The state, land laws and the Bakweri land problem

Successive governments in Cameroon have reinforced the state’s power over land, typically in legislation masquerading as land reform initiatives.

A number of these legislative actions are especially relevant to this chapter.

The first is the German colonial government policy establishing ‘native reservations’, to which the Bakweri farming communities were confined.

This policy, dating from the first tenure of Governor von Puttkamer, was designed to free large tracts of Bakweri ancestral lands for private

18 These are the lands that had been vacated by German plantation farmers.

agricultural plantations and colonial government use.¹⁹ Implementation of this policy entailed assigning each native an area of no more than 1.5 hectares for habitation and cultivation purposes, and the policy also required that dispersed settlements be consolidated into villages, with surveyed and numbered buildings and plots.²⁰

For the fishing communities of Tiko, the German colonial government enacted a scheme to convert all lands that were not ‘needed’ by the natives into property of the Crown in 1911.²¹ This dubious scheme arbitrarily determined that each native adult male (not females) should receive six hectares of land for habitation and cultivation, so that some 300 hectares of land were set aside and distributed, since the colonial government’s census of 1908 recorded 50 adult males.

The decision to convert Bakweri ancestral lands in the Tiko area into property of the state was one of the last policy initiatives by German colonial authorities before the First World War, after which France and Britain assumed control of the territory as trustees of the League of Nations, the forerunner to the UN. In principle, France and Britain operated under the watchful eyes of the League of Nations, and could therefore not forcibly expropriate or convert native lands into property of the state. An important provision of the League of Nation’s Trust Agreement exhorted the administering authorities to ensure the preservation and protection of all native laws and customs, especially relating to land. Article 8 of the Agreements approved by the UN General Assembly on 13 December 1946 and 1 November 1947 stipulated thus:

In framing the laws relating to the holding or transfer of land and natural resources, the Administrative Authority shall take into consideration native laws and customs, and shall respect the rights and safeguard the interests, both present and future, of the native population. No native land or natural resources may be transferred, except between natives, save with the consent of the competent public authority.²²

In practice, the designated trustees of the territory (France and Britain) spared no opportunity to replicate the efforts of their imperial predecessors, Germany. On paper, the trustees appeared to be attentive to the stipulations of the UN Mandate Agreements. France established two parallel systems of land laws in her portion of the territory.²³ One of these systems, namely l’indigènat, was designed for lands of the natives or les indigènes, which comprised the unassimilated members of the indigenous

19 Njoh (n 4 above) 78.

20 Njoh (n 11 above).

21 AJ Njoh ‘Development implications of colonial land and human settlement policies in Cameroon’ (2002) 26 Habitat International 399 - 415.

22 As quoted in Meek (n 4 above) 370. Also see Njoh (n 11 above) 79; Fisiy (n 13 above) 23 30.Njoh (n 11 above) 80 - 81.

population. The decree establishing this system (1924) constituted, in essence, the transfer of a policy that had been in force in French West Africa since 1917 to Cameroun. The other system was designed to govern European residents and assimilated members of the indigenous population (ie, les assimilés or les evolués). Although the first of these systems appeared to be sensitive to native customs and traditional land tenure practices, it functioned just like the second one, which was simply a replica of land ordinances in force in France at the time. French land laws in Cameroon, like those of their German predecessors, sought to convert as much land as possible into property of the state. A French decree of 1938 declared as property of the colonial state all land left unused or unoccupied for a period of ten years (ie terres vacantes et sans maître).²⁴

British colonial authorities were also bent on endowing the state with as much land as possible, although on the surface the most attentive of all the colonial authorities to customary practice. Support for this assertion can be found in the decision of the British imperial government to adopt in Southern Cameroons the land laws of colonial Northern Nigeria rather than those of colonial Eastern Nigeria. This decision hinged on the fact that whereas the land laws of Northern Nigeria accorded due regard to native customary land tenure practices, those of the Eastern Province of Nigeria, of which Southern Cameroons was administratively a part, did not. The Land and Native Rights Ordinance (No 9 of 1910) of colonial Northern Nigeria traces its roots to a Report of 1908 that was the brainchild of a committee comprised mainly of officials of two major British colonies, Nigeria and India. British colonial authorities considered the Ordinance such a success that they transferred it to Tanganyika and British Southern Cameroons, where the Ordinance was adopted verbatim in 1925.²⁵ The preamble to this Ordinance is immediately followed by a statement to the effect that all lands of the Northern Provinces of Nigeria and the Cameroons ‘whether occupied or unoccupied’ shall be considered

‘native lands,’²⁶ but Section 4 stipulates that ‘all native lands and all rights over same are hereby declared to be under the control and subject to the disposition of the Governor.’²⁷

Efforts on the part of the government to aggrandise the powers of the state, and reduce those of other societal entities, in the land domain did not end with the demise of colonialism in Cameroon, but were accelerated by the post-colonial authorities, who have proven to be the most oblivious to the Bakweri land problem. These authorities have pursued initiatives that have done more to supplant customary land laws with Euro-centric

24 Njoh (n 11 above) 82; Fisiy (n 13 above) 35.

25 Meek (n 4 above) 371; Njoh (n. 11 above) 86.

26 Njoh (n 11 above) 86; Meek (n 4 above) 371.

27 Njoh (n 11 above) 87; Meek (n 4 above) 371.

equivalents than any initiative by their European colonial predecessors.²⁸ Four major initiatives on the part of the indigenous leadership are worth noting in this connection. Decree No 63-2 of 9 January 1963 effectively reversed the 1959 colonial law that re-established the supremacy of customary entitlements to land. Secondly, the state ignored all claims to land backed by other than formal or modern instruments, with officials rejecting more substantive terms such as 'owners' and 'landlords' in favour of lesser terms such as 'holders' and ‘occupants’ for members of the indigenous population in relation to ancestral lands.

The third has to do with rejuvenating relevant provisions of pre-independence laws that were specifically aimed at increasing the colonial state's inventory of land and/or dispossessing the indigenous population of same. To accomplish this objective, the indigenous leadership drew inspiration from two colonial acts, namely the German Crown Lands Act of 15 July 1896 and the Act of 12 January 1938 that was introduced in Cameroun under French Mandate. Recall that both Acts converted so-called vacant and unoccupied lands into property of the colonial state. As demonstrated by the land law of 1974, post-colonial authorities inherited and adhered to the letter and spirit of the land legislation blueprint of their colonial predecessors.

Fourth, major amendments to the 1974 law were effectuated two years later in 1976, the groundwork being in Law No 73-3 of 9 July 1973. This law authorised the Head of State to establish rules governing land tenure in the country. With the powers conferred upon him by this law, President Ahidjo enacted a major land ordinance on July 6, 1974. Part I, section 1 (2) of the Ordinance makes the State the guardian of all lands throughout the country:

The State shall be the guardian of all lands. It may in this capacity intervene to ensure rational use of land or in the imperative interest of defence or the economic policies of the nation.²⁹

Part III, of the Ordinance declares national lands to include:

(a) Lands that are free of any effective occupation;

(b) Lands confiscated from private parties for committing any of a number of infringements including failure to convert informal instruments or deeds of land rights into land certificates; and

(c) All parcels of land, which do not fall into the category of public or private property of state and other public bodies.

28 Fisiy (n 13 above). AJ Njoh ‘The political economy of urban land reforms in a post-colonial economy’ International Journal of Urban & Regional Research (1998) 22. Republic of Cameroon Land tenure and state lands (unknown).

29 Republic of Cameroon (n 28 above).

One important element of colonial land policies that has been duplicated by post-colonial authorities in Cameroon is the requirement that all interests in land be registered in the National Lands Registry, continuing the Grundbuch of the German colonial era. The post-colonial authorities went further in efforts to ‘modernise’ the land tenure system, by making registration of land titles in the Registry a pre-condition for claiming entitlement to any parcel of land in the country. The Ordinance No 77-1 of 10 January 1977, gave all urban land owners until 6July 1984 (rural owners until 6 July 1989) to convert all land deeds or certificates of occupancy into land certificates duly registered in the National Land Registry, at risk of forfeiting their rights. Thus, urban and rural land owners had 10 and 15 years respectively from the date of publication of Land Ordinance No 1 of 6 July 1974 to formalise their land claims.