This complexity is the product partly of the adaptive responses of African societies to the novel situation of rapid urbanization, and partly of various devices of colonial administration to exclude the Africans from having a permanent stake in living in the city. Tenure systems such as the livret du louer , the permis d'habitation , cerificates of occupancy , head lease , and quitrent are some of the contrivances to deny freehold rights to Africans living in the city. By the time of independence, freehold tenure had come to be seen as a European device to expropriate African land. Nationalization, however, was largely a legislative measure and not one to expedite the issuance of appropriate titles even for those leaseholds. This development, to the extent that it tried to substitute administrative processes for allocation through the free market system to which the society was already responding, must, to that extent, be considered retrograde.
Chapter V examines the various urban land management systems.
The chapter reviews the traditional land management system in pre-colonial urban centers using the capital of the Basuto Kingdom as an example. The role of ward chiefs is strongly underscored as well as the clarity of traditional land policy objectives. The latter sought simply to ensure, to all families, access to land for residential, cultivation and grazing purposes. This clarity of policy goals contrasts sharply with the ambiguity and incoherence surrounding present land policies in most countries. The result is the difficulty in effective managing urban land processes in most Sub-Saharan African countries.