Indigenous Peoples in Southern Africa

Abstract

This article considers the complex cases of indigenous peoples in three Commonwealth countries in southern Africa: Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. In terms of national-level policy, the governments of these countries do not differentiate indigenous peoples from the rest of their populations. They do, however, have programmes aimed at assisting ‘marginalised’ or ‘disadvantaged’ communities. In this article, three main dimensions related to indigenous peoples’ rights in southern Africa are discussed: national policies, indigenous peoples’ rights, and rights to representation; land and resource rights, including rights to water; and language and gender rights. The paper concludes with an assessment of where indigenous peoples stand today in southern Africa.     

农村基层组织人员贪污贿赂犯罪立法解释适用问题研究

村民委员会、村党组织、村经济组织的成员和村小组长、村民委员会下设各委员会委员等在农村基层组织中担任一定的职务、履行一定的职责的人都是"村民委员会等农村基层组织人员",其构成贪污贿赂犯罪必然发生在协助人民政府从事行政管理工作的过程中,具有时间性。而对如何认定协助行政管理行为的完成,论文提供了一种路径,即假设不存在村基层组织的协助管理行为,由人民政府直接完成现实中由村基层组织协助完成的行政管理工作,那么在假设条件下,认定人民政府某些具体行政管理工作完成所采用的标准,应适用于村基层组织人员协助管理工作完成的认定。     

土地承包经营权入股有限责任公司问题研究——以农民股东与债权人的利益冲突与平衡为视角

农民股东用以入股的土地承包经营权构成公司对债权人担保的"责任财产",但其目前又承载着事实上的生存保障功能。土地承包经营权的"责任财产性"与"保障性"形成明显的冲突与紧张关系,由此产生农民股东与债权人之间的利益冲突。分别探讨公司成立阶段、运营阶段、清算阶段的农民股东与债权人之间的利益冲突的表现形式及其解决方案,尤其对于清算阶段的利益冲突,在评析当前各家学说利弊得失的基础上,提出"优先购买权+入股保险+入股风险基金"的三位一体的立体化解决思路,应具有十分重要的意义。     

Markets,War, and the Reconfiguration of Political Authority in Sierra Leone

Although Côte d'Ivoire recently emerged from a long period of protracted conflict, peace is indeed precarious. This is particularly the case in the country's western cocoa regions, where tensions between indigenous and migrant populations continue to pose a threat to Côte d'Ivoire's economic and political recovery. These tensions revolve around longstanding land disputes that culminated in violent attacks in the late 1990s, early 2000s and in the recent 2010–2011 post-election crisis. Using insights from field work in 2012 conducted in the cocoa regions, this article explores the issue of land tenure reform and politics in post-conflict Côte d'Ivoire. In so doing, it considers the legal and political dimensions of land tenure in the cocoa regions and the highly controversial 1998 land law. This provides the crucial context for analysing the historical and enduring nature of these disputes, the critical importance of land reform in contemporary Côte d'Ivoire and the relationship between the “land question” and peace at both local and national levels.     

The need to improve the living conditions of women in Nuba Mountains,Southern Kordofan

ABSTRACT

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) not only ended Africa's longest civil war, it aimed to transform Sudanese society. A critical element of this transformation is uplifting the status of women. This article surveys the conditions faced by women in two villages in Nuba Mountains/Southern Kordofan, principally their ability to access land for farming, credit facilities and barriers to education and health services, and whether the implementation of the CPA has resulted in any concrete changes.     

The Wheels of Misfortune: The Street and Cycles of Displacement in Surabaya,Indonesia

This focus of this paper is not Surabaya's increasingly free-flowing streets, but the people those streets displace. Based on research in a low-income neighbourhood, or kampung, of Indonesia's second largest city, this paper shows how the street facilitates displacement and exacerbates the marginalisation of underemployed kampung men. This argument is set against the struggles over the use of public space between Surabaya's kampung residents and the municipality since independence and is grounded through the biographical detail of seven kampung men over the ten years since the economic crisis of 1998.     

Media Dissent and Peri-urban Land Struggles in Vietnam: The Case of the Văn Giang Incident

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of media-led dissent in Vietnam's contemporary land struggles. The analysis focuses on Vietnamese-language material published online by domestic and foreign media about the so-called V?n Giang incident – a high-profile land dispute that shook the country between 2009 and 2012. Looking at how the media treated this incident broadens studies of land struggles in Vietnam, which up till now have focused on peasants’ resistance strategies. This case not only shows that media practitioners engage in dissent with regard to land politics, but also that they engage in more straightforward criticism of the state and its corporate redevelopment partners than what most analyses of rural land struggles in Vietnam, centered on the micro-level and on “lawful” (O'Brien) forms of resistance, would lead one to believe. Illustrating this point, the author shows that media dissent throughout the V?n Giang land dispute openly challenged the government's justificatory discourse about “displacement for development” as well as the mismanagement of land resources on which political and economic elites rely to dispossess peasants from peri-urban lands. If it has not yet provoked major institutional changes, the media's contribution to land struggles has nevertheless succeeded in creating a genuine, national public debate on land politics in rapidly urbanizing Vietnam.     

Land Acquisition,Investment, and Development in the Lao Coffee Sector: Successes and Failures

ABSTRACT

Despite the increasing acknowledgment of scholars and practitioners that many large-scale agricultural land acquisitions in developing countries fail or never materialize, empirical evidence about how and why they fail to date is still scarce. Too often, land deals are portrayed as straightforward investments and their success is taken for granted. Looking at the coffee sector in Laos, the authors of this article explore dimensions of the land grab debate that have not yet been sufficiently examined. Coffee concessionaires in southern Laos often fail to use all of the land granted them and fail to produce high yields on the land they do use. Thus, the authors challenge the often-assumed superiority and effectiveness of large-scale versus small-scale production, specifically the argument that they modernize agricultural production and optimize land use. They argue that examining failed investments is as important as studying successful ones for understanding the implications of the land grabbing phenomenon for social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Knowledge about the scale of “failed land deals” provides important motivation for national governments to close the gap between intentions and actual outcomes. This article engages with the current debate on quality of investment and challenges the approach of employing land concessions as a vehicle for economic development in the Lao coffee sector and in other sectors and countries.     

推行土地整合实践研究——以广西崇左市为例

广西崇左市属于典型的喀斯特地貌,山多地少。为破解田地块小、田埂多、零星分散难题,崇左市近年大力推行土地整合工作,探索出了“上龙模式”、合作社模式、企业承包模式、民政企联袂模式等成功经验,取得了减少用工量和生产成本,推动机械化、规模化和专业化,增加面积产量和收益,促进农业农村科学发展等显著成效,但也存在思想观念滞后、整合成本攀升等困难和问题。要加快推进土地整合工作,必须切实解决好思想观念、整体推进、农民利益、资金缺口以及持续推进等问题。     

城镇化进程中的农村土地使用制度改革——以成都市和河南省为例

成都市在工业化和城镇化进程中,对农村土地使用制度进行了创新性的改革探索,取得了比较成功的经验,引发全国各地竞相学习和效仿,河南省土地改革饱受争议。河南省在实施以新型农村社区建设为主的新型城镇化引领"三化"协调发展的基础上,根据省情对农村土地使川制度相应进行了改革,在全面分析成都土地改革成功背后的逻辑,以及与河南省农村土地改革进行比较的基础上,该文对土地收革本身和与之相关的真题进行了深入探讨,并就中国未来农村土地改革提出了提高农民在上地增值收益中分配比重、统筹城乡社会保障建设、破除政府对土地一级市场垄断、加大农业科技投入和充分利用国际市场保障国家粮食发全的政策建议。