COLUMN: MIND YOUR LANGUAGE. There is a difference between land disputes and land conflicts
DAR ES SALAAM: I AM writing this post when some people in some parts of the world are celebrating Idd el Fitr. The moon was not sighted in our part of the world, so we have to wait a day longer before ending the holy Month of Ramadhan.
I have on my laps, the Good Citizen, dated 19 March, and this news item on its page 4, titled: “Varsity Expertise ‘can help tame land rows’” looks appetising.
The story is about a visit made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Culture and Sports to Ardhi University, as a follow up on the implementation of the Higher Education for Economic Transformation Project (HEET).
According to the writer of the story, members of the Committee: “posed the construction progress debate to a broader national concern: land disputes, a national challenge that has increasingly surfaced during the nationwide tour of Prime Minister Mwigulu Nchemba”.
The writer points out that: “Across several regions, wananchi, have used the Premier’s visit to air grievances over LAND OWNERSHIP DISPUTES, many involving farmers, pastoralists and urban expansion”.
Let us be clear about two things. One, land disputes are not just about ownership. They could be about boundaries (most common form of disputes), land use, rights of way, externalities, pollution, noise, inheritance, value of land, and so on.
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The writer should have left out the word “ownership” and just retain “land disputes”. Two, when you talk about misunderstanding between farmers and pastoralists, you are not possibly talking about disputes, but about conflicts. Land disputes are of a limited scope between say individuals, or between land owners and public authorities.
These can usually be solved using existing legal and institutional set-ups. Land conflicts, on the other hand, have a wider scale, pitting one community against another, or a community against the state, in such a way that a solution is beyond the legal provisions, and may involve fundamental changes in the way society looks at and organises itself.
Fighting over land rights and land uses between communities such as farmers and pastoralists, falls in the basket of land conflicts. Sorry for diving that much into my “Land Governance” course, and back to the story, where the writer continues to inform us: “Recognising the gravity of the situation, the Prime minister, during one of his RALLY (no: “rallies”), directed regional commissioners to investigate reported disputes and tasked key government offices including the Attorney General and ministries responsible for lands and ‘local government’, to propose lasting solutions”.
The writer may not be aware that following the last cabinet set-up, duties for Regional Administration and Local Government (TAMISEMI), were moved from the President’s Office, to the Prime Minister’s Office. This means that the substantive minister for local government is the Prime Minister himself, much as he has a Minister of State to assist him.
Matters of land disputes and land conflicts that can be solved by the minister for local government, are under his dossier. We now move from Dar es Salaam to Tanga, where, another Parliamentary Committee, this time on Water and Environment, is reported by a correspondent of the Custodian (19 March, page 4), to have expressed high satisfaction with the implementation of the ‘53.3 billion Green Bond’ water project.
The news item is titled: “Committee congratulates Tanga Uwasa water projects progress”. What does “53.3 billion Green Bond” mean? Is the ‘53.3 billion’ supposed to be understood as being Tanzania shillings, or could it be something else? Remember, the US dollar is sometimes referred to as the greenbuck. Could we be talking about dollars here?
The writer should not leave us guessing. According to the writer: “the ambitious project which leverages innovative financing through Green Bonds is on track for official completion by October 2024!!!”. October 2024 is more than two years ago. The project cannot be completed retrospectively. Did the writer have in mind October 2026? Or 2027? Or 2030? We are left perplexed.
Idd Mubarak! lusuggakironde@gmail.com
