traditional Land Reforms

Were driven by Motives of:
Establishment of landholding ceilings
Redistribution of private land
Distribution of public land
Restitution of land
Privatization of public land

Market-based Land Reforms

Aims to establish land markets to
minimize
direct
intervention
by
government or public authorities
It involves three components:
1. Recognition of property rights
2. Adoption of mechanisms regulating the
privatization of public land
3. Development of procedures to regulate
the transferability of property rights

Key Findings (1)

Local elites might not resist land reforms if
demanded by international power(s)
But why international powers would care about
land reforms
Viewpoint to serve their vested interests e.g.
after 2nd World War in 1945 U.S.A pushed &
disorganized land reforms in Latin America, Asia
& Africa to avoid the trend of socialism &
communism
Successful Land Reforms to place in Japan, South
Korea, Cuba, China under military rule that

Key findings (2)

Land reforms are always enacted as a
measure of citizens power against elite
Parliament enactment of land reforms
does not mean the elite are totally
defeated, but merely hibernates waiting
to resist implementation of land reforms
using de facto power even in democracies
Elites who have benefited from the statusquo blocks land reform through slow &
deliberate derailment of implementation

My argument (1)
Land reform is about changing the
historical feature of elite domination
of land in terms of primitive
accumulation of extensive amount of
land
Land reform is about a historical fact
that land is an economic resource
controlled by elite reforming it
implies a change of structure of
power within society

My argument (2)
Land reform is therefore a contestation
between the elite & the citizen
Land reforms are enacted (de jure) as a
means
of
sanctioning
them,
but
implementation is done (de facto)
There is a need of disentangling effects of
de jure enactment of land reforms and de
facto implementation because of use of
de facto political power on choice of
political policies

What is required of us in Land

Reform effort
To investigate mechanisms through which
elite are able to hold de facto power
despite limitation imposed by de jure land
reform enactment
To probe role of the Bureaucracy &
Judiciary in implementation of reforms

How is community Land best

Safeguarded
Best Safeguards against what?
-Large-scale Land Acquisition of community
land
-Degradation of community environment
-Grabbing
of
indigenous/minority/marginalized
communities territories that form their
community lands

Best Safeguards
Codification of Prof. Okoth-Ogendo inverse
pyramid of community land institution that
normally has the Family Unit at the apex,
Lineage/Clan
at
middle
and
Community
members at the broad top
Probe
the
normal
pyramid
proposed
management structure of community land in the
Draft Community Land, which includes: the
Community Land Board at the Apex top, the
Community Land Management Committee in the
middle and the General Assembly of Members at
the broad bottom

Conclusion
We must remember that community land
is investment space for Kenyas economic
growth & development
We must stop & roll-back disruption of a
system of community land tenure that
provides its collective users protection &
replace it with forced luring individual
landholdings that reward individuals as a
shift to market economy that is not
inclusive