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- Convenors:
-
Carolien Jacobs
(Leiden University)
Suliman Ibrahim (Leiden University)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH117
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Real property is high in demand in Africa's growing cities. This makes it important to be able to claim ownership. This panel invites papers that look at urban property disputes taking place in times of fragility and/or transition.
Long Abstract:
With high urbanization rates, pressure on available resources is increasing in Africa's cities; vacant real property is limited, prices of plots and houses are rapidly increasing. In Africa's unstable regions, urbanization can be further accelerated because of the influx of refugees or internally displaced persons in search of security. Processes of urbanization make it important for people to be able to claim their rights of ownership. However, in fragile and transitional settings it is often difficult to settle ownership claims; for instance because of formal registration related matters: being too expensive, or registration procedures being corrupt; or because property laws inherited from older regimes are being contested under new ones, or the multiplicity of tenure regimes: state and non-state based. An alternative, less formal way to claim property, in such cases, is to simply take it. When widespread, such acts can add to the fragility of the state and prolong transitional periods.
This panel invites papers that primarily but not exclusively look at urban property disputes that take place in times of fragility and/or transition. We will analyse the dynamics of such disputes, the paths people choose to claim their rights, formal or informal, and the challenges they face in unstable contexts. We will derive our examples from different corners of Africa, such as Libya, South Sudan and the DRC. For reasons of comparison, we also welcome contributions from more stable settings.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Although State laws still struggle to prevail and domain over traditional and customary law, the recognition of the latter as an official source of law can play an important role for peace and reduce social unrest and can also help political actors to spread their influence.
Paper long abstract:
This paper intends to provide an assessment and the comprehension of the reception and expression of the different kinds of customary law on the official legal framework of Portuguese-speaking countries that were under Portuguese domain along the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the way both interact since the times European settlers accelerated the occupation process of the African continent. Therefore, it is necessary to start to identify the general historical framework making also a brief incursion through the colonization campaigns operated since the second half of the 18th century until the first decades of the 20th century. Subsequently, an emphasis is given to the post-independence period, being particularly relevant the dissemination of nationalist and pro-unity ideologies of the newly formed States, as well as the relations and the assertion of the new official authorities and regimes with the structures, communities and expressions of customary law.
Paper short abstract:
This paper challenges analyses of "the" late colonial city as if it were a microcosm of the state, by examining how low-level municipal actors in Zimbabwe's second city captured authority from the state, to "modernise" African townships in ways that often contradicted state policy.
Paper long abstract:
Late colonial urban reforms across Africa saw expansive, "modern" African townships replace the municipal 'locations' for transient migrant workers, concomitant with paternalistic attempts to inculcate a 'civic consciousness' amongst the now-stabilised urban African communities. The impetus for reform is usually assumed to have emanated from the centre of a topographically ordered state, producing colonial cities with generic segregatory planning and policies. Colonial capitals steal the limelight as exemplars of "the" colonial city - taken to be a microcosm of the state. This paper challenges these notions, revealing how structural tension between Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo, and the state, made space for low-level municipal actors to pursue alternative urban modernising visions. Bulawayo's intransigent town council had always successfully repelled government attempts to intervene in its neglected African location affairs until WWII, when rapid industrial and population expansion led to crisis. Finally submitting to government pressure to resolve drastic African housing shortages, the city council hired an ambitious anthropologist, Dr Ashton, in 1949, to take charge of African administration. At this critical juncture, the city began to take a progressive lead in developing home-ownership and married housing schemes. With the rise of the strongly segregationist Rhodesia Front party in 1962, the white council found itself defending African rights to the city (especially freehold tenure and more integrated planning) - with Ashton at the frontline - against government attempts to curtail them. Thus, African residents struggling for these rights found themselves engaging with a topographically fixed, but topologically shifting colonial state power.
Paper short abstract:
This paper assesses whether restitution or compensation should be the preferred remedy when addressing cases wherein dwellings were taken from their original owners and assigned to new ones as a result of Gaddafi regime socialist laws.
Paper long abstract:
This paper assesses whether restitution or compensation should be the preferred remedy when addressing the legacy of Libya's infamous Law No. 4. Gaddafi's regime introduced this law in 1978 to ban owning more than one dwelling, and entitle those in need, notably tenants, to own dwellings owned in excess of this limit. As a result, tens of thousands of those deemed in need of housing owned expropriated dwellings. Many of them have lived there since; thus, the dwellings have become their homes. Even when in 2006 the regime formed a committee to address the grievances of former owners, the remedies offered consisted mainly of compensation; hence, occupants' stay in the expropriated dwellings continued uninterruptedly. The situation seems to have changed in the aftermath of the 2011 February uprising that toppled Gaddafi's regime. Draft laws submitted to address the legacy of Law 4 propose restitution as the preferred remedy. In doing so, these drafts prioritize the former owners' right to property over the right to home that the occupants apparently enjoy. I will assess whether this is the right approach. The assessment will be based on an analysis of primary sources, e.g., draft laws, archive of the compensation committee, and interviews with former owners, occupants, and key persons such as the heads of the compensation committee, authority for state property and authority for real property registration.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores housing arrangements that are accessible to internally displaced people living in urban host communities in the east of the Congo. It analyses how people secure property, the challenges they face in doing so, and the impact of securing property on their identity in the city.
Paper long abstract:
Due to prolonged armed conflicts many people are displaced in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Three out of four internally displaced people (IDPs) seek refuge in host communities, such as urban centres. Upon arrival, the first concern of displaced is to find shelter. Based on a two-year qualitative research project carried out in Bukavu, DRC, this paper firstly explores the main strategies used by IDPs to find secure shelter, depending on the assets they can avail of. The paper argues that obtaining real property is not only a way to improve one's living conditions and security. Ownership also serves as a marker for one's identity and sense of belonging. But whereas many IDPs aspire to become residents of the city, many of the longer-term residents paradoxically cultivate their ties with the rural areas from where their ancestors originate. Secondly, the paper analyses some of the challenges people face when claiming their ownership rights. These challenges are often related to the context of fragility in which ownership transactions take place and that result in contested claims over property. Many people, and especially IDPs, have difficulties in finding a solution that is enforced and accepted by all parties involved. The state contributes to this tenure insecurity. Facilitating tenure security could contribute to the empowerment of this group of people.
Paper short abstract:
In this presentation, I take land as a heuristic starting point to explore the production of strangers in the specific context of Eldoret, Kenya. How do urban dwellers articulate claims of difference and belonging in a city often referred to as “cosmopolitan” and “mixed”?
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation, I take land as a heuristic starting point to explore the production of strangers in the specific context of Eldoret, Kenya. Located in the former "White Highlands", the dynamic secondary city of Eldoret is often referred to as "cosmopolitan" and "mixed". At the same time, it has been the epicentre of recurrent post-electoral violence in 1992, 1997 and 2007/8. While land and ethnic tensions have often been identified as the underlying causes of these episodes of violence, I argue that there is a dialectic relationship between the production and ascription of (multi-layered) identities on the one hand, and the opportunities offered by urban life on the other hand. How do urban dwellers articulate claims of difference and belonging? What brings people together or tear them apart? I look at the specific historical context and social configuration of Eldoret to answer these questions, suggesting that the production of "strangeness" is negotiated by the inhabitants of the town and rooted both in discourses and everyday practices.