Fractured governance and local frictions: the exclusionary nature of a clandestine land market in southern Zambia

ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which efforts to expand private land tenure, coupled with the continued centrality of customary land administration in Zambia, produce a fractured system of land governance in which localized markets for land emerge bur are forced to operate in a clandestine manner. Using ethnographic and archival data sources, I argue that despite the historical and contemporary relationship between land rights and economic 'development', the clandestine nature of land markets in rural Zambia tends to (re)produce many of the social ills that 'development' seeks to resolve. Using a case study of a clandestine market for land in a Tonga-speaking region of southern Zambia, this article shows how these markets undermine women's rights to land, while allowing for the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few. RESUME Cet article explore la maniere dont les efforts de developper le foncier prive, conjugues a la centralite persistante de l'administration fonciere coutumiere en Zambie, produisent un systeme fracture de gouvernance fonciere dont emergent des ,marches fonciers localises contraints de fonctionner dans la clandestinite. A partir de sources de donnees ethnographiques et d'archives, l'article soutient qu'en depit de la relation historique et contemporaine entre les droits fonciers et le > economique, la nature clandestine des marches fonciers dans les zones rurales de la Zambie a tendance a (re)produire beaucoup des maux sociaux que le > cherche a resoudre. En se basant sur l'etude de cas d'un marche foncier clandestin dans une region de langue tonga du Sud de la Zambie, l'article montre comment ces marches affaiblissent les droits des femmes a la terre, tout en permettant la concentration des richesses et du pouvoir dans les mains de quelques-uns. ********** In Nkandanzovu, a recently settled Tonga-speaking region in southern Zambia, a combination of social and environmental pressures contributes to a scarcity of arable land. Informants indicate that they feel pressure to extend their maize fields in order to compensate for a contraction of government fertilizer subsidies. Additionally, family sizes have grown and households have multiplied since the region was first settled, which places further stress on land availability. Finally, over the last two and a half decades of settlement, land has lost much of its fertility under continuous cultivation. Though Nkandanzovu is not a densely populated region, with approximately 172 households spread over a large geographic area, the land necessary to support the low-yield extensive farming practised by local residents is simply not available. As a result, fathers are finding it difficult to allocate land to their sons after they marry; headmen claim they no longer have land to give to needy community members; families are dividing as an increasing number of people leave the region in search of new land; and a growing number of people suggest that a lack of land contributes to their food insecurity. The days of free access to customary land in Nkandanzovu are drawing to a close. In place of free land access, a system of market-based land allocation has emerged. Yet, this market is not fluid and impersonal, but rather is socially 'jagged'. In this article I argue that local systems of land signification blend with the 'illegality' of land markets in Zambia's customary areas to produce a clandestine land market in which women and other marginalized social categories are barred from participation. Jen Mubita's experience with the emerging land market is emblematic of its jagged nature. Jen is a middle-aged woman who makes a living farming maize, growing garden vegetables, and selling buns in the local market of Nkandanzovo. Divorced by her husband in 2006, Jen, along with her six children, now struggles to produce enough maize to meet the household's food requirements on what she calls her 'shrinking' land. …