IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v95y2020ics0264837719317600.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Resisting, frustrating or embracing the urban agenda: Chieftaincies in Southern Africa examined constitutionally and statutorily

Author

Listed:
  • Chirisa, Innocent
  • Matamanda, Abraham R.
  • Mazanhi, Patience

Abstract

There is no comprehensive scholarship, which compares cases of how chieftaincies foster or hinder urban land use in Africa. What seems to exist are disparate pieces of literature focusing on different cases without offering a diagnostic picture of the way constitutions and statutes have been crafted across regions. The paper advances the argument that urbanisation is a reality and a sweeping force across the terrain of the global regions, Africa included. Proponents (such as Mbiba, 2017; Freund, 2007; Cirolia, and Berrisford, 2017) have argued that the best way to deal with urbanisation is to ensure a smooth transfer of land from chiefdoms into municipal areas, which inevitably and inadvertently ‘eat into the land of the chiefs’. A case study methodology was used through which the various national constitutions and ‘chief laws’ for selected countries were examined in terms of provision, hence the application of thematic content analysis of the documents. The selected case study is Zimbabwe. Among other issues explored in this study, it emerged that these states make the land delivery process cumbersome when chiefs dictate the pace of urban development. The study recommends the attenuation of the powers of chieftaincies based on collaborative negotiation for the sake of sustainable urban development.

Suggested Citation

  • Chirisa, Innocent & Matamanda, Abraham R. & Mazanhi, Patience, 2020. "Resisting, frustrating or embracing the urban agenda: Chieftaincies in Southern Africa examined constitutionally and statutorily," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:95:y:2020:i:c:s0264837719317600
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104618
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837719317600
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104618?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2013. "Pre‐Colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(1), pages 113-152, January.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Tristan Reed & James A. Robinson, 2014. "Chiefs: Economic Development and Elite Control of Civil Society in Sierra Leone," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(2), pages 319-368.
    3. Akaateba, Millicent Awialie & Huang, Huang & Adumpo, Emile Akangoa, 2018. "Between co-production and institutional hybridity in land delivery: Insights from local planning practice in peri-urban Tamale, Ghana," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 215-226.
    4. Abraham R Matamanda, 2020. "Battling the informal settlement challenge through sustainable city framework: experiences and lessons from Harare, Zimbabwe," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 217-231, March.
    5. Killian MUNZWA & Jonga WELLINGTON, 2010. "Urban Development In Zimbabwe: A Human Settlement Perspective," Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 5(5(14)), pages 120-146, February.
    6. Festus Boamah, 2014. "How and why chiefs formalise land use in recent times: the politics of land dispossession through biofuels investments in Ghana," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(141), pages 406-423, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mihaylova, Iva, 2023. "Perpetuating the malign legacy of colonialism? Traditional chiefs’ power and deforestation in Sierra Leone," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    2. Festus A. Asaaga, 2021. "Building on “Traditional” Land Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Rural Ghana: Adaptive or Anachronistic?," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-17, February.
    3. Francesco Amodio & Giorgio Chiovelli & Sebastian Hohmann, 2024. "The Employment Effects of Ethnic Politics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 456-491, April.
    4. Ali, Merima & Fjeldstad, Odd‐Helge & Shifa, Abdulaziz B., 2020. "European colonization and the corruption of local elites: The case of chiefs in Africa," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 80-100.
    5. Bennett, Daniel L. & Faria, Hugo J. & Gwartney, James D. & Morales, Daniel R., 2017. "Economic Institutions and Comparative Economic Development: A Post-Colonial Perspective," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 503-519.
    6. Leander Heldring, 2019. "The Origins of Violence in Rwanda," HiCN Working Papers 299, Households in Conflict Network.
    7. Cornelius Christian & James Fenske, 2015. "Economic shocks and unrest in French West Africa," CSAE Working Paper Series 2015-01, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    8. Kansanga, Moses Mosonsieyiri & Arku, Godwin & Luginaah, Isaac, 2019. "Powers of exclusion and counter-exclusion: The political ecology of ethno-territorial customary land boundary conflicts in Ghana," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 12-22.
    9. Lechler, Marie & McNamee, Lachlan, 2018. "Indirect Colonial Rule Undermines Support for Democracy: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Namibia," Munich Reprints in Economics 62825, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    10. Kansanga, Moses & Andersen, Peter & Atuoye, Kilian & Mason-Renton, Sarah, 2018. "Contested commons: Agricultural modernization, tenure ambiguities and intra-familial land grabbing in Ghana," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 215-224.
    11. Fenske, James, 2015. "African polygamy: Past and present," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 58-73.
    12. Daron Acemoglu & Isaías N. Chaves & Philip Osafo-Kwaako & James A. Robinson, 2014. "Indirect Rule and State Weakness in Africa: Sierra Leone in Comparative Perspective," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume IV: Sustainable Growth, pages 343-370, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Yang, Hyunjoo, 2019. "Family clans and public goods: Evidence from the New Village Beautification Project in South Korea," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 34-50.
    14. Mizuno, Nobuhiro, 2016. "Political structure as a legacy of indirect colonial rule: Bargaining between national governments and rural elites in Africa," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 1023-1039.
    15. Meriggi, Niccoló F. & Bulte, Erwin, 2018. "Leader and villager behavior: Experimental evidence from Cameroon," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 324-332.
    16. Archibong, Belinda, 2019. "Explaining divergence in the long-term effects of precolonial centralization on access to public infrastructure services in Nigeria," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 123-140.
    17. Amodio, Francesco & Chiovelli, Giorgio & Munson, Dylan, 2022. "Pre-colonial ethnic institutions and party politics in Africa," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 969-980.
    18. Johan Fourie & Nonso Obikili, 2019. "Decolonizing with data: The cliometric turn in African economic history," Working Papers 02/2019, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    19. Galvis, Luis-Armando (ed.), 2017. "Estudios sociales del Pacífico colombiano," Books, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, number 2017-12, August.
    20. Naso, Pedro & Bulte, Erwin & Swanson, Tim, 2020. "Legal pluralism in post-conflict Sierra Leone," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:95:y:2020:i:c:s0264837719317600. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.