Convenor(s)
Alava Henni / University of Helsinki
Jones Ben / University of East Anglia
This panel looks at the relationship between civil society and local politics with a view to contributing toward a more precise understanding of religious actors as political actors. Papers in the panel should analyse the role that non-state actors such as churches, missionary organizations and faith-based NGOs play in conflicts and contestations over land and property in Africa. These institutions and organisations play critical roles in the areas of education, health and service provision. This also means that they are engaged in the business of popular mobilisation and local politics. Religious institutions and NGOs occupy large tracts of land in places where land conflicts are becoming more and more pronounced. They are major employers and have access to resources. In many such contexts, the authorities that define legal ownership are plural – government, customary and religious. Religious authorities are sometimes called on to act as mediators in disputes over land and property. This double role; as land owners and hence parties to conflicts, and as mediators in the disputes of others; makes these actors particularly interesting cases for exploring the overlapping claims to ownership and authority in contemporary Africa. Papers explore these themes through historical and contemporary case studies.
“Terre promise?”: Églises, ONG confessionnelles et contestation autour de la propriété en Afrique
L’objectif de ce panel est de s’intéresser à la relation entre la société civile et la vie politique locale, en vue de contribuer à une compréhension située des acteurs religieux en tant qu’acteurs politiques.
Il s’agit de s’interroger sur le rôle que les acteurs non étatiques tels que les Églises, les organisations missionnaires et les ONG confessionnelles occupent dans les conflits et les contestations autour de la terre et de la propriété en Afrique. Ces institutions et organisations jouent un rôle essentiel dans les domaines de l’éducation, la santé et la prestation des services. Cela signifie aussi qu’elles sont engagées dans des activités de mobilisation populaire et dans la politique locale. Les institutions religieuses et les ONG occupent de vastes parcelles de terre et sont donc des employeurs non négligeables, ont accès aux ressources dans des endroits où les conflits fonciers sont de plus en plus exprimés. Dans de nombreux cas, les autorités qui définissent la propriété juridique sont plurielles –le gouvernement, le droit coutumier et religieux. Les autorités religieuses sont parfois appelées à agir comme médiateur dans les conflits fonciers. Elles occupent un rôle double : à la fois, comme propriétaires fonciers, et donc partie prenante dans les conflits, mais également comme médiateurs dans d’autres conflits. Une étude spécifique de ces acteurs permettra de mieux comprendre les chevauchements des revendications autour de la propriété et les questions liées à l’exercice de l’autorité dans l’Afrique contemporaine.
Liberski-Bagnoud Danouta / CNRS
The Sovereignty of the Earth
La communication porte sur la situation de la terre en Afrique subsaharienne et le changement de régime symbolique qu’elle connaît depuis l’introduction par l’administration coloniale de la notion de propriété foncière et, dans la foulée, l’extension du domaine de la marchandise à la sphère des rapports complexes que l’homme noue avec le sol où il demeure. Hors des sentiers déjà explorés par les nombreux travaux sur « la question foncière en Afrique», l’enjeu de cette étude est d’analyser en toutes ses conséquences la mutation conceptuelle que représente pour les populations paysannes du Burkina Faso la fiction juridique d’une terre transformée en bien que l’on peut s’approprier, louer, vendre. Ces nouvelles donnes juridiques et économiques modifient à la racine le mode sur lequel les communautés villageoises en cette partie de l’Afrique fabriquent du territoire, c’est à dire instituent les lieux où séjourner en humain est pensable, sur fond d’un interdit qui exclut rigoureusement la terre de la sphère de l’Avoir. Cet interdit fondamental frappe l’acte de vendre la terre comme celui de la délimiter et de la borner. La formulation exacte de l’interdit lève un coin du voile sur la logique qui le sous tend : « Vendre la terre, c’est vendre les personnes. Celui qui prend l’argent de la terre, mange les gens ». Il s’agit d’entendre en cet aphorisme l’exacte portée d’un acte qui est pensé comme autophage, en ce qu’il touche à la structure même de la société.
Alava Henni / University of Helsinki
Contested notions of belonging and ownership around church land in Africa: A case study from Northern Uganda
Land has received little attention in research on religion in Africa. Important contributions to the understanding of contemporary Christianity in Africa have focused on spiritual authority/power, deliverance rituals, transnational relations, political influence, material wealth, the response to the AIDS pandemic, and the dramatic increase of faith-based organisations. Yet the land on which churches operate has not been subject to scholarly engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of South Africa, where the end of the Apartheid regime involved a request for churches to register land holdings, leading to the transfer of some church land back to the original owners. The lack of attention to church land issues outside of South Africa is intriguing as land is a critical element in Christian theology, for church development, and in African societies. Moreover, some churches are amongst the largest landowners in regions with increasing contest over land.
Following an overview of the research done on missionary land in Africa and of recent media accounts on disputes over land held by religious actors in East Africa, this paper presents a historically grounded case study of land disputes around a Catholic and Anglican mission station in Kitgum. At the core of these disputes are competing notions of ownership, authority, and belonging – yet also debates over ‘a common good’ that are not satisfactorily addressed in existing literature on land conflict in Africa.
Shroff Catrine / Aarhus University
Church Land and Schools: Commercial Enterprise or Community Development?
The rivalry between Christian churches in Uganda today involves contestation over land. Churches require land to build sites of worship and fellowship, and an office and a pastor’s house to run the church; once these buildings are in place, many churches want to acquire more land to put up a school, at times also a health centre.
In former days, when land was in plenty, chiefs gave the Catholic and the Anglican missionaries land to farm and set up churches, schools, and health centers – seen as agents of development for the common good, a Catholic mission could develop a community by providing education, health care, and enhance food security. Nowadays, new, often Evangelical, churches, have to buy land and education is a commodity in high demand. Churches – both ‘old’ and ‘new’ – offer education on a commercial basis and it adds to the notion that churches are ‘businesses’; no longer working towards the common good.
Based on a case study from south-east Uganda of a dispute between a Catholic and a Pentecostal clergyman over a piece of land that both of them wanted to use for educational purposes, this paper examines the difficult situation for clergy to whom setting up schools is part of both church development and community development, yet the commercialization of land and privatization of social services add to public notions of churches as ‘businesses’ and clergy as ‘greedy’.
Jones Ben / University of East Anglia
Registering land: NGOs, the Catholic Church and differing land claims in a Ugandan sub-county
In Uganda there is increasing competition over land. This paper examines the role of NGOs and churches in debates over land. I take as my point of departure long-term fieldwork from Katine sub-county in the northern part of the Teso region. The paper looks at the structures put up by the NGO on the grounds of the local government headquarters. I show how this played into prevailing debates about the role of NGOs and their relationship to the state. I also examine the way the Catholic Church was party to a land dispute with local farmers over the size of the parish plot. On one level there is an argument about how NGOs remain extrinsic to local politics, their wealth is derived from elsewhere and their work is closely allied to the government. The Catholic Church, by contrast is more embedded in local political dynamics. Churches and NGOs use different registers to stake their claims. More generally though the paper points to the way they are both relatively powerful actors, and are able to secure their interests at a time of increasing inequality, and growing competition over land.