Mr Dampha,
    Well that was a good piece, but as you have rightly pointed out, you are not
conversant with this particular problem. Maybe if you have some free time you should carry out a
research on this issue and similar ones that is plaguing the Kombos at the moment.

This was not land that is/was left unused, in fact it has already been divided up amongst
people who need to build houses for their families.

If Brufut had not been cursed by its proximity to TDA, this problem would not have come about
at all. Allocation of land for housing and village/town expansion goes on all over The Gambia
everyday, and we do not even hear of them. Also The Government has not declared all lands in
The Gambia, government owned, it is only land in the kombos, I doubt if that is in fact fair.

One thing am shocked about not finding in your piece though  is the role being played by selfish
entrepreneurs like Taf and the blatant unfairness of refusing people to build houses for their families,
though they might be just mud houses.. We have to be careful not to be seen to try to blackmail people
with the argument that as development is needed in their communities, they should fold their hands and
stay mute when their land is being robbed off them in broad daylight. Development at what price, homelessness
for them? I am waiting Mr Sanneh's take on this.

I will apologize in advance if you are in any way offended by anything in this response to
your piece, rest assured its not intentional. Maybe as am personally affected here, am being
short-sighted or even selfish.

With respect
Manneh

Dampha Kebba wrote:

> I enter this debate cognizant of the emotive feelings discussions about land
> evoke. People are blowing each other up in Palestine because of land, among
> other things of course. You go around the world, you discover a number of
> conflicts whose origins can be traced to disputes about land. I hope the
> Gambia situation NEVER reaches such catastrophic proportions. I do not in
> any way want to sound alarmist, but I am afraid that if people do not
> approach this subject objectively, we run the risk of festering an
> uncontrollable situation back home. At the end of the day, the solutions
> that is going to be reached might not be the politically correct solution,
> but I hope it is going to be the JUST solution for the ENTIRE Gambian
> population. Like Ms. Joh opined, the fairness issue has to be addressed.
> Tough choices lay ahead for the coming government. A caveat from my end at
> the onset. I am trying to look forward and am motivated to write because of
> the vital point raised by Mr. Sidi Sanneh about how our land tenure system
> might impact investor confidence. I am not trying to address the justice of
> the Taf Construction Case. I do not know enough about the case. But I hope I
> am well-positioned to address the issue of fairness raised by Ms. Joh and
> Mr. Sanneh's point.
>
> In my opinion, after we gained independence from the British and decided
> that we wanted to belong to one country, The Gambia, we became wedded to a
> unit. Our little Kingdoms in the past became absorbed into this country
> called The Gambia. Now, this does not mean that people's property rights
> that existed before and during colonialism became null and void and absorbed
> as well. People's land rights should have been addressed adequately
> post-independence. To some extent, those rights have been addressed. But
> here is where we have some murkiness because decision makers were and are
> still trying to be politically correct. The issue of land tenure in Gambia
> and West African countries like Nigeria is very complex, to say the least. I
> do not profess to be anything close to an authority in this field. In that
> spirit, I also respectfully counsel people that do not know enough about
> this field to tread carefully and not be lead by emotions to  say things
> they will regret later or say things that will just divide us and would not
> provide meaningful solutions to the problem. If my recollection serves me
> right, I remember that with all their jurists in Nigeria, few like the
> storied Taslim Elias (Late World Court Judge) was brave enough to write a
> thesis on the land tenure system in Nigeria and exhaustively articulated the
> issue of Customary Land Tenure. I must tell you that his book could easily
> rank as the most difficult book I have ever read.
>
> Going back to Gambia. When we gained independence and decided to form one
> country, we also adopted a set of rules to govern us. Among other things, we
> drew a Constitution and also adopted English Common Law as our residuary
> law. We also maintain some of our customs to govern certain aspects of life
> like marriage, land tenure, inheritance etc. for the predominantly Muslim
> population. The challenge we faced was to try and mesh our customs with the
> common law and our Constitution and other Acts passed by Parliament. This is
> by no means an easy task. Its difficulty is more pronounced in the Zoo we
> have back home where mediocrity is the order of the day. We have politicians
> that do not have the wherewithal or the integrity to do what is right in
> this situation.
>
> Since we are one country, the ideal situation would have been for all the
> land to belong to the Government (the whole country). The government will in
> turn lease out the land to private citizens in order to develop the land.
> That would hopefully take care of our present predicament where people will
> claim that their ancestors have customary title to the land and prevent
> others with means from developing the land. Have we reached that state yet?
> Absolutely not. According to our laws, the government has to compensate the
> former owners of the land before it can acquire the land. This clearly
> requires the setting up of a mechanism to determine who the former owners
> are in the first place. Then we have to determine what is fair compensation
> for them. That is the only legal way our government can usurp 'people's
> lands'. Otherwise, the government will have to pass undemocratic and
> draconian decrees and use force to acquire 'people's lands'.
>
> The task ahead is how to acquire this land for the common good of the
> Gambian people and at the same time adequately compensating people that have
> legitimate claims to the land as we speak. I think the point raised by Mr.
> Sanneh about Local Government Decentralization will go a long way to
> alleviating this problem. As I mentioned here the other day, in Burkina Faso
> (Gastions des Terriors) children as young as ten were used by experts to
> demarcate the boundaries of villages. The reasoning there was that these
> children will not be motivated by politics to claim land that do not belong
> to them. Children go beyond the land used by their parents for farming
> purposes in order to play and wonder around. Not that what the children say
> would be definitive, but their estimation of the boundaries of their
> community would most likely be less tainted than that of the adults in the
> community. In short, we can learn from the Burkinabe experience and craft
> ways of determining some of the Customary Ownership Rights on lands that has
> not been acquired by the government as we speak. Once those rights have been
> determined, government need not compensate the previous owners with cash in
> order to bring that land into the regime currently governing land in Banjul
> and Kombo St. Mary.
>
> For instance government can agree to acquire adjacent land that has not been
> claimed by the community (and NOT currently developed) and develop that land
> in a way that the property values of neighboring lands will skyrocket. For
> example, government can agree to build roads, hotels, power stations etc. in
> a given area and regard that as compensation to the inhabitants of that area
> in order to bring their lands within the confines of our contemporary laws
> (as opposed to customary laws). Brufut is a good example. Clearly the
> proximity of the TDA helped enhance property values in that area. The
> government created that and not the former customary rulers. That could have
> been used in negotiations with customary rulers to bring Brufut into the
> 'Leasehold System'. In short, Recognize the legitimate claims of the
> inhabitants of Brufut. Give them 99 year leases. Acquire the lands around
> Brufut that the villagers cannot lay legitimate claims on. Give that land to
> Taf, who has the resources to 'develop' the place.
>
> Of course for this system to work, we must have a visionary government that
> people have confidence in. Brufut people for instance have to be assured
> that legitimate claims will be honored by the government and converted to 99
> year leases. People should also be assured that the government will allocate
> the land it acquired on an equitable and uniformed basis. In other words,
> Gambians that can develop the land will be given the land for a nominal fee.
>
> If we want to attract foreign direct investment, we must, among other
> things, tackle our land tenure problem. This haphazard system whereby we
> have different authorities allocating land, need to stop. We should not have
> the government allocating land in certain areas and Local Authorities
> allocating land in other areas. We need a uniformed system whereby the
> government is the sole owner of the land and is free to lease (rent) the
> land out to citizens that can develop the land (not just by building on it,
> but farming on it as well). In order to reach that stage, we have to tackle
> head-on the legitimate claims of customary owners. We have to do that in an
> equitable manner to benefit ALL Gambians. If we do not do that, but go ahead
> and 'seize' people's lands willy-nilly, we are just postponing a problem. No
> one wants to have a Zimbabwe situation in Gambia. Investors (both foreign
> and local) do not want to develop a piece of land just to be told thirty
> years down the line that others have legitimate claims to the land.
>
> Our future government needs to address this situation together with Local
> Government Decentralization and ensure that people are clear about who owns
> what. This is a gigantic task that awaits our next government.
> KB
>
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