**3. Securing land rights: process and governance**

#### **3.1 Process**

Land issues and their relation to poverty have gained great importance throughout eastern and southern Africa. It has become a high-profile issue in virtually every country in these regions, more particularly in response to the scramble for land in the context of privatization and a search for foreign investment. Land held under various forms of communal tenure has particularly come under serious threats. Consequently, debates on land reform and provision of secure land tenure systems to the often-disenfranchised local communities have taken center stage by the governments, donors, civil society, and NGOs. This need was emphasized at a Conference on Land, Labour and Food Security in Southern Africa held in Johannesburg in 1997. During this conference, a Charter was drafted demanding governments, among other things to acknowledge that equal access to, and ownership of land is a basic human right, and that land reform policy should: (i) break the monopoly of landholding by landlords and commercial farmers, and give equal and secure ownership of land to those who live and work on it; (ii) be developed with full participation and input of the landless and rural poor, with emphasis given to the interest of rural women and the youth; (iii) should be driven by the principles of social justice and basic human needs as opposed to market forces; and (iv) that people who have been displaced from their land by conflict or unjust policies should have the right to claim their rights to land [11].

The argument is in favor of consolidating communal land tenure is that customary tenure which is most prevalent in rural Africa is insecure for the smallholder farmers

and provides no incentive for land improvements, prevents land from being used as collateral for credit and that it prevents the transfer of land from inefficient uses to efficient ones [10]. Provision of communal land tenure security is, therefore, seen as a precondition for intensifying agricultural production and is increasingly stressed as a prerequisite for better natural resource management and sustainable development. In response to these needs, over the past three decades, many countries in eastern and southern Africa have been addressing the issues of inequitable access to land.

To address the problem of inequitable access to land, the Mozambique government enacted a land law in 1997, which is supposed to accommodate the new political, economic and social context and guarantee access and secure tenure to land, both for the Mozambican local communities and the national and foreign investors [12]. Under this law (Article 1), a 'local community' is defined as "a grouping of families and individuals, living in a territorial area that is at the level of a locality or smaller, for the purpose of safeguarding their communal interests through the protection of traditional areas, agricultural areas, whether cultivated or lying fallow, forests, places of cultural importance, pastures, water sources and areas for expansion*".* According to this Law (Lei de Terra) of 1997, tenure security for local communities is supposed to be protected in three ways:


Thus, in terms of land, the range of rights protection under this law is extremely broad, encompassing all the major categories of land use among rural communities, now and in the future. This is re-enforced by: (a) recognition of customary land rights; (b) granting greater leasehold security to smallholder and commercial interests—thus strengthening smallholders' chances to defend their rights in the face of growing competition for land from commercial interests; and (c) granting women land rights [13, 14]. Based on these statutes, Mozambique's land law theoretically provides an enabling legal framework upon which local communities can harness collective land stewardship and tangibly participate and benefit from biodiversity conservation through joint management partnerships with private investors, or with the state. It was on this basis that the Cubo community secured its rights to land on which they intended to establish a Conservancy.

Guided by the Land Law of 1997, Chapter 3, Article 9 and Decree 66 of 1998, the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) used a step-wise approach in facilitating the titling and securing of the Cubo community land. This involved identification and
