Land Tenure Center Newsletter
Number 81, Spring 2001, p. 12
"When driving on the back roads that crisscross the central Bandundu Region, one is struck by the vast amount of empty space, even by African standards. One can drive for literally several kilometers at a time without seeing any evidence of human use of the soil. It has been just such apparent emptiness that has many times led to ill-fated development efforts in Africa. It comes as a surprise to a person not familiar with Africa that there is not a square meter of this putatively un-utilized land that is not jealously guarded by traditional owners.
The land and the group of people who own it are inexorably connected. But because it is a group of humans that is identified with the land in a very intimate and exclusive sense, land and labor have not traditionally been seen as commodities as they are in Western societies. One has rights to land because one is related to a mutually inclusive and exclusive set of people. This set of people will include ancestors and the yet-to-be-born. For the traditional community, it is this finite pool of people and land that form the basic capital stock of the society."
Riddell, James C. 1987. "Land Tenure in Central Bandundu." In The National Land Law of Zaire and Indigenous Land Tenure in Central Bandundu, Zaire, edited by James C. Riddell, Jeswald W. Salacuse, and David Tabachnick, pp. 25-83. LTC Research Paper 92. Madison: Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin.
Copyright © 2001 by Land Tenure Center and Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for noncommercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.
Top of page
Return to Newsletter index
Return to publications page
Return to LTC's home page