What Does It Mean To Be ‘Tenureless’?

In this short pilot I have decided to highlight an unclassified population mass. Here is how the key takeaways have been structured: 

• Definition and Introduction of Tenure
• The Form and Rewards of Access to Land Rights
• Deriving the Definition of the Tenureless
• The Importance of Studying the Tenureless
• The Fate of the Tenureless and How It Impacts the Continent

Introduction

We all have an unwavering desire to have a place to call home – a place to return to – a hill to die on when we have completed our Earthly toil. The feeling of wanting to belong somewhere comes naturally to all people. Tenure is the relationship between a person and that where. A piece of land is the epitome of this relationship, solid ground to prove one’s standing. What fuels the need to own land are the associated benefits of uninterrupted enjoyment of the rights to use, to possess, to inhabit and to dispose as we see fit. These rights inherently depend on the type of relationship one has with the subject land but, ultimately, true fulfilment comes from the security of such tenure.

Now, enter the bifold nature of tenure which presents freehold and leasehold tenure. The former suggests that one has exclusively rights to land, wholly owning and having dominance over such. The latter becomes a form of possession which grants a portion of rights usually under lease where a fair value of rentals are paid on the asset over a period of time. It is anyone’s guess that absolute sanctuary in tenure is realised in freehold form.

In more familiar situations, real rights in land are seen in those who exclusively and completely own urban residential and commercial land parcels through purchase with such a verifiable record existing in public office. Under such conditions one seemingly eternally has access to economic opportunities including leasing out the land or building asset for monetary gain, to use to partake in economic activity, and financial advance from borrowing against their ownership rights. The economist De Soto then asks, “Is land the economy, or the economy is land?”

In similar comfort are those domiciled in rural areas upon our Afrikan customary family land parcelled out with the blessing of traditional leaders. These people make up 59% of the continent’s population as per World Bank data. Upon this land, one may farm crop, rear livestock, build shelter and make a living without looking over their shoulder. Inheritance and parcelling by presiding Chiefs is the usual and legal way by which it is acquired.

As the need for peace drives the need for war, surely the need to own land subsequently gives birth to those without. Those among us without access to it, those for which absolute enjoyment of rights in land is far from reach, those to whom security of tenure is alien – the tenureless.

A surgical examination of our society will reveal that this set contains a greater number of people than one would imagine at first thought. It includes those whose rights can be snatched from them at any time because of artificial and natural defects in the system, those failed by such a system, and those fighting endlessly to be included such a system. Under this umbrella are vulnerable population subsets such as unrepresented widows, neglected orphans with no one to root for them, the homeless urchins, and some marginalised women. The tenureless also include previously sheltered individuals who have been permanently displaced from their homes by tragic disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones and fires.

From a socio-economic viewpoint, the tenureless predominantly includes those in urban areas who have sought out informal and, in this case, illegal places of doing business in order to make a living. The lack of permanence in registered rights on space for such derivation of economic gain exposes such groups to the risk of losing their livelihoods. Their businesses do not have a perpetual geographic location they can be tied to rendering business assets and property rights impossible to protect. Included in this basket are street corner vendors, tuckshop operators, vegetable stalls, trinket sellers at traffic lights and related hawkers to whom formal employment is unattainable and those that have been driven in hoards from their poor rural homes to chase the glittery metropolitan dream. Due to this migration en masse, the urban growth rate of Afrika averages 4% annually topping the world as the fastest urbanising region projected by the World Bank to be over 50% by 2030. More people, less habitable space.

The Importance of the Tenureless

Understanding the plight of the tenureless, their associated critical indicatory qualitative and quantitative statistics enables public office to better handle the socio-economic toll of natural disasters and pandemics alike as this population cluster is the most adversely impacted on all accounts. From a social standpoint, it is imperative that the tenureless are studied in order to advance the protection of human rights, that is, the right to shelter. This will more than likely prevent ulcerous poverty by decreasing the probability of more people being born under insecure conditions. Currently, the World Data Lab estimates 67 Million children under 14 years are exposed to poverty in the continent.

Most countries in Afrika are low income economies which are primarily driven by informal trade largely occurring in urban centres. This unregulated trade makes up 34% weighted average share of the global economy, and contributing up to 60% of GDP in countries like Nigeria. A worthy digression is that this mass comprises of unemployed youth – up to 25% in educated Northern Afrika – who are a staggering three quarters of Afrika’s population and are even expected to double by 2055 as UN figures predict. These youth are the future of Afrika. Therefore, it is critical to study the economic tenure standing of these frontline labourers as their trade is the oil on which our states run. Without access to tenure, the continent will not escape the low income trap and generations will remain in perpetual abject poverty which at the moment affects 1 in 3 persons or 490 Million Afrikans as World Data Lab presents.

The Fate of the Tenureless

Both traditional and modern tenure systems need to be buttressed to empower disadvantaged groups with the goal of protecting and assisting in acquiring secure rights in land. This has been a lingering African Union (AU) agenda which has seen many moons without much success. The same applies for small scale business systems in urban centres which need to be bolstered to cushion security of tenure in places of business. This effort could be steered by cultivating citizen-first governance cultures with participatory approaches led by independent local and regional organisations such as the Network for Excellence on Land Governance in Africa (NELGA).

Leveraging the increasingly available technology to develop and maintain fit-for-purpose data repositories on land information, ownership and use will leapfrog access to tenure data by supporting data-influenced approaches in land rights administration. Access to information is central in attaining favourable land governance and to secure land rights for vulnerable people. A practical example is The Land Portal Foundation which helps partners to create and disseminate land governance data through interoperable open data technologies. Check it out here – landportal.org

Another crucial recommendation is the partnering of public departments involved in land policy management and academic institutions to update curricula arming graduates with necessary arsenal to tackle Afrika’s dimensions and realities in land issues. Notable progress is with the partnership between Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC). When the African Land Policy Centre (ALPC) created the Guidelines for the Development of Curricula on Land Governance in Africa, it had found out that current curricula are too technical, lacking social, cultural, political and economic weight in land governance. The assessment also noted that current research was not responsive to Afrika’s needs partly due to limited analytical capacity and inadequate data among other factors.

Corruption in land ownership transactions is a major fuel of landlessness and unequal access to this vital resource. It is a cancer that the tenureless are forced to live with. Every second citizen in Afrika has been affected by land corruption in recent years, according to Transparency International. Efforts have been made in Zimbabwe to investigate land barons and to cleanse local authority systems. Citizen education on how to defend their land rights, increasing independent oversight, simplifying laws, and opening up access to opaque systems are some of the working solutions here. However, in unashamed governments, the rot extends to the land and anti-corruption commissions which have been mandated to resolve land disputes for the poorest. Pure political will is the only panacea.

So What Now

If the brackish rusty land governance machine keeps churning and the tenureless in urban areas are not protected, the economy will arduously grind to a halt trapping the continent in an infinite decaying loop of poverty. If the same group in rural areas are not protected, our very social fabric will tear into shreds.

Understand that land is power – power for investment, for growth, liberation and power for prosperity!