Introduction
The global land rush has drawn new attention to the African state. Based on empirical research into a ‘Chinese’ request for 2 million hectares of land in Zambia, this article develops the perspective that processes of land acquisition are deeply influenced by the shifting politics and policies within states, specifically considering that a change of government halted the deal. This contingent perspective runs counter to the global land grab discourse, in which African states have been seen as gatekeepers, brokering foreign, large-scale acquisitions that negatively affect local people. Deals have been understood not only as ‘state-sponsored’, but more as top-down phenomena driven by global markets or foreign states, classic illustrations of the ‘impact of the foreign upon the domestic’ (Fairbairn 2013). More dramatically, it has been suggested that land is being ‘foreignised’ (Zoomers 2010), with the effect that ‘massive structural holes in the tissue of national sovereign territory’ are being created (Sassen 2013, 26).
These neo-colonial narratives depend on and reinforce an idea that land can simply be ‘grabbed’ in Africa, and that African states all react to land requests in the same way. However, the description of Africa as a centre of land grabbing requires more nuance in the way land grabbing is understood, particularly in response to the complex realities unfolding in African countries (Hall 2011). More generally, Edelman and León argue that land grabbing tends to occur in cycles, depending on the confluence of historically specific circumstances relating to natural resource markets, the relative negotiating capital of international and domestic actors, policy reform agendas, dynamic relations between state and customary authorities, class relations and so forth (2013). All of this suggests that, rather than advocating an outright abandonment of the land grab concept, there is a need to develop new analytical perspectives through which the dynamics of present-day land investments can be understood and analysed (cf. Pedersen and Buur 2016). Whilst the neo-colonial land-grabbing narrative presents us with a rather rigid and reductionist account that seems inevitably to lead to foreign control over land, a more contingent approach is to recognise that any ‘external’ attempts of power are influenced by political contingencies and negotiations between a multitude of actors on the ground (cf. Keene et al. 2015).
Empirical studies of land deals in Africa have shown that domestic processes and actors matter. States have very different responses: some are welcoming and calculating partners in land deals and others apply the brakes, with divisions between state entities and variance of governmental regimes appearing to affect outcomes (Borras and Franco 2013; Wolford et al. 2013). Clearly, states do not divide neatly into those that protect land and those that have sold out. Instead, state behaviours are contingent on national politicking. One now-infamous case is Madagascar, where the government signed a deal with a South Korean firm to lease out 1.3 million hectares. Political opponents used the deal to overturn the government and, when in power, recentralised control over large-scale transfers and cancelled other ongoing land transfers (Burnod, Gingembre, and Andrianirina Ratsialonana 2013; Gingembre 2015).
The ability of external powers to effectively impose the terms of land deals on states should, then, not be taken for granted. Lund and Boone show that even change of persons involved in land allocation (elected politicians, commissioners of lands, chiefs) can destabilise land decisions (2013). Regime, policy or individual changes frequently undo approved deals or push stalled deals forward, sometimes overriding legislation and contracts (Li 2011, 296). Deals have also been held up by the state vis-à-vis customary contestation or have been used to modify power relations. In Madagascar, state officials tried to use land deals to recentralise land administration, while traditional leaders opposed them in order to regain authority over land (Burnod, Gingembre, and Andrianirina Ratsialonana 2013). In Ghana, the recent surge in large-scale land deals corresponds to a pre-existing motivation of chiefs to re-establish authority, as deals help to formalise the use and boundaries of customary land (Boamah 2014). Thus states, and state-like actors, still covet control over land, and use it as a vehicle for asserting sovereignty and exerting political and economic power (Bush, Bujra, and Littlejohn 2011). In Zambia, land dealings are especially complex because territorial power is vested both in the state apparatus and in traditional leaders who derive their authority from control of land. Land dealings are not only about material land tracts but, more so, about long-standing questions regarding the extent of the central state powers vis-à-vis traditional authorities. This means that ‘national sovereign territory’ cannot sensibly be constructed as a once-coherent whole that has subsequently been engulfed by foreign actors (Lund 2011, 887). The oft-used metaphor of ‘hollowing out the state’ is particularly unhelpful if we consider that sovereignty has endured as a key claim that rulers employ to engage with foreign actors, as well as to assert state authority against customary claims. Indeed, the more recent land-grabbing literature highlights that deals are often legitimised precisely by the narrative of state sovereignty and legality (Wolford et al. 2013).
This article develops the perspective that processes of land acquisition are deeply influenced by the national politicking within states, by tracing the reaction of different rulers to a ‘Chinese’ request for, initially, 2 million hectares for biofuel production in Zambia. The article specifically highlights that different ruling regimes reacted differently to the land request. In 2011, the deal was supported by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) government, only to be resisted and downsized by the Patriotic Front (PF) government when it came into power in September 2011 with a populist, resource-nationalist agenda. The events also contribute to the argument that land grabbing is essentially ‘control grabbing’ (Borras et al. 2012). When the PF government entered office, land control was pulled closer to the state, and the PF put on pause a novel arrangement designed to allow the leased land to remain under customary control. The case supports Lund and Boone’s argument that land arrangements are ‘only as robust, solid and enduring as the power relations that underpin them’ (2013, 9).
Thus, rather than taking foreign land grabbing for granted, this article explores the dynamic contests over land: first, by historicising key shifts in land politics from independence to contemporary times, and then, by tracing the developments around the Chinese request. The narrative is based on existing literature on Zambian land politics, as well as material collected during a wider research project, looking at bioenergy, jatropha and land developments in Zambia, comprising fieldwork between 2009 and 2015. As with many large-scale and Chinese investments, few people were aware, or admitted they were aware, of the negotiations going on, and this article therefore draws on interviews with a limited set of six well-placed respondents: the lands commissioner at the Ministry of Lands, Lusaka, 29 January 2015 (Commissioner interview); the responsible officer at the Zambian Development Agency (ZDA), Lusaka, 26 January 2015 (ZDA interview); Chief Katyetye, Lusaka, 1 February 2015 (Chief interview); the Mungwi district commissioner, Northern Province, 28 May 2009 (DC interview); a village head in Northern Province, March 2011 (Village head interview); and Thomson Sinkala, director of Biomass Development plc, and also representing a joint-venture Chinese–Zambian bioenergy company, January 2015 (Company interview). Other materials were used to triangulate data gathered through interviews, including academic articles, media reports (Lusaka Times, Post, Times of Zambia and Zambia Online) and parliamentary debates (downloaded from Parliament Online, available at www.parliament.gov.zm/). Land laws, regulations, policy drafts and related reports were also screened to develop the case study. The analysis was guided by the question of how state and traditional authorities reacted to the deal, and, as the deal unfolded over time, it became clear that land dealings depended upon changing dynamics among governments, presidents and chiefs. The case therefore contributes to our understanding of the ways that land acquisition decisions can become embroiled in short-term national party politics and longer-term battles over land authority.
Historicising land dealings in Zambia
On 24 October 1964, Zambia became independent of the United Kingdom and this provided a basis for building the nation-state. The first president, Kenneth Kaunda, promoted a state ideology of ‘humanism’, which was neither socialist nor capitalist but combined free markets with government intervention to indigenise industry (Berry 2015). Within 10 years, Kaunda and his United National Independence Party (UNIP) had nationalised much of the economy, including expropriating 51% of mining operations. All land was nationalised at independence, but the colonial arrangement of dual governance remained. Areas that had been ‘crown land’ became ‘state land’, administered by statutory law, which could be leased and titled. Areas that had been ‘reserves’ and ‘trust land’, where the majority of the Zambian population resided, became ‘customary land’ with land allocation governed by the customary office and customary law (Government of Republic of Zambia [GRZ] 2006). To this day, traditional leaders have significant power over land allocation, law enforcement, dispute resolution and, more generally, in brokering development projects and influencing voting patterns (Baldwin 2016, 87).
The post-colonial Zambian state initially embarked on an evolution of laws aimed at increasing state control of land transactions. This involved restricting non-Zambians from acquiring land without presidential consent, as well as issuing guidelines regarding the procedure for conversion of land from customary to leasehold tenure. The 1975 Land Act was intended to curb land speculation and, by regulating the property market, provide ‘an opportunity for Zambians to acquire valuable land previously monopolised by expatriates and the wealthiest Zambians’ (Szeftel 1982, 11). The 1975 Act required government approval for transfers of state land, which gave the lands minister wide discretionary powers to approve both individual transfers and the price at which such transfers occurred. Events indicate that this arrangement was taken advantage of. Structuralists have argued that an elite and comprador class developed during this period, and influenced the state to formulate policies designed to materially benefit it and foreign capitalists (Taylor 1997). Nonetheless, any such process had its limits in the Zambian case. In 1977 President Kaunda dismissed the lands minister for what he called activities ‘tantamount to abuse of office’ (Szeftel 1982, 11). Kaunda tried to prevent himself from being perceived as a ‘comprador’ or a person who acts as an agent for foreign organisations (cf. Chan 1992).
Kaunda’s reputation temporarily declined in the 1980s as the economy crumbled and food riots and industrial unrest brought the one-party state to an end. The image of Kaunda ‘fathering’ the nation revived as Zambians realised how much worse things could get under the political regime which replaced UNIP in the multiparty elections in 1991. When Frederick Chiluba’s MMD won in 1991, the government began to dismantle the state-controlled economy through a set of market liberalisation and privatisation policies (Lungu 2008). The elite during this time was described by Sichone as ‘anti-national comprador oligarchs’, being ‘those who profited from the privatization of state owned enterprises and those whose very existence is tied to foreign companies’ (2017). Land, in turn, was described as being governed by ‘a convergence of interests’, among African states and elites, international institutions like the World Bank and FAO, and corporate capital (Martin and Palat 2014). Arguably the enthusiastic adoption of structural adjustment programmes under the MMD prepared the ground for land grabbing, making it relatively easy to acquire land for foreign actors (cf. Zoomers 2010). In Zambia, this involved the so-called ‘pro-investment’ Lands Act of 1995. The Act stipulated that all Zambian land be vested in the president, and changed the qualifications for owning land, such that non-Zambians of ‘certain categories’, including investors and resident permit holders (GRZ 2006), could also ‘own’ land. The Act facilitated acquisitions through a clause which allowed for the conversion of customary land to state land, which meant that all land, in principle, could enter the marketplace (Nolte 2014). In practice, entering the market meant navigating a range of actors granted brokering roles by the land regime. Neoliberal rationales and larger conditions of the global political economy certainly played a major part in land decisions, but more domestic and ‘embedded’ interests and motivations continued to govern (Becker and Wittmeyer 2013). Specifically, the 1995 Lands Act formally recognised for the first time the role of chiefs in land administration, at the same time manifesting the MMD’s willingness to increase the recognition and powers of traditional chiefs, at least symbolically (Baldwin 2014, 2016, 90).
With the 1995 Lands Act, customary lands were potentially up for grabs. State land had historically been the target for those seeking land for industrial purposes. The limited availability and higher cost of state land made customary lands an ‘obvious choice’ for large-scale investors after liberalisation (German and Schoneveld 2012). Foreign investors have to lease land, and because leaseholds can only be taken on state land, this means that customary land has first to be converted into state land. Village heads and chiefs are allowed to give consent to small land transfers, but the alienation1 of plots of customary land above 250 hectares requires the involvement of the Ministry of Lands and approval by the local council. Deals above 1000 hectares require additional consent from the lands commissioner and/or the president. Customary land can thus irreversibly be transferred to state land, when a transfer is approved by the state and chiefs. Leasehold may then be granted for a maximum period of 99 years, with the possibility of extension (GRZ 2006). The informal leasing of customary land by chiefs to foreign investors also exists, though it is technically illegal. Moreover, investors tend to prefer the formal process of transferring land into the state domain, so that formal leaseholds can be used as collateral, or can be secured by the state through protection agreements and so forth.
The 1995 Land Act has been widely rejected by chiefs, specifically because of the provision for the conversion of customary land rights into private leaseholds; these are seen as a governmental ploy to dispense with traditional land allocation powers (Ng’ombe and Keivani 2013). It is commonly stated that 94% of the land in Zambia is customary. Yet, the ability to convert land from the customary domain to leasehold, but not the reverse, means that the amount of customary land consistently declines; and, since the Act, the amount of customary land has greatly diminished as a result of having been made available to foreign and domestic investors (Nolte 2014). Sitko and Chamberlin thus estimate that only about half of Zambia’s rural land is now under customary tenure (2015). This trend triggers durable changes in state vis-à-vis customary control, as customary authorities lose influence.
The practices used in land acquisition enable state agencies to involve themselves in decisions regarding customary territory in a way that may appear relatively unobtrusive. Foreign acquisition processes are often facilitated by the ZDA, and the agency has a two-page list of steps to ensure that proper procedures are followed (ZDA interview 2015). The process formally involves a range of state procedures, such as carrying out land surveys and an Environmental Impact Assessment, making field visits and consulting with the local chief and the community at large, including a public hearing and via media advertisement (Nolte 2014). Although community consultation is legally stipulated, the current power balance is such that customary and state authorities, as well as investors, have strong leverage to negotiate land deals, while local land users play a marginal role (German and Schoneveld 2012, 2013; Mujenja and Wonani 2012; Nolte 2014). Deals inevitably generate conflicts and disputes between communities and traditional authorities, specifically because traditional rulers are accountable to both the state and the people (Metcalfe and Kepe 2008).
The MMD governments from 1991 to 2011 generally pushed for land alienation, promoted the conversion of customary rights to leasehold and repeatedly urged traditional authorities to release land for investment (Mujenja and Wonani 2012). The approach was presumably informed by the fact that leasers bring in revenues to the state and fees to brokers, as well as providing jobs in rural settings. Moreover, land policy drafts under all MMD administrations promoted the formalisation of land governance. For example, a GRZ draft land policy in 2006 presented the requirement for the president to consult the chief before alienation of land as ‘an encumbrance’, noting also that very few people have used the possibility of converting customary land to state land due to inadequate guidelines and the opposition of the chiefs ‘who think their powers will be eroded’ (GRZ 2006, 4.2.2). Chiefs have at the same time been accused by the government of alienating too much land, specifically of giving land to foreign investors and the urban elite without participation by local people in land alienation decisions (Ibid., 3.2).
In practice, a range of actors brokered land under the guise of the state. German and Schoneveld found that individuals acting in the name of the state (including ex-district commissioners, representatives of the ZDA and the Ministry of Lands, ministers and members of parliament) had aligned themselves with investors in order to ‘facilitate’ and benefit as brokers from land-based investments (German and Schoneveld 2012). These facilitators influenced negotiations by emphasising the benefits over the risks, and at times lobbying recalcitrant chiefs to accept land transfers. Such ‘brokering’ extended up to State House and MMD lands ministers, who played active roles in encouraging traditional authorities to release land for investment, by arguing ‘that customary land is insufficiently utilized and developed and should thus be put to more productive use’ (Ibid. 484).
Arguably, the MMD presidents who followed Chiluba, Levy Mwanawasa (2001–08) and Rupiah Banda (2008–11), all approached foreign land acquisition differently. However, the major shift that was to change land politics was the 2011 election, which ended the MMD’s 20-year rule as Michael Sata’s PF defeated Banda. Sata had particularly used anti-foreign rhetoric during earlier election campaigns, and this generated an uncertain investment environment for foreign actors (Larmer and Fraser 2007). Foreign copper arrangements were particularly contested, but land was also high on the agenda. The rumours that the administration was willing to accept a Chinese request for nearly 2 million hectares formed part of the PF’s resource-nationalist campaign. During the campaign and after coming into office, the PF expressed concerns about customary land alienation, which they described as causing a number of abuses and unfair treatment of ordinary Zambians (Lisulo 2013). During an interview in 2015, the lands commissioner affirmed Sata’s unwillingness to sign off large land deals. Proving himself ‘a man of action’, Sata sent the commissioner a Letter of Decree stating that all deals had to be assessed by Sata personally. On 10 December 2013, a ban was imposed on the sale of customary land. The lands minister directed the commissioner and all councils countrywide not to process any papers from customary areas for land which had been illegally bought. He also stated that the government would start repossessing land which had been illegally sold (Lusaka Times 2013; Sichone 2013). To ban an act that is illegal might seem redundant, yet it signalled the state’s efforts to enforce its authority and control an anarchic practice.
Given the changes put in place by the PF administration, by 2015, the lands commissioner denied that land grabbing was going on in Zambia. According to him, Sata approved no deals prior to his death in office on 28 October 2014, despite some 40 applications being made. Nonetheless, the commissioner had received a lot of non-governmental organisation and academic visitors who wanted him to affirm a narrative of land grabbing. Reflecting upon the potentiality of land grabbing, he asked, ‘were they really speaking about Zambia?; they must pick it from other places.’ He signalled that Zambia’s land situation presented an unusually challenging field to negotiate, especially since land is vested in the president, making acquisition ‘a bit more complex’. The commissioner said that those who claimed there was land grabbing in Zambia were welcome to check the public register, and he took time to explain that the existing larger private holdings were remnants of previously state-held land which, upon bankruptcy, had been sold by the bank to private entities, while noting that three MMD presidents had a continuing legacy of promoting land privatisation (Commissioner interview 2015). Sata’s vice president Guy Scott affirmed that no large-scale transfers had occurred during Sata’s time in office (public event, Livingstone, August 2015). However, that Sata is a resource nationalist disapproving land transfers should not be taken for granted. We turn now to look at how these politics played out in the case of the Chinese request.
The Chinese request
The story begins in 2009 when ‘China’ approached the Zambian government with a request to plant 2 million hectares of Jatropha curcas L. (Zigomo 2009). ‘China’ in this case was Kaidi Biomass Zambia Limited (KBZ), a joint venture between the Chinese ‘Zhongying Changjiang International Investment Guarantee Limited’ and the Zambian entity ‘Biomass Development Plc’ (one of the companies formed in the 2000s when Zambia experienced a surge of interest in the production of biofuels). The Chinese entity was a subsidiary of Wuhan Kaidi Investment Holding Company Limited, now part of Sunshine Kaidi New Energy Group Co., Ltd., one of the largest private companies in biomass power generation in China (UNPD n.d.). The executive vice president of KBZ was a Zambian with Chinese ties; he had studied in China and then worked as an international business manager for Sunshine Kaidi New Energy Group in China, where he was responsible for opening the African market for infrastructure and energy investments (Zambian Observer 2018).
Up to this time, Chinese farms were still relatively small players in Zambia’s agricultural sector. China’s largest state-owned commercial farm in Zambia comprises around 3500 hectares, and the majority of farms are private and run by often self-taught ‘accidental farmers’ who sublet small parcels of statutory land to cater for local food demands (Guo Chatelard 2014). Therefore, a request on the scale of millions of hectares was quite exceptional. Although the reported size of the request varies, an interview with the Zambian partner in 2015 conveyed that a request for 2 million hectares had been made, and that it could be met; the size had not been exaggerated, as it was said to reflect the investment capacity of the Chinese partner. The Zambian partner believed that even 20 million hectares would have been realistic in Zambia, ‘given the vastness of underused land’ (Company interview 2015). The MMD government certainly agreed with this discourse that represented Zambia as a vast, fertile country with low population density and under-exploited natural resources. A government position paper on the biofuel crop jatropha stated that Zambia has a total area of 75.2 million hectares, of which 74 million hectares represents land; of that, 42 million hectares is arable land, of which nearly 6 million hectares is under cultivation. The conclusion was that ‘nearly 36 million ha of arable land is not being utilized and can be made available for developmental activities’ (GRZ 2008). These justifications are similar to other cases ‘with assertions about the availability of terra nullius and the desirability of closing “yield gaps” and developing “empty lands”’ (Edelman and León 2013, 1698). However, as Edelman and León note, claims about ‘empty’ or ‘undeveloped’ lands are usually discursive constructions which refer to spaces that capital has not yet penetrated, and ‘not spaces devoid of people’ (1715).
The task ahead was to find a location and actors who agreed to the notion that land was indeed ‘available’. The deal began to take solid shape when a combined team of Chinese and Zambian investors conducted a feasibility study in the north of Zambia (Lusaka Times 2009a). As was usual, the team was led by an agent from the ZDA and negotiations involved public meetings and speeches by ministers and local leaders promoting the project. According to press accounts, they presented a project for a US$3-billion investment, establishing a biodiesel industry in Zambia that would create around 50,000 jobs and outgrower opportunities for the local people. Five districts were targeted, Mporokoso and Luwingu in Northern Province and Nakonde, Isoka and Chinsali in Muchinga Province, and traditional leaders expressed a willingness to provide large portions of land for the project. Two chiefs in Mporokoso District said ‘they were ready to sit down with the investors so that they could discuss how best the project would benefit their subjects’ (Ibid.).
In these accounts, the MMD government was keen to emphasise its role in bringing in investments to the country. The commerce minister highlighted that the MMD government was working hard to ensure a conducive environment for both local and foreign investors, and he expressed hope that the project would be well received by Northern Province, failing which it would be ‘moved to another province’ (Ibid.). While this forthright statement reflects the non-negotiability of the project, its recognition of the possibility of failure also conveyed apprehension within local government that traditional leadership needed to be appeased. During fieldwork in the last years of the MMD government, this particular deal, and other Asian land speculations, became a regular topic raised by respondents during interviews in the Northern Province. A district commissioner said his district was sceptical of deals with the Chinese, particularly because of the perception that Chinese investors import their own labour force, limiting the development potential for local people (DC interview 2009). A village head residing in the same district also voiced concerns over surrendering large tracts of land to Chinese investors. He emphasised the repercussions for customary authority, and that he had tried to convey this message to his senior chiefs (Village head interview 2011):
… I was born here, I die here, so I have got to be ‘patriotical’ with my area. So when that thing bloomed so much, zoomed so much, that the Chinese want 500,000 hectares of land. That alarmed us. I went to the Ministry of Agriculture to look for maps pertaining to the hectarage of chiefdoms in the Northern Province. … Some chiefdoms, they had only 2,000 hectares, some 3,000, some 100,000, 400,000 hectares, the biggest was the Paramount Chief who had 600,000 hectares. … And that is when I rushed to the Paramount Chief [and said], ‘Now, we have a problem here with these Chinese rushing, sweet talking the ministers that they are coming to invest and create jobs. … Now if the Chinese come to ask you as Paramount for 500,000 and you have 900,000 hectares where is your power as a leader? For 99 years you will have no control over that [land] and after 99 years, [after] two generations, who will come and remember that they should now come and give back this land? Nothing. So look at how you are going to disadvantage yourselves. We will then begin to struggle to have our land back as it was [in the struggle with] the rich colonialists.’ The Paramount Chief listened to me. I left the maps with him and he had to send for all of his chiefs to tell them that this is the information pertaining to jatropha and this is when they said ‘Aaa’ and their eyes were open. They put a stop to that. And that is how this thing silently died off. We went to the DC office secretary: we cannot give this amount of land to the Chinese. And that is how this thing died a natural death.
Traditional leaders in other chiefdoms were more compliant. Chief Katyetye and Chieftainess Nawaitwika agreed to make land available for the project. The deal was finalised at 80,000 hectares, around 42,700 hectares in Isoka and 38,000 hectares in Nakonde, according to an interview with Chief Katyetye in 2015. In July 2011, two months before tripartite elections, a deal was sealed at a signing ceremony for a US$450-million biofuel project backed by an Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement between the government and KBZ (Bloomberg 2011; Times of Zambia 2013; Lusaka Times 2011). Phase One included establishing plantations under diverse biofuel crops, and the construction of biofuel processing plants, biomass power plants and local infrastructure such as houses, roads, electricity and schools (Lusaka Times 2011). The long-term plan involved a US$6-billion investment in the development of bioenergy in Zambia, with future expectations of more than 150,000 direct jobs (Times of Zambia 2013).
Although glossed over in state-friendly press reports, the transfer of large land tracts to Chinese investors remained a sensitive issue. The Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry assured people that the land given to the investors would not be sold but rather leased out for investment (Ibid.). Even so, the conventional transfer of land from the customary to the state domain had not been agreed upon. Chieftainess Nawaitwika had been willing to surrender customary land for the project, but Chief Katyetye was reluctant to alienate such large tracts. The chief was, on balance, positive about hosting the project. From his perspective, the 18 households residing on the land had agreed, and the project would be bringing long-awaited jobs and infrastructure to the area. However, transferring land to the state domain was problematic from his perspective. Indeed, up to this point, no formal titling existed within his chiefdom. The chief had instead argued for a customary trust to be set up which would lease out customary land to the company. According to his statement, this compromise was accepted by the state authorities and investors, and it was described by the chief as a new form of leasehold in Zambia. While permits and other operational issues would be governed by statutory law, the customary body would retain sovereignty over the land, and land rents (of around US$6/hectare) would be given not to the government but to the trust to be used for community development (Chief interview 2015). Similar attempts to manage common property regimes designed to manage private investment in communal lands are not new to Zambia; rather, there is a long-standing discussion on how to effectively and equitably hold customary land, as well as negotiate access to it (Metcalfe and Kepe 2008).
Up to the elections on 20 September 2011, these neo-customary arrangements were supported by the MMD government. For example, the ZDA agent leading negotiations said that he was pleased with the way the investors had followed statutory procedures when preparing for the acquisition (ZDA interview 2015). State media reported that also Chieftainess Nawaitwika applauded the deal and MMD for bringing investment to her chiefdom, which she expected would boost the economy by creating jobs, reducing poverty and improving infrastructure (Times of Zambia 2013). The chieftainess prayed ‘that this programme will not just end at signing papers but be operationalised as soon as possible’ (Lusaka Times 2011). However, this prayer remained unanswered.
When the MMD was removed from office in the tripartite elections of 2011, the deal hit the buffers. As an opposition leader, Michael Sata had publicly opposed the Chinese proposal on the basis that leasing such large parcels would disadvantage Zambians already scrambling for land to grow food, and that such a project would only benefit the Chinese labourers expected to be brought in to work on the plantation (Farmlandgrab.org 2009). Sata was also quoted as having accused the MMD vice president of selling 1.2 million hectares to the Chinese (Lusaka Times 2009b). During a public discussion in the UK, Sata’s new vice president, Guy Scott, reiterated this concern, by saying that when the PF entered office they arrived ‘with the worry of finding the country sold out’, [however], ‘when going through the papers [he found that] no big lands had changed hands officially’ (ODI 2012). Scott argued that the PF government was keen to change the Zambian state’s comprador image, suggesting that ‘it would no longer be sufficient to send an iPhone to the cabinet.’ Instead, investors would have to go through the ‘proper procedures’ if they sought to acquire land in Zambia (Ibid.).
The PF interpretation was that the deal had not been finalised, and that the incoming administration retained the authority to agree, or not, to this deal. In contrast to a ‘hard’ form of resource nationalism in which governments cancel contracts or demand national shares in natural resource ventures (Childs 2016, 541), the PF simply withheld forms of cooperation that would enable the project to go ahead. Firm leaseholds signed before elections might have altered the road taken. Even then, the government probably could have found statutory means of halting the project, such as holding back permits or operating licences, or harassing investors or political actors that it felt were not favouring constituents important to the legitimacy of the incoming administration. The Chinese deal was, in this way, fraught with political risk. It represented a political opportunity for the newly elected regime to show its strength against foreign investors. According to the media, the new province minister told the chieftainess that the PF government was concerned with the manner in which land had been allocated to investors, and that the 80 [sic!] hectares given to the project, so far, was ‘just too much’ (ZANIS 2012). The PF government even made the massiveness of the deal into a subject of humour. Addressing Parliament on 21 June 2013, Vice President Scott said that the ZDA had received an application for 1,000,000 hectares during the MMD administration:
Luckily, the ZDA sent back the application with a request that the Chinese company should place the comma in the right place because it was not possible for such a piece of land to be given to it. [Laughter] The Chinese sent back the application, insisting on the 1,000,000 ha of land. A million hectares is enormous. Luckily, the ZDA turned down the request flatly. (NAZ 2013)
In response to this dramatic scaling-down of the offer, the Chinese investor decided to pull out of the country. The land offered in Zambia was inadequate to justify the investment required, such as dams, irrigation, electricity and roads, which had been budgeted in relation to a much bigger project (Company interview 2015; Namutowe 2013). The Zambian partner showed a great deal of frustration, and quoted a cost of US$1 million that had already been spent in preparations for the project. In his view, an agreement made with the Zambian government had been undermined by the elections. He criticised the approach as bad conduct if the country wished to be perceived as a stable nation for foreign investments (Company interview 2015).
When President Sata died in office in 2014, he was temporarily replaced by Vice President Guy Scott and then by PF General Secretary Edgar Lungu. When Lungu took office, traditional leaders initially sought to capitalise on the political changes and approached the ZDA in an attempt to draw the Chinese investors back, as well as initiating conversations with the new president (ZDA and Chief interviews 2015). During an interview a few days after the change of presidents, the lands commissioner (Commissioner interview 2015) indicated that Sata's successor, President Lungu, might be more generous when it came to leaseholds, and that two or three large deals might be approved during his term. Indeed, Lungu quickly approved another Chinese acquisition of 20,000 hectares for biofuels purposes (Lusaka Times 2015), but the KBZ request for the land remained unanswered. After Lungu completed Sata’s presidential term and was elected again in 2016, Chief Katyetye simply stated that the Chinese project is ‘dead’, and any hopes for a new deal were postponed to ‘after the change of government’ (personal communication 2017).
Change of governments, change in land control
The events presented here illustrate that not all governments react in the same way to land deals, and that processes of land acquisition are deeply influenced by the shifting politics and policies within the respective country. The Chinese deal was negotiated over two governments and the approach taken by the MMD and the PF differed dramatically. National elections transformed the dynamics of the talks, as the PF regime drew control over land deals closer to the state apparatus. The landscape of competing and shifting interests delayed the official sign-off of a politically charged deal, eventually causing the Chinese investors to abandon their plans. This indicates that deals are not outcomes of foreign wills, but that power dynamics within countries matter.
The events also shift attention from foreign land grab to more national questions over who grabs what from whom. According to Chief Katyetye, what was being grabbed through these changes was not land but chiefs' authority over land, and the actor seeking to grab was not foreign, ‘but the government’ (Chief interview 2015). According to the chief, the PF had initiated several efforts to draw land control closer to the state apparatus, including a legislative draft seeking to further formalise the customary land administration, a re-drafted land policy and attempts to insert into the constitution a clause specifying that all land in Zambia should be vested absolutely in the president. These efforts did not go uncontested. In response, chieftains had warned that they would block the upcoming constitutional reform if it contained the wording ‘all land is vested in the President.’ The chief said that while state and presidential involvement in land control is not questioned, chiefs do not regard it as safe to surrender all powers to the president, or ‘to politicians’. Politicians do not necessarily act on behalf of Zambia at large or make sure that deals benefit rural communities. The chief, who had himself been a PF politician, explained that politicians serve only for brief periods and they ‘may play tricks’, or ‘be out of office any time’. By contrast, traditional leaders were rooted, present and located in the land; ‘this land was inherited and should not be given away.’ The chief said that traditional leaders typically consider their primary role as custodians of the land – if not of all land, then certainly of customary lands (Ibid.).
This view coincides with Baldwin’s research on chiefs in Zambia, which points to a perception that while ‘politicians will come and go’, most chiefs have ‘longer time horizons’ because they ‘expect to rule for life (and then to have someone from within their family succeed them)’ (2016, 106–107). Chiefs in Zambia are generally understood as embedded in their communities in the sense that their own livelihood and well-being are closely tied to the development of their communities more broadly (91). Even so, claims that chiefs are inherently the authentic representatives of their communities should not be taken for granted (178). Rather, the complexity of land dealings deepens, as the relationships among traditional leaders, communities and the state come into view. While chiefs may perceive themselves as guardians of the land, they compete for political legitimacy as protectors of the people. According to the lands minister, the president is the person responsible for defending people from the threat of displacement: ‘Let people realise that even if they are in chiefdoms, they are all protected by the President, and that they can’t just be displaced anyhow from their places’ (as cited in Lisulo 2013). The processes of land acquisition deeply influence the dynamics of this discourse.
Given the uncharted route that Zambia is taking under Lungu, wider political questions are warranted. In some respects, Lungu follows the resource-nationalistic legacy of Sata. However, aside from nationalising farms and continuing the Zambianisation programme are the ‘Chambia’ and ‘Chambianisation’ accusations in public discourse. Lungu’s alleged ties to China and the effective purging of much of the leadership of the PF under Sata and the return to positions of influence of large numbers of former MMD politicians, including former MMD president Rupiah Banda, now a close advisor of President Lungu, suggest that governmental reactions to land deals are highly personalised. One question asked to the lands commissioner was whether the approach of vesting all land in one man did not risk opening up the situation to arbitrary or preferential treatment by the acting president. In addition, MMD governmental documents had spelt out concern about what might be called ‘individualised’ land governance, or, as a working document put it, problems of ‘personality versus office’, raising the ‘potential for political interference if land is vested in one person, the President’ (GRZ 2006, 4.2.2). The lands commissioner responded that even if such decisions were to be debated within a larger committee, the president would still have the final say. A contingent political approach to land ownership was also posed as the most natural thing, as ‘all policies change over time’ (Commissioner interview 2015). Ironically, not all policies change over time. Rather, the question of the presidential power over land has held up policy and constitutional reforms in Zambia for a very long time.
Conclusion
The Chinese request for land in Zambia demonstrates that reactions to land deals are multiple. It is not simply a competitive power game between state and customary offices, and neither are struggles over land always a conflict between the foreign, national, and local powers and interests. In Zambia, a categorical framing of interests and actors does not capture the realities, specifically not when land dealings spill over into national elections. Battles are contingent upon national land politics, upon political parties, and upon state and customary offices. While one government can push for private leaseholds, another can push back to halt them. While one president can veto land transfers, a new president can welcome them. While some chiefs are willing to release large parcels of land, others hold on to their customary authority and search for novel ways to retain it and to benefit from long-term investment. Who is a resource nationalist here, and who grabs what from whom, is not easily categorised. It is not simply a power game between state vis-à-vis customary offices, or one party against the other; rather, different rulers have different stands. These multiple and contradictory politics of land have held back the development of a durable land policy in Zambia for many years. And yet this complex politicking may legitimise what might be called a statutory land grab, as customary control seems to be increasingly monitored.
As the narrative shows, land politics continues, such that how land dealings play out, and what their outcomes will be, is difficult to generalise and predict. Land politics, like all politics, is contingent on shifts in society and whoever has the power to determine them. More than anything, the Chinese request for a massive parcel of Zambian land, its near acceptance and the investor’s eventual withdrawal, show the high stakes involved in Zambian land battles. A state may therefore react differently to land requests, depending on the nature of the stakes involved.