by Diana Mavunduse
The failure to include civil society in land policy formulation has resulted in policies that do not respond to fundamental issues in land reform. Which, for example has caused informal settlements and land invasions in Zimbabwe.
“There is need to take the land policy debates to the people, participation of the affected is key to effective and sustainable policy formulation or changes,” said Ethan Mhlanga, programme officer for Oxfam UK based in Zimbabwe, addressing participants at the W.K Kellogg Policy Dialogue Forum held in Harare, recently.
Liberation struggles within the region have been motivated by the need for equitable distribution of land. Policy debates on land reform have gained momentum in SADC region but participation in the policy debates by various stakeholders is still limited.
“Building regional alliances will create opportunities for the region to influence policies in the globalised world, the international influence has not worked in favour of the poor as we have seen with the economic adjustment programmes,” said Sam Moyo from Southern African Regional Institute For Policy Studies (SARIPS) in Zimbabwe.
Dialogue participants agreed that grassroots organisations are generally small-scale and focused on the immediate requirements, which are project-centered. They do not engage government at local level on policy issues and, as a result, people who should be benefiting from the land reform are left out.
Lack of knowledge on land laws and technical capacity to enable grassroots organisations to engage in informed policy debates hampers their full participation in policy formulation.
“In most southern African countries the state views itself as the sole policy maker, hence policy formulation tends to be exclusive,” said Mhlanga.
“The challenge is for civil society organisations to build their capacity in policy analysis so that they will be able to monitor the planning and policy formulation processes and demand the state to be more accountable.”
The marginalisation of women in southern Africa in land allocation, particularly in communal and resettlement areas, is also a major concern.
“Organisations working with women in the region face multiple challenges in policy implementation. These hinge around cultural barriers that exclude them from participating in decision making,” said Rumbidzai Nhundu from the Women and Land Lobby Group in Zimbabwe.
In southern Africa, women are the producers of food and other agricultural produce, few women have direct control of land which they cultivate and have little decision-making authority over the agricultural process or the benefits of their labour. This results in them having secondary rather than primary rights.
“To have a proper land policy, the starting point should be in the way gender is conceptualised and in the way the land reform programme implementation is handled. This will see the land policy articulating objectives which seek to address obstacles in advancing women’s land rights,” Nhundu said.
During the workshop, public policy was described as a comprehensive and integrated statement of vision, goals, intentions, preferences and courses of action to be followed by a public agency with a view to meet and satisfy needs of targeted beneficiaries.
Part of the problem of creative land policy in southern Africa is said to be due to failure to do proper diagnosis of the environmental context of which the policy issues and solution are based.
Professor Sipho Shabalala, a senior advisor for the provincial government of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa, urged land policy makers in southern Africa to do thorough research on the current land situation by involving all the stakeholders before implementing the policy.
“Policy making requires a broader participation of affected stakeholders and a wider spectrum of information on which policy making is based, it should be accessed from a larger number of diverse sources,” he said.
Lack of through policy analysis has also been identified as a contributor to ineffective and non-creative policy making and implementation management in southern Africa.
Shabalala gave the Tribal Grazing Land Policy of Botswana as an example, where the goal was modernisation of tribal land utilisation.
The policy was based on the assumption that there was plenty of empty land, but then it turned out that this was not the case. The required assumption of surfacing and testing was not done during the policy proposal formulation step.
“On several occasions, pertinent and serious questions are raised about certain policy objectives whilethe policy is well half way in its implementation, it is often discovered that the definition of a problem or issue to which the policy is about has never been studied and sufficiently analysed,” said Shabalala.
The forum realised that rural community’s play a critical role in sustainable development debates. As such, action to promote participation of rural populations in southern Africa’s land reforms must go beyond national and provincial levels.
Participants at the Forum realised the need for strengthening national and regional alliances on land through sharing of information and experiences. (SARDC)
