African Studies Quarterly 

About: African Studies Quarterly is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Colonialism. It has an ISSN identifier of 1093-2658. Over the lifetime, 339 publications have been published receiving 5187 citations.

Women's Movements, Customary Law, and Land Rights in Africa: The Case of Uganda

Abstract: Much of the literature on women and land tenure in Africa has viewed the introduction of land titling, registration, and the privatization of land under colonialism and after independence as a setback for women, leaving women in a state of even greater insecurity with poorer prospects for accessing land, and hence, obtaining a livelihood. The demise of the authority of clans and local elders has made women's land rights even more precarious. In this context women's movements in Africa have adopted a rights-based approach that challenges customary land and other practices. In doing so they have contradicted a new consensus among policymakers around the view that sees land tenure policy as building on customary systems and giving them legal recognition This paper attempts to account for this apparent contradiction in the case of Uganda, which has gone further than most African countries in devolving land administration to the local level, while at the same time giving rise to one of the most active women's movements challenging customary land tenure practices. If women were benefiting from customary land tenure arrangements, as the development practitioners argue, one would think the preservation of customary rights or modifications in the customary systems would have been desirable goals of the movement. This paper explores this apparent divergence of approaches to women's land rights. INTRODUCTION Much of the literature on women and land tenure in Africa has viewed the introduction of land titling, registration, and the privatization of land under colonialism and after independence as a setback for women, leaving women in a state of even greater insecurity with poorer prospects for accessing land and hence obtaining a livelihood. Customary land tenure systems were eroded and transformed in ways that were disadvantageous to women. Today, the prevailing policy and much of the scholarly wisdom, from perspectives as ideologically diverse as the World Bank, Oxfam, and many feminist development studies scholars, seems to have converged around the view that sees land tenure policy as building on customary systems. The convergence does not, however, rest on identical premises. The World Bank, for example, sees the reliance on customary arrangements as a simpler and less conflictual route to the eventual titling, registration, and privatization of land ownership, whereas Oxfam sees the reliance on customary systems as a way to strengthen and democratize local communities, and promote bottom-up grassroots initiatives. (1) Thus, one of the most dramatic changes in land tenure reform today is that, for the first time since the pre-colonial period, states are giving legal recognition to existing African tenure regimes, which are being treated on par with the freehold/leasehold systems. (2) Unregistered customary tenure, which is the main system of land rights in Africa, is being recognized in the new policies. Ironically, at the very time that these gains are being won in the name of the rural poor, the pastoralists, women, and the landless, African women have mounted new movements to eradicate customary land tenure practices and fight for the rights of women to be able to inherit, purchase, and own land in their own name. Feminist lawyers working with these movements have argued that customary law in the present day context has been used to selectively preserve practices that subordinate women. Rather than seeing customary land practices as a basis on which to improve women's access to land, they are advocating for rights-based systems that improve women's ability to buy, own, sell, and obtain titles on land. This paper attempts to account for this apparent contradiction in the case of Uganda, which has gone further than most African countries to devolve land administration to the local level, while at the same time giving rise to one of the most active women's movements challenging customary land tenure practices. …

After Arusha: Gacaca Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Abstract: The epicentre of post-genocide Rwandan society and politics has been the need for reconciliation to assuage ethnic tensions and end a culture of impunity. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has yet to meet its goal of reconciliation in Rwanda: The failure of the tribunal goes beyond its institutional shortcomings and can be attributed the norms of international criminal law that render it an inappropriate response to criminalizing mass violence. The Gacaca courts were resurrected in Rwanda as an indigenous form of restorative justice. The principles and process of these courts hope to mitigate the failures of "Arusha Justice" at the tribunal and seeks to punish or reintegrate over one hundred thousands genocide suspects. Its restorative foundations require that suspects will be tried and judged by neighbours in their community. However, the revelation that Gacaca is a reconciliatory justice does not preclude its potential for inciting ethnic tension it if purports to serve as an instrument of Tutsi power. The state-imposed approach of command justice has politicised the identity of the participants in Gacaca -- perpetrators remain Hutus and victims and survivors remain Tutsis. Additionally, the refusal of the Kagame government to allow for the prosecution of RPF crimes to be tried in Gacaca courts empowers the notion that Tutsi survival is preconditioned by Tutsi power and impunity. If Gacaca fails to end the perceptions of impunity in post-genocide Rwanda, it will come at a much higher cost for reconciliation than the failure of the ICTR. The relevance of justice after genocide speaks to the appropriateness of retributive and restorative models of justice in a post-genocide society such as Rwanda. Additionally, the model of justice must be reconciled to the nature of a political regime that imposes unity under an ethnocratic minority.

Neither Peace nor Justice: Political Violence and the Peasantry in Northern Uganda, 1986-1998

Abstract: Uncertainty abounds concerning the 19-year conflict in Northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government. Two questions have received the most attention and could have the most bearing on efforts to resolve the conflict: first, why has the Ugandan government been unable or unwilling to end the war for nineteen years? Second, why has the LRA chosen to use extreme violence against the Acholi instead of trying to build popular support? First, this article addresses these questions, arguing that the debate has failed to take into account the political agency of the Acholi peasantry in the conflict and the relations between the peasantry and government, on the one hand, and the peasantry and the LRA, on the other. By putting the Acholi peasantry and its relations with government and rebels at the center of the analysis, the longevity of the war and the tendency by both rebels and government to use violence against the peasantry can be made sense of as a consequence of both sides' failure to realize an effective popular mobilization among the Acholi. Second, the article traces historically these failures of popular mobilization and the paths by which both the Ugandan government and the LRA came to see the population as a threat and potential enemy instead of as a potential support base. Third, by putting the people at the center of the analysis of the conflict, the groundwork is laid for putting the people at the center of the resolution of the conflict, transcending the current tendency of conflict resolution agendas to focus only on elites, treating the civilian population as passive bystanders or victims. INTRODUCTION (1) Uncertainty abounds concerning the 19-year conflict in Northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government. (2) Factual questions, such as the number of civilians killed, the rebels' troop strength, or responsibility for certain violent acts, receive wildly disparate answers. Moral and political questions pertaining to the LRA's mass abductions of children or their reign of violence against their own people, the Acholi, lead to even greater perplexity. Among the many questions, there are two that have received perhaps the most attention and that could have the most bearing on efforts to resolve the conflict. First, why has the Ugandan government been unable or unwilling to end the war for nineteen years?; Second, why has the LRA chosen to use extreme violence against the Acholi instead of trying to build popular support? In the first two sections, I will address the academic debates surrounding these questions. I will argue that the debates have for the most part failed to take into account the political agency of the Acholi peasantry in the conflict and the relations between the peasantry and government, on the one hand, and the peasantry and the LRA, on the other. By putting the Acholi peasantry and its relations with government and rebels at the center of the analysis, the longevity of the war and the tendency by both rebels and government to use violence against the peasantry can be made sense of as a consequence of both sides' failure to realize an effective popular mobilization among the Acholi. In the subsequent sections, I trace historically these failures of popular mobilization and the paths by which both the Ugandan government and the LRA came to see the population as a threat and potential enemy instead of as a potential support base. By "bringing the people back in" and placing them at the center of the analysis of the conflict--thus compensating for the current emphasis on national and international elites in explaining the Ugandan civil war--the groundwork is also laid for bringing the people back into the resolution of the conflict, thus transcending the current tendency of conflict resolution agendas to focus only on elites, treating the civilian population as passive bystanders or victims. …

Gender analysis of a nationwide cropping system trial survey in Malawi

Abstract: The majority of farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are female, yet women often have limited access to extension information and agricultural inputs. Designing improved agricultural research and extension services for women in Africa is a challenging task since female farmers defy simple characterizations, and the effect of gender versus income levels relative to quality of extension services received is difficult to disentangle. The accurate characterization of farmers targeted by extension on a large scale supports efforts to quantify potential impacts of extension programs in Africa. A nationwide trial comparing legume cropping systems to fertilized and unfertilized maize controls was implemented at approximately 1400 on-farm sites by the Malawian extension service and cooperator farmers in the 1998-99 cropping season. In addition to agronomic yield data collection, extension agents conducted a socioeconomic survey of the farmers involved in the trial. The objective of the survey was twofold: to determine socioeconomic characteristics of the farmers collaborating with the extension service, and to assess farmer opinions regarding the cropping systems being promoted. Of the 1385 sites, only 270 (19 percent) involved female farmer cooperators, although women constitute 69 percent of the full-time farmer population in Malawi. The 1115 male farmers had significantly greater experience as head of household, used more fertilizer, and devoted a greater area to cash crops. There were no significant gender differences across crop yields when inputs were supplied, indicating that female farmers were as productive as their male counterparts. Farmer ranking and rating of the cropping systems were remarkably similar between the genders. Mucuna pruriens was perceived as having the lowest overall labor requirements, while fertilized maize had the highest food production rating. Unfertilized maize and local control plots fared poorly in both farmer rating and ranking of treatments. Overall, these results suggest that the extension service skewed the trials toward "well-to-do" male farmers. However, the extension service