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For a long time, would-be investors in Western province have been complaining about
the tenure system which they accuse of failing them to acquire land for
development....For those who manage to borrow land from fellow villagers, [the]
possibility of the owners...grabbing [it] back is more than 80 per cent. [A]
teacher...complained that the land...he had borrowed was later grabbed from him by
the owner....[A]fter a successful season which saw his family harvest quite a number
of bags of rice, the owner suddenly withdrew the land on the pretext that his family
was under land pressure....[D]espite these rigidities,...certain influential individuals
have broken the barrier and [claimed]...massive pieces of land.
It is certainly a matter of concern that borrowers are feeling insecure in their rights, but
lenders as owners are within their rights to repossess the land. The more important issue is the lack
of long-term transfer rights and contracts that provide security for both lender and borrower. It also
is difficult to assess from the anecdotal evidence whether the landholders being evicted are local
inhabitants or recent arrivals. All that is evident is that certain landholders are experiencing tenure
insecurity under customary tenure arrangements. In other instances, land grabbing by outsiders,
sometimes armed with official titles, is precipitating tenure insecurity in rural areas as illustrated in
the following article (Daily Mail, 14 January 1994):
In Zambia...land is being dished out to foreigners and investors without considering
the long-term consequences such action will have on the people ....Zambia has entered
a phase where land grabbing is escalating at an alarming rate....In Chief Kabamba's
area, for instance, Serenje district council has already given out 4,800 hectares of land
to a South African investor on grounds...this will bring development to the district....
North-Western province which is probably the richest in terms of forest resources is
said to be attracting many foreign investors....Traditionally,...people managed
agriculture based on land rotation....However, things have been changing over the last
few years. People from outside the province are coming to stake claims to land in the
name of development and local people cannot fight Lusaka businessmen or South
African investors.
There is no doubt that tenure insecurity is occurring in some cases where title is absent in
Zambia. But that question in itself is not sufficient to encourage widespread titling. The spotty and
anecdotal information available simply isn't detailed enough to determine whether the insecurity is
arising in the more densely populated areas, in instances of high or rapid commercial development,
on the expanding frontier of the agricultural zone, or whether title itself may in some cases be
generating the tenure insecurity through improper adjudication of rights.
Three sources of tenure insecurity thus seem to be present or at risk of occurring. First, the
leasehold system itself is the cause of large land allocations to outsiders that, when driven by pressures
to "privatize," can result in tenure insecurity for those lacking title or the means to acquire it. Second,
there is the misadministration of the customary sector by some chiefs on Reserve and Trust Lands,
characterized by chiefs allocating or selling large tracts of land to outsiders, chiefs reallocating or
selling land of existing claimants to a higher bidder or someone with influence, or chiefs preventing
one from bequeathing land to heirs or otherwise preventing the transfer of land to another. Third,
there is the potential risk of conflict between registered and customary systems. Sporadic titling
systems relying on voluntary registration are susceptible to generating landlessness or displacement
of rights by existing holders, particularly in situations of rising land value, acute land scarcity, and