| dc.description.abstract | An important theme in this workshop is the assumption that for agricultural development programmes to
succeed, they need to be founded on land policies which inter alla emphasize the reform of tenure rather
than of the agrarian structures and conditions under which production relations operate. The theory of
the case is that by changing tenure, that is, the manner and conditions under which land is held, it is
possible to generate efficient land use practices. This assumption is in turn founded on the argument that
ownership per se, especially if it is individualized and is secure against State intervention (or interference),
is the foundation of economic initiative.
This argument has been pushed by free enterprise economists and planners in Africa on two
complementary fronts. First, it has been offered as the explanation for the alleged inability of indigenous
tenure institutions to stimulate agricultural development; it being contended that because of their
"communal" nature these institutions are inherently incapable of accommodating "modern" production
methods, techniques, and practices. Second, it has been offered as the panacea for the morass of
underdevelopment which continues to plague rural Africa; the implication being, therefore, that salvation
lies along the path of the privatization of land ownership rather than of the public control of land use.
Although a number of countries in Africa have accepted this argument and in consequence have invested
staggering resources in tenure reform programmes, there is evidence that its wider political economic
consequences have not always been assessed or fully appreciated. In particular, the impact of tenure
reform on the economic, political, and social organization of rural society has never been fully weighed
against its alleged contribution to rapid growth in the agricultural sector. The concern of this paper will be
to investigate some of the perils that have befallen rural societies in Kenya as a result of this omissiom It
is argued that whatever contribution tenure reform may have made to growth in that country has been
completely offset by the emergence of economic disparities, redistribution of political power, and the
disequilibration of socio-cultural institutions that have occurred in rural society as a consequence of
reform.
The Kenya programme is particularly instructive, since it remains the most comprehensive in eastern
Africa. Its history, justification, and expectations were first set out in a report prepared in 1954 by R.J.M.
Swynnerton. A Plan to Intensify African Agriculture represents official government policy to this day.
The essence of the Swynnerton formula was the privatization of land through the displacement of
indigenous property systems, relations, and modes of production and their replacement with a new legal
order modelled after 1925 English land law. Although the programme is by no means complete, and at
the present rate may not be until the year 2050, it is estimated that over 70 per cent of all land outside the
arid parts of the Coast, Eastern, North-eastern, and Rift Valley provinces has now been privatized
(Okoth-Ogendo 1976). It is the impact of this new regime on the allocation of economic and political
resources to, and resolution of normative conflicts within rural society that this paper examines.
The data presented here are drawn from research conducted in four areas in Kisii and South Nyanza
districts of western Kenya between 1972 and 1974. Although these data are some eight years old, the
trends that emerge from them appear to have been exacerbated rather than to have abated during that
period. Indeed, the current Development Plan 11979-1983) clearly anticipated this when it called for the
establishment of a land reform commission during the plan period to investigate inter alia the
rationalization of existing land laws and tenure systems, speculative dealing in land, illegal subdivisions of
registered land, absentee landlordism, and land mining (Kenya 1979). Most of these, as we shall see
below, are in one way or another linked to the tenure reform programme. As nothing has been done
towards the establishment of such a body, there is even greater need to expose some of these issues and
to examine their consequences. | en |
