Welcome to this two week online discussion focusing on the role that customary law and institutions play in community land rights management and governance within the different countries which make up the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The idea for Land Portal to convene this online discussion emerged through the research process to prepare our Country Portfolios for SADC countries (check https://landportal.org/countries). This work was done by Rick de Satgé, one of our moderators for this debate. It became clear that there are strongly diverging opinions about the role played by customary law and institutions in governing land, including its allocation and administration.

While in some cases customary institutions play an important role in avoiding conflict within and between communities, in others, they have enabled local elites and global capital to grab land and put the livelihoods of land-dependent families at risk. As the region currently sees a rapid growth in Covid infections, having land often becomes their only means of shelter and protection against the virus.

As you can see, this is a rather ambitious and important discussion. And you will have two very experienced moderators and researchers on this topic over the next two weeks: 

Rick is a researcher and communicator who works part time for the Land Portal as a Country Research & Engagement consultant, with a focus on Southern Africa. Rick was born in Zimbabwe and lives in Cape Town. He has over 40 years of experience in the land sector working in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Rick is a former Director of Research and Collaborative Learning with Phuhlisani NPC, a South African non profit company focused on land reform, to which he remains affiliated as a Senior Research Associate. He currently curates www.knowledgebase.land providing news and links on land issues in South African and the region.

Siyabulela has a strong transdisciplinary background, with expertise that goes from land governance, land administration and land reform to land data ecosystems. In the course of his 30 year career in the land sector, he has made an enormous contribution to a range of research, policy assessment and formulation assignments for various government entities. Since 2010 he has been involved in intricate land-legal ground breaking, supporting Water Services Authorities in the Eastern Cape Province navigate around land tenure hurdles on their infrastructure projects. Siyabulela has a PhD (Science) in Geography and is a research associate of Rhodes University.

We look forward to seeing your comments on this controversial, yet essential debate for Southern Africa and other regions in the world, to explore the granularities of customary institutions and ways in which they can work for (and not against) vulnerable groups.

We are experimenting with using Deepl for those countries where there are French and Portuguese speakers. If you want to write in either of these languages feel free. If you want to provide a translation at the same time go to Deepl  and copy in your text before choosing the language in which you wish to translate it. Otherwise the moderators can do this on your behalf. There may be some mistakes so we will rely on bilingual people to help correct these.

Many thanks for your kind words. We are looking forward to your contribution as you have important knowledge from both South  Africa and Botswana to share. We need critical and informed inputs to help build up a picture of the key trends and issues across the SADC region so we hope to see you active in these two discussion spaces.  

Land Portal is addressing an extremely important subject. I have produced a FREE 115,000-word manual addressing this subject for Zambia entitled: Guardians of Eden Manual. It can be downloaded by participants in epub from Kobo, plus a free app. It is relevant for much of Africa and for Indigenous Peoples generally.

Hi Gaynor.

Thank you for joining the conversation where you have a great deal to contribute.  it would be great if you could contribute insights from your research to the South African and Zimbabwean clusters. As we get further into the discussion we will be very intersted to pursue this statement made in your coauthored  2019 paper. 

The challenge is that the characteristics of women’s land challenges have, in almost all cases, been homogenised—as though all women share the same problems and opportunities across the developing world. This “homogenisation” of women or the habit of “homogenizing” women has led to misplacement of policy priorities concerned with improving tenure security for women in SSA. 

Chigbu, U. E., G. Paradza and W. Dachaga (2019). "Differentiations in Women’s Land Tenure Experiences: Implications for Women’s Land Access and Tenure Security in Sub-Saharan Africa." Land 8(2): 22.

While the discussion continued here, in South Africa former president Jacob Zuma was sentenced jail by the Constitutional Court.  This hopefully sends a signal that the unfettered corruption and capture nurtured during the past years and which has hollowed out the South African state and undermined the land and civil rights of many rural citizens will be brought back under control. At the same time news reports from Eswatini highlight mounting social unrest and dissatisfaction against the rule of King Mswati.

Angola and Mozambique

In this country cluster Simon Norfolk has contributed a rich piece which tracks the changing position of the state vis a vis customary structures and traditional authorities. In 1975 the Frelimo government nationalised all land and abolished all customary structures which fuelled conflict and civil war. By 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet bloc following the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall socialist policies were replaced with neo-liberal turn. However, this did not affect Mozambique’s stance on customary authorities which remained marginalised. It took ten years for the state to recognise the de facto role of customary systems in local land administration, but for a long time it resisted conferring meaningful powers to local structures. Simon describes Frelimo’s schizophrenic journey alternating between centralisation and decentralisation. He notes that despite all the twists and turns customary authorities have remained resilient and positioned “to continue to provide a local, accessible, affordable land administration service, solving conflicts and witnessing transactions”.

At the same time the complex situation which has developed over the past few years in Cabo Delgado shines a light on the consequences of large scale investments and accompanying local land alienation and forced relocations. It raises the question of how land gets allocated for investment and who are the winners and losers as a consequence of these deals? Howe are local people and customary structures involved in these processes and their situation properly addressed?

Eswatini, Lesotho and Botswana

On this page there has been some discussion about the pros and cons of the codification of customary law. The status of customary law and its place in a pluralistic legal system is an important topic for discussion. Writing elsewhere about this relationship Laurence Juma has noted:

African customary law scholars have been preoccupied with finding points of convergence between two divergent paradigms instead of seeking to develop African customary law as a distinct legal tradition that espouses rules and supports institutions of its own kind.

 This raises important questions as the discussion unfolds:

• How is customary law best developed as a distinct legal tradition?
• What examples are there of processes to attempt this and with what result?

Ian Manning has picked up on analysis by Liz Alden Wily focusing on Botswana where Tribal Land allocation has been centralised under the land Boards. This has undermined opportunities for villages to formalize their traditional rights to specific rangelands and enabled individuals to access these lands under common law leases.

Again important questions arise:

• Do institutions like Land Boards protect community land rights or create spaces where powerful people can appropriate resources?
• Are people better protected by customary systems and locally developed and sanctioned access and exclusion rules grounded in customary law and practice?

Namibia and South Africa

In the run up to this discussion more than 50 people submitted responses to our Google form seeking to profile the status of customary law and institutions in each of the SADC countries. The form is still open for submissions. One of the contributors was Wolfgang Werner, a leading Namibian researcher. We published a narrative based on his form submission yesterday which provides a comprehensive picture of the Namibian journey. This is a highly recommended read.

In his piece Wolfgang notes that:

Despite the central role the traditional leaders play in the administration of customary land rights, the current legislation does not provide for improved accountability and transparency downward. Communal Land Boards have been introduced to ensure that land allocations and cancellations are done according to the law, i.e. introducing accountability towards the state. But traditional leaders are not obliged by law to consult members of their community on major land alienation decisions such as for large-scale irrigation projects or oil exploration.

One thing that stands out from this very helpful overview of the situation in Namibia is the lack of restrictions on the powers of traditional leaders to alienate land for investment. Such investment may create profit and jobs for a few but dispossess and removes people whose livelihoods depend on the land. This is a powerful theme that is starting to emerge in different country clusters.

In South Africa the Land and Accountability Research Centre and other civil society groupings have argued that clause 24 of the Traditional and Khoisan Leadership Act (TKLA) has empowered traditional councils to enter into agreements with external entities such as mining companies and did not take into account the need to obtain consent from land rights holders.  The objections of land rights activists and judgments in court cases finding that community consent was required to approve development on their land were ignored by the legislators and Section 24 stands.

In this instance it seems that the policy direction of the state is specifically delegating authority to fast track mining deals on communal land to the benefit of elites.

The issue raised by Wolfgang illuminates one of the central questions underpinning our discussion:

• How can these institutions best be protected against corrupt and authoritarian leadership and capture by local elites and global business partners?

Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi

Matt Sommerville provides a caution against elevating customary law as a magic bullet to prevent elite capture. His post has relevance for the discussion as a whole and address the second core question framing this discussion

• How can customary law and governance institutions be strengthened to ensure social inclusion, secure community access to land and effective management of natural resources?

Matt observes that:

I don't think we should expect that customary law will involve less elite capture than the state system in any country / context. While I think that some "codification" / system strengthening and formalized structures can help reduce some of the ambiguities and discretionary decisions that lead to elite capture. Customary systems have the benefit of being able to evolve extremely fast and I believe there is an appetite for bridging the customary and statutory systems, both from a legal perspective and from a socio-cultural perspective as well. There are the areas where there may be tensions for example in the application of justice,  inheritance, fee structures, etc., but these are places where dialogue, written rules,  can help to navigate what is an acceptable norm and how it interacts with the statutory law.   

Also on these pages Ian Manning poses a related question:

The question is: how to re-capture the spiritual kinship power of old and infuse it with true democracy. I believe this is possible if customary land is held sacrosanct, if the chiefs, headmen and spiritual guardians are democratically assisted by Citizens’ Assemblies, and manifestos produced that affirm the new kinship.

So the discussion advances but is clearly in need of wider participation to realise its potential.

Days 4&5

Protests against King Mswati III in Eswatini have meant that people participating/monitoring in the discussion from there have been cut off.

Thanks for your email. 

However, we are currently experience network problem. 

Our government has cut it off due to the political unrest situation in the Kingdom of Eswatini area. 

In the background to the discussion people are continuing to respond to our pre discussion survey examining the roles and legal status of customary law and governance institutions in the various SADC countries. We have been collating and amalgamating these responses as resources for an informed discussion.

So far more than 50 people have completed this survey with the majority of the responses coming from:

• Mozambique
• Zambia
• Namibia
• South Africa
• Zimbabwe

We have also had responses from:

• Botswana
• Eswatini
• Madagascar
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Somalia
• India
• Nepal

In our Mozambique and Angola thread Lasse Krantz joined the discussion to examine the different powers and roles of chiefs or ‘regulos’ when it comes to administration and governance of land and how they articulate with government policy of formalising communities as collective landholding units.

In the Namibian and South African country threads different perspectives have emerged on whether traditional leaders are required to obtain informed consent of communities before divesting any community owned land for investment purposes. Charl Thom Bayer seems to differ with Wolfgang Werner concerning their obligations in this regard. Charl-Thom focuses on how the requirements to consult so easily ignored or set aside enabling elites to circumvent or break the law with minimal consequences. He asked whether the alienation of customary land should be regarded as equivalent to a process of expropriation which involves much stricter requirements with regards to valuation and compensation. In a context characterised by mounting pressure on natural resources and the search for lucrative land-based investment these are critical questions. Wolfgang Werner in his responses highlighted the uncertain relationship between customary and statutory law. He notes that although the legislation provides “traditional leaders with considerable powers in the administration of customary land rights, it does not provide for appropriate measures to enforce their decisions”. This suggests that there is a long way to go before systems of legal pluralism which recognise both statutory and customary law find ways to actually do this in practice. In the Namibian example there is a legal pyramid with statutory law at the apex.

On the DRC, Madagascar and Mauritius page to Teresa Connor has  posted a profile of Madagascar and the role of customary law and institutions in land allocation and governance. This complements the earlier contribution by Faly Ranaivoson. On the same page in response to the second question focusing on the main changes in how land is accessed and managed under customary tenure within SADC countries Ian Manning describes changing approaches to the management of forest resources in the DRC, providing a critique of the development framework known as integrated landscape management and casting light on a 2014 decree which enables a Forestry Law passed in 2002 to create a legal framework for community owned and managed forest areas in which communities are able to apply for customary ownership rights on forest areas not exceeding 50,000 ha.

Ian has also been very active on the pages focusing on Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Tanzania is the one country among the SADC member states where traditional leadership was banned in the 1960s and has never been reinstated. Ian provides a detailed post reporting on the findings of a 2015 Parliamentary Select Committee report in Tanzania which found that:

• Tanzania has no comprehensive mechanism to deal with land.
• There weas weak law enforcement, contradictory legal regimes and ineffective and incompetent leaders which were the main factors driving land conflicts.
• Only 1200 villagers out of more than 10,000 had been surveyed, and only have a handful of these had land use plans.

Ian highlights how in terms of the 1999 Land Act in Tanzania  certificates of customary right of occupancy were issued on 162 000 hectares of land to the pastoralist Maasai, Barbaig and Hadzabe. He highlights how subsequently the processes of “neoliberal enforced development involving land evictions” had highlighted the precarious nature of pastoralist  land rights in the face of 'fortress conservation' programmes in the Ngorongoro conservation area.

ALLAN CAIN
Development Workshop Angola

Statutory vs Customary Land Rights
Angola is a post-war country, with weak land tenure legislation and limited local government management capacity. More than 62 percent of the population live in urban and peri-urban areas and are increasing and putting pressure on land and services. Much of the population in these areas lives in informal settlements with insecure land tenure under the threat of forced evictions. Land conflict is an issue affecting urban, rural and peri-urban areas. Poor communities affected by the expansion of cities and towns are particularly vulnerable. Of these, women are the most vulnerable. Access to land is a matter of survival, for those who’s only income and accumulated assets are drawn from their land. More than half of families depend on informal sector activities to sustain themselves. Securing rights to land and housing assets are important to livelihoods of women headed households by permitting access to financing that they require to grow their enterprises as well as for incrementally upgrading their housing.

The post-socialist inheritance has left the State as the formal owner of all land. In practice however there is an active informal land market, large scale-land grabs by urban elites, and increasing conflicts affecting communities, small holders and families, particularly those headed by women. While the existing land law recognizes customary land use (residential, traditional agriculture and access to water) customary traditions are practiced in the various regions and cultures of the country, women’s rights of ownership and inheritance are weakly protected and are often unrecognised.

The formal statutory systems governing land rights and transactions in Angola are more favourable to women than in many African countries, but they are not yet fully realized and implemented in practice. As it emerged from almost 30 years of civil war, Angola enacted legislation that articulates principles of non-discrimination and gender equity. A progressive family law proactively provides for the rights of women in common law marriages and the inheritance rights of daughters. However, despite the mandates of the formal law, customary laws and traditional practices prevail. Those customary laws and practices mostly favour men, and men dominate Angola’s political, economic, and social spheres. the majority of Angolan women remain trapped with a lack of assets, illiteracy, limited economic opportunities, and the need to care for children and relatives. Land rights provide a critical asset to all women regardless of their circumstances but most particularly those with the fewest options. The Government of Angola’s current land and decentralization reforms provide an opportunity to design a strategy for protecting and improving women’s rights to land and livelihoods potential.

Despite constitutional provisions, all citizens are not equal in practice before the law, due to inadequate information, limited resources, and weak local administrative systems. Traditional authorities, such as local chiefs (sobas) are often the only administrators, mediators, and adjudicators of land rights that women will ever encounter. Less than one percent of the traditional chiefs are women. These individuals and local institutions of governance and dispute resolution generally apply customary law and local practice to guide decisions regarding land rights. Under traditional succession practices, Angolan women generally do not have land access equal to men‘s, as family land passes to sons and male relatives of the deceased husband. Women generally move to her husband’s house upon marriage and often live on and cultivate land owned by the husband‘s family or granted by the family or soba (traditional authority) to the husband. If the women are subsequently widowed, abandoned, or divorced, the former husband or relatives of the husband may force the women from the husband‘s land and home.

The inheritance practices upon which customary law in Angola are based are often discriminatory towards women. However, women are responsible for generating income, from informal trading or cultivation providing for household food security, and raising children and caring for the ill and elderly. The proportion of women heads of household continues to grow. 34.5% of households and 46% of per-urban slum households are headed by women . They also form the majority of those families living in extreme poverty. The problem of poverty within communities is also a result of inability to develop alternative ways to generate income. More than half of families depend on informal sector activities to sustain themselves. Assisting women to explore alternative and improved income generating opportunities that may contribute diversify their income sources, providing them with knowledge to access financial services, as well as facilitating their access to loans for investing in their small businesses, will contribute to improve their abilities to increase their possibilities to reach economical independence for themselves and for their families. Land tenure security is important for securing credit for poor families and women-headed households.

In the central plateau of Angola, the implementation of national policies respecting women’s rights remains incomplete (specifically for small holdings and peri-urban occupations). The practice of the existing customary system are still widely observed specifically, territories are administered under the leadership of traditional leaders, the “Sobas” (at Ombala level, a kind of a traditional district) and of the “Seculos” (at community level).

Past land reform programmes, together with the break-up of communal land holdings, have led to the transfer of exclusive land rights to males as heads of households. This ignores both the existence of female-headed households and the rights of married women to a joint share. However women, living in the customary law system, are often unaware of their statutory rights. Poor access to information also contributes to the lack of knowledge by citizens of their rights. By providing adequate and better information to women about their rights and access to land, as well as providing knowledge on land rights to the communities where they are included, will result in an increased awareness among women of their right to equally access and control land and housing.

Land Conflicts
Angola’s four decades of armed conflict were characterized by land expropriation, forced removals, resettlement, and the massive internal displacement of rural and urban populations. Prior to independence Portuguese colonial settlers had appropriated over 40% of registered land and denied African occupation of much of the remaining forested and reserve land. During the civil war after independence in 1975, warring parties used forced removals of populations from their lands as tools of war (Cain 2012 p.173). Since the end of the war in 2002, the reintegration of politically divided populations and ex-combatants—was linked to access to land that became a primary factor in social reconstruction. However post-war land legislation did not provide the opportunity for Angolan peasants and communities to register their properties or gain restitution for their lands that had been expropriated during the colonial settlers’ landgrab. The government distributed the equivalent of 50 percent of the land held by commercial farmers in colonial times to a small number of mainly urban-based absentee owners, who paid insignificant prices for secure tenure rights in order to eventually exploit these lands commercially. As happened in colonial times, the modern commercial sector was allocated an excess of underused land, which was set aside by the new owners for possible future use or speculation. Local peasant farmers, on the other hand, were treated by the Angolan state much like they had been treated under the colonial regime (Pacheco 2002). They were left with small, often scattered parcels of land divided between tiny irrigated garden plots and less fertile, seasonally used lavras (plowed plots) for staple crops. Post-war legislation made no provision for existing or previous possession or occupants’ rights (usucapiao) by which property rights may be acquired through continued use over time. Therefore the main driving force for the rapid return of rural IDPs to their areas of origin was their need to reclaim family lands and the fear of finding it staked out by an intruder or usurper often holding title deeds issued by a government official. Resettlement of IDPs, excombatants, and returning refugees produced innumerable local conflicts over land allocation, often resulting in clashing interests between the returnees and those who had stayed behind in their areas of origin. The role of traditional authority in land management had been eroded through the years of colonial rule and civil war. However, the return and resettlement of almost 3 million people to their rural areas of origin provided a renewed role for traditional leaders in dealing with local land conflicts and providing testimony regarding families’ historical land claims.
Disagreements over land became more frequent as the scramble for land between powerful commercial interests and peasants threatened evictions of families who had fled the conflict-ravaged countryside to make homes on land without sufficient legal title. In rural communities, fertile agricultural land with relatively easy access to urban markets was in high demand. These sites frequently became the focus of disputes between residents and returning IDPs as well as more powerful commercial interests.

A recent diagnostic study carried out in Huambo province in Angola’s Central Highlands revealed that 75% of the peasant small holders said that they do not see any benefit from the commercial farms near the communities. Only 1% of respondents mentioned any benefit from commercial exchanges between the community and the commercial farmers and no-one reported that the proximity of commercial farms brought the community any improvement in access to services like water and electricity. Approximately 10% of small-holder respondents said that because many farms were acquired through forced expropriation of community lands they felt threatened by the presence of commercial farmers in their neighborhoods and that with the passage of time they feared conflicts which could lead to the further expropriation of local community’s lands.

Land conflict is an issue affecting urban, rural and peri-urban areas. In urban areas the poor risked being uprooted from their homes because their sprawling musseques frequently occupied ideal locations for elite housing developments, offices, and roads. Poor communities affected by the expansion of cities and towns are particularly vulnerable. Of these, women, elderly and people living with disabilities are the most vulnerable. Access to land is a matter of survival, for those who’s only income and accumulated assets are drawn from their land.

Advocacy and Public Policy Reform
Angola is currently undertaking major governance reforms to empower municipalities with elected local councils. A key to municipalisation will entail decentralising the management of land. It will be necessary to build the capacity of local administrations and local communities to strengthen family land tenure and protect the rights women. If the poor majority are to be the primary beneficiaries of land tenure reform, the design of tools for managing land rights must take this into account. Poorer groups will have more effective access to such procedures where they receive clear information about how the system is meant to operate, and where the local government institutions responsible are located close by, working in local languages using tools of mapping and recording, including accepting oral testimonies as evidence to support claims. Effective and responsive judicial and land administration systems which are accessible to poor people and vulnerable groups are therefore crucial components of successful, pro-poor land policy reform. Development Workshop is working at the public policy level with the Government’s National Land Commission developing a land policy reform that aims to address contradictions between formal, informal and customary tenure, which have lead to conflicts and inefficiencies. Women status in traditional rules is one area of contradiction that needs to be addressed.

Women have a lower level of knowledge about their land rights compared to men with the exception of the 15-17 age group. The recent study in Huambo province (Development Workshop 2018) revealed that of the men interviewed aged 18-25, 20% said they were aware of the existence of the land law, and only 15% of women respondents claimed to have knowledge about the law. The percentage difference between men and women over the age of 36 was 20% (see Figure 1).

Current Angolan municipalisation reforms present a unique opportunity to affect local practice on how community and individual land-holder tenure is administered and protected. The Ministry for Territorial Administration and the Ministry of Planning and Housing is developing a set of land-management and mapping tools for the use by local municipal administrations. The tools employ the principal of “social domain tenure” (STDM) promoted by the UN’s Global Land Tools Network GLTN, Participatory Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) and rapid gender tenure assessments.

The protection of gender rights should be rolled out in the new municipal government reforms to be implemented across Angola. These reforms involve the election of municipal councils Autarquias. The raising of public awareness about the rights of women to equal access to assets such as land, housing and means of livelihoods will ensure that these issues are protected at the local government level.

Advocacy work is required by civil society organizations to combat gender inequality, to promote the status of women with a focus on cultural change particularly in communities where customary land traditions are still strong. Raising the awareness on the existing legal framework and rights of access to the land, housing and livelihoods, particularly for women, is a way to provide them with the tools to protect themselves against unfavourable rules set by customary practice and against land-grabs by urban elites. Women are too often discriminated against in terms of access and land tenure, although they are the ones who are mostly linked to the tasks of cultivating the land. Land conflicts are most often mediated by traditional leaders (see Figure 2) rather than government authorities who are more knowledgeable about legal rights. The encroachment by commercial real-estate developers and expropriation for plantation farming and mono-cropping limit further their access to land. Providing them with the information on their statutory land rights can contribute to safeguarding their tenure.

A participative framework for planning the use of land needs to be promoted, with the purpose to accommodate the diverse interests of different groups using the land, thereby preventing potential conflicts. Small-holder and family agricultural production still ensures food security for most communities and in the country as a whole. The political buy-in of municipal authorities and the involvement of local community organizations and farmers associations, will be key. By raising the general awareness about the civic rights of women in the community, and the importance of protecting them for general development the local decision makers need to be influenced to embrace more inclusive customary rules, free of gender discriminatory principles.

Angola is undertaking a major devolution of power and decision-making to municipalities . Civil society has advocated for strong participatory governance reforms. The adoption of participatory gender-sensitive land management tools can have a strong platform for implementation. The capacity of the structures in charge of implementing legislation, land management and arbitration of conflicts needs to be reinforced. Land use planning is currently an activity that lacks coordination among the different institutions at national, provincial, and local level, without clear limits of intervention among them. There is also limitation in terms of skilled human resources capable to provide technically adequate rules for this activity. As a result land grabbing and occupation from powerful groups result often in misappropriation of community land, affecting vulnerable people, among them women. The new elected municipal councils will be required to deal with conflicts resulting from land use and property and find consensual solutions.

Co-production with communities and local government
Co-production of knowledge on land tenure involving participation of communities and local government will require collaboration between municipal administrations and local community associations who are being trained in the use of participatory mapping tools (STDM). Data collected and the land tenure mapping produced is co-owned by the Municipalities and the community associations who engage in its production. The participatory diagnosis will be carried out after the training of local administrations and civil society. “Data ownership” means: the authority to allow or deny access to the data, and the responsibility for the data’s accuracy, integrity, and timeliness. The “cadastre” produced provides evidence of legitimate and verifiable land occupation that significantly improves legal tenure.

Women often lack knowledge of their legal rights, including their land rights, marital property rights, and inheritance rights. Similarly local authorities often do not have clear knowledge of statutory rights and may have a weak understanding of the situation related to land issues in their areas of jurisdiction. There is a general lack knowledge of the land law, regulations, and procedures for implementing the laws, including the formalization of land rights and granting of concessions. The strategy to support women’s rights to land should be linked with providing training on the laws impacting land rights (both formal and customary) and do institutional capacity building for the new municipal administrations. It is hoped that women’s participation in elected decision-making bodies will support efforts to strengthen women’s rights.

Land use planning and management is better addressed when there is the involvement of the different institutions in a concerted manner. Innovative co-participation engaging local government and traditional / customary leaders, the private sector, local associative groups, communities, will result in a participative way to approach and find solutions to the existing problems. Together with seeking experiences and lessons learned and shared at regional level or in other countries, will contribute to increase capacity of local networks to engage in and benefit from global and regional networks and knowledge sharing that supports land opportunities for rural women and men.

Recommendations:
There is a need for the inclusion of a co-ownership clause into Angolan the Land Law. Co-ownership of land between spouses and/or family members is an important principal of land reform. (South Africa and Tanzania that have enacted legislation requiring land co-ownership by married couples)

Development Workshop’s research provides evidence of the proportion of women-headed households in peri-urban areas (over 46% in slum areas of Luanda). Women’s land rights be reinforced and for land legislation to be brought into compliance with Angolan law. The equal rights of men and women to assets and resources, as supported by the Constitution of the Republic of Angola and the Family Code of Angola, extend to rights of land access and land tenure security (the Family Code, 1989). Marriage is defined in the Family Code and includes registered unions and de facto unions as set forth in Titles III-IV of the Family Code. Pursuant to the principles contained in the Constitution and Family Code, spouses in a marriage, whether a registered or in a de facto union, are presumed to have equal rights to the land and any buildings that they occupy, and the burden is on the spouse claiming otherwise to provide evidence of the claim. It is therefore necessary to create specific land protection programs for women, without neglecting the sources of facilitated access and recording of women's information. In addition, it is recommended to introduce in all registration and titling processes a requirement to include the wife's or partner’s name (conventional or traditional marriage) since the owners, man and woman share the same roof.

There is a need to eliminate sources of legal discrimination against women, ethnic and religious minorities, and other disadvantaged groups in economic matters. This includes de facto, as well as, de jure discrimination; this includes efforts to ensure equal rights for women in key economic areas such as land ownership and inheritance. Where the property rights adversely impacted are held by a married couple, whether in a registered or de facto union, payment of cash compensation shall be made jointly to the wife and husband. If the couple elects in-kind compensation, the title to the property transferred shall be in the names of both spouses.

Recommendations to improve women’s land rights in Angola include: implementing legislative and policy reform to remove legal constraints on women’s rights to land, promoting public information and awareness on women’s constraints and opportunities to land access, ensuring the participation of women in the land rights formalization and adjudication processes, and putting in place monitoring and enforcement systems to ensure that land rights formalization efforts successfully recognize and document women’s land rights, as well as enforce those rights.

Conclusions:
Angola has inherited a varied and complex set of landholding and land use practices, the evolution of which has been influenced by customary and cultural traditions, the colonial past, years of conflict and forced migrations, massive urbanization, and the socioeconomic development of the nation. From colonial times until the recent end of the conflict, Angolan legislators have demonstrated a consistent tendency to contain or circumscribe the land rights of the country’s rural and poor peri-urban populations and to direct land resources to the hands of a few, while at various times supporting the development of commercial farming and mineral extraction (Clover 2005).

The incorporation of international norms of good practice of civic and gender rights into Angolan legislation can result in real improvements in procedures for managing land and protecting the tenure rights of women and small-holders. The introduction of the concepts of public consultation and participatory planning in the post-war public discourse may have influenced the inclusion of these concepts in the land and planning laws. Public consultation on the 2004 Land Law was the first opportunity to lobby for the application of rights-based legislation. Angolan civil society advocates for the promotion of land tenure rights for women and the protection of the urban and rural poor against arbitrary and forced removals. Land has become a political issue debated in the parliament and is influencing the platforms of political parties. Opportunities are increasing for civil society and community representatives to employ emerging local spaces such as municipal forums and consultative councils in order to bring the debate on land rights into the public arena. Land issues are likely to be high on the agenda of elected municipal councils when they are instituted after the first local governmental elections in 2020 and the constitution of municipalities with decentralized authority and budgets.

Customary law and institutions are often the most accessible and available remedies for vulnerable rural women and men facing land rights violations in Southern Africa. However, it is also true that without adequate and proper oversight and accountability mechanisms in place, the same laws and institutions can lead to violation of the same rights. It is important that instead of outrightly dismissing these laws and institutions, we acknowledge their benefits and positive aspects and align them with constitutional and human rights imperatives. Once that alignment in law and policy is done, the responsible traditional authorities would need training on these principles and support through properly positioned state institutions.

One good practice at customary law in Southern Africa is that traditional leaders make decisions through a consultative process and often have an inner council to provide advice and help with decision-making. This should be re-purposed to ensure that the inner council includes people with approriate knowledge in human rights, including land rights to advice the traditional authorities. This can assist in removing arbitrariness in decision-making but also in guarding against corruption and abuse of authority as decision-making will not be concentrated in one individual. The SADC region should therefore use the positive aspects of customary law and institutions in coming up with a land policy.

In addition, the increasing use or abuse of traditional authorities for political ends needs to be addressed. This has contributed to authoritarianism by traditional authorities who feel that governments are indebted to them for helping them stay in power and they in turn abuse their power when dealing with issues affecting local populations such as land rights.  Constitutions and laws in SADC must therefore provide that traditional leaders must be non-partisan and must not align with political parties.