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The administration of State Land, applicable to parts of the sample from Southern province,
is the jurisdiction of the state. This topic is addressed in chapters 1 and 2.
B. Land acquisition
There are two main types of land acquisition by households in Reserve and Trust Lands in
Eastern and Southern provinces: inheritance/gifts from family members and allocation headmen with
confirmation of the chief. This is not to say that systems of land transfer are simple or easy to
understand. On the contrary, inheritance systems are quite varied in the study sites (see below). While
the chief is responsible for allocating land in Eastern province, the village headman performs that
function in Southern province with chiefs consulted only in the case of dispute. In addition, there exist
scattered temporary land transfers involving seasonal renting or lending.' Sales of traditional land are
very rare according to survey respondents, although several mentioned chiefs accepting money for
some land allocations, making the transactions appear like sales.
In State Land, there are different common modes of land acquisition. In areas where relatively
new resettlement programs have occurred, many farmers acquire land through state allocation. In more
established State Land areas, inheritance is more common and some purchasing is found. Although
markets have been discouraged by government policy (bare land could not be bought or sold),
individuals have circumvented this by exaggerating the value of land improvements which can be
legally sold.
Table 5.2 shows that over 90 percent of the respondents in Eastern province acquired land by
inheritance or other intrafamilial gifts. Inheritance and gift have been lumped together because some
respondents used the word inheritance to describe inter vivos transfers while others called them gifts.
Inheritance and other intrafamily transfers were also the most common among the Southern province
sample (65 percent) but not to the same extent as in Eastern province. This is due to the inclusion of
State Land farmers in Southern province where purchase and state allocation accounted for 18 percent
of land acquisitions. The other common form of land acquisition was through allocation by the chief
or village headman, accounting for about 17-18 percent of acquisitions in each province. Purchasing
between individuals is rare; only six farmers in Southern province (three each on Reserve and State
Land) and one in Eastern province reported purchases.' Only one household (in Eastern province)
reported ever selling land.
The following sections discuss the important acquisition modes in greater detail.
1. Inheritance
Among the patrilineal Ngoni, land passes from father to son. Traditionally, a father would
give all the land to his eldest son (from his first wife in case of multiple wives, Dorner and Bruce
1982). Increasingly, however, land is divided among sons, either as inheritance or gifts, as evidenced
' This is true more in Southern province than in Eastern province.
Legally, purchase refers to the transfer of unexhausted improvements, not the land per se, although in practice the
buyer and seller implicitly appear to be incorporating land value into the negotiated price as well.