The Land Question Revisited

The land tenure system of the PFDJ has taken a center stage. It has become a very volatile issue. We know the PFDJ will aggravate the problem by making all Eritreans landless, and no solution will come from it.

The question is does the opposition have the intellectual capacity to take charge and have a road map that will tackle this issue step by step? Does it have the wisdom and the humility to learn from history in solving this issue on behalf and for the advancement and welfare of the Eritrean people? In short, will it able to recommend a proposal that is in accordance with the rule of law and the respect of property rights and thereby ensure liberty? I wish it all the good luck. In the sprit of doing my share, if it helps here is a sequel to my “A Modest Proposal for a Way Out,” and my refinement on this subject.

The current status in Eritrea is that all land is nationalized by the state. Maybe appropriate terms to use are that the PFDJ owns all land in Eritrea. And one uses land in Eritrea only under the guidance and permission of the PFDJ. Even at that, one is not assured of getting a piece of the action, since one is at the mercy of the whimsical behavior of the PFDJ. The situation we are in today is much different than the situation that existed in Eritrea during the Italian colonialism and during the Federation and the Haileselassie eras. Under the rule of the PFDJ, politics and sometimes who has hard currencies enters into the equation of who gets land. This means the whole Eritrean population has to blindly obey the PFDJ in order to get land. This maybe too forgiving on my part, speaking once mind will lead one to the dungeon, and forget land. This is nothing but slavery.

Villages - the so called traditional Diesa, and families - the so called traditional Tselmi, no longer own land in Eritrea. These Diesa and Tselmi land tenure systems used to be the two forms of land ownership in Eritrea (at least in the Highlands); the former more prominent in Hamasien and Akelguzai and the latter more prominent in Seraye. Now, the state owns all land in Eritrea be it in the Highlands or the Lowlands. That should be the starting premise of any serious examination of the land question in Eritrea.

Needless to state, monopolization of ownership of the land by the state is nothing but condemning the people to slavery. “Private property is the foundation of liberty.” One of the fundamental foundations of ensuring liberty in Eritrea is to make sure that the land ownership reverts back to the real owners of the land - the people. The ratified constitution has to take into account of this important matter and needs to be modified accordingly. At least experience has vividly shown us of the folly of allowing the state to monopolize the ownership of land. This has never happened in Eritrean history. (Even the Italian colonizers did not monopolize the ownership of Eritrean land hundred percent.)

In the lowlands, just because the settlers happen to be pastoralists does not mean they do not own the land. They do, they know where their herds are supposed to graze and not. This is irrespective of the way the Italian colonialists behaved in this matter. The Italians passed a draconian measure where they decreed a big portion of the Eritrean land (in the Highlands and Lowlands) to be state land. One of the biggest victims of that measure was the Tewahdo church where it lost a lot of land; the aim was to emasculate the Tewahdo church and thus weaken the Eritrean resistance against Italian aggression. No surprise here, since they came to Eritrea to steal its land and its natural resources. Still, it is questionable that the Italians ever enforced their own edicts absolutely and hundred percent of the time in all lands so decreed state property. (The Tewahdo church was a different matter since it was a challenger to the Italian power.) I have no intention to whitewash the sins of a colonizer. Eritrea is supposedly now under the hands of is own “children.” No nation worth its salt will inherit, honor and live by the brutal colonial decree. Sadly, that is how the PFDJ is behaving in the lowlands. All decent Eritreans should support the restoration of the ownership of the land in the lowlands to its rightful owners - the descendents of the original ancestral settlers of the land.

Once that is established those who want to make use of the land, say for farming, should enter into commercial contractual agreements with the owners, whereby they pay rents. The contracts should be free of government intervention. The role of the government in this case should only be to enforce contractual agreements willingly entered upon. That is what the rule of law calls upon in this matter. Let normal free market of demand and supply determine the price, the nature and duration of the contractual commercial agreements. If the state wants to take some land for the use of all kinds of worthy developmental projects then it has to negotiate with the owners, the people, and pay them market price as a compensation for the exchange of their land. Only despots who have no respect for property rights take the property of people without due compensation. Needles to state this principle applies all over Eritrea - Lowlands and Highlands.

As to land ownership in the villages of the highlands, as a first step, I recommend that we revert back to the traditional Diesa system. Cities such as Asmara who are encroaching on peasant lands should pay market price compensation to the villagers whose lands have been incorporated into the cities. In a traditional Diesa system, only the village owns the land and not like current Eritrea where the state owns the land. The assumption by some that we currently have a traditional Diesa system is wrong. We do not. The only thing we have that looks like a Diesa system is that the apportionment of the land is done “equally” among all the villagers. Even in this respect, unlike the traditional Diesa system, sometimes politics enters into the equation of who gets land. The traditional Diesa system includes ownership and apportionment - ownership belongs to the village and apportionment is carried out equally among all adult villagers. The beauty of this traditional system is politics does not enter into the calculation of who gets land. The only and sole qualification of getting plots of land is one has to prove that one belongs to the village through blood lineage. In short, one has to hail from the village. And one then has a share in the village land.

These days it maybe very difficult to go back to the Tselmi system since years have passed after its demolition by the Dergue regime. This system is even much stricter than the Diesa system since the way one gets plots of land is determined by family blood lineage, a much narrower criterion. Again politics does not enter into the equation of who gets land. In short, one has to prove that once blood lineage belongs to a family, or one has to prove that one is a member of the bigger family. And then one has a share in the family land. This smells a little like capitalism. Now, it is difficult to restore back the Tselmi system, thus the only recourse for areas who used to have the Tslemi system, including my home village, is to adopt the Diesa system since for all intents and purposes they are using anyhow a system that looks like the Diesa when it comes to apportionment among the villagers. That way initially after the collapse of the PFDJ, we will have a Diesa system in all Eritrean land settled by agriculturalists.

What we observe in both systems is that liberty is ensured. Authority of land administration is done at the level where there is intimate knowledge - at the local level and at the village level. Minority rights are respected. This has some hints of federalism, at least in land administration. In these systems, there is no need of kowtowing and cajoling to the state in order to get plots of land. These systems give some sort of semblance of assurance for the people not to fear the state. If one is Eritrean by blood one is assured of getting plots of land through both systems, no questions asked. Our traditional customary laws, the so called HiGi EndAba, deal enormously with this land and inheritance issues and had served Eritreans beautifully with justice and fairness for more than about five centuries. Economists may quarrel how such laws and systems inefficiently allocate resources. But to be sure they kept the peace in Eritrea. And in practice these traditional systems have proved themselves without any doubt that they are better models than the national collectivist model of the PFDJ.

The intention of a liberal democrat is to remove a collectivist entity from interfering in the individual farming economic activities of the Eritrean people. As our people say, let the farmer farm and let the trader trade - no need of government intervention.

Personally, I believe the Tselmi system is relatively a better economic system than the Diesa. The Tselemi system is much closer to a private ownership of land, while the Diesa system is a communal system. In other words, the Diesa is nothing but a form of communism in land ownership - village ownership. Naturally the Diesa faces the economic inefficiency that is inherent in a system of common property, the so called “Free Rider“ problem. That is since the land is owned by the whole village there is an incentive (or disincentive) for no one to take good care of it because of the continual apportionment of the land every five to seven years. There is no accountability. The individual reaps the benefits and passes the associated costs to the village.

Moreover, it ties the farmer to his village, no incentive to move around and take economic risks. One cannot mortgage the land and open other worthwhile economic activities. That is one cannot borrow capital from banks in order to advance worthwhile economic activities using the land as a collateral, since the village and not the farmer owns the land. In short, there is no credit market to speak of. A prosperous economy cannot function properly without an efficient and well regulated credit market. It does not encourage an entrepreneurial spirit, since capital that is tied to the land is not allowed to move freely to other economic activities. An active, innovative and energetic farmer cannot expand his agricultural enterprises since land is not bought and sold like other commodities in the marketplace. The market is not allowed to freely and efficiently allocate the resources. Hence land degradation and economic inefficiency and rigidity. A lot of latent capital remains hidden, unused and buried in an immovable land. The curse of many third world poor nations. (See: “The Mystery of Capital,” by Hernando De Soto.)

Hence, eventually a liberal democratic state has to radically change the method of land ownership in Eritrea from that of a communal one to that of a private and individual one. This requires a serious and methodical study by economists, anthropologists and sociologists. In a nut shell, I believe the Diesa system has to be changed from a communal ownership into that of ownership of plots of land by individual farmers. Land has to be governed by the rules of a free economic market competition. This is a move from a land ownership that is monopolized by a state, to that initially of an ownership by a village, with the final destination being to that of ownership of plots of land by individual farmers. In other words, there is a need to move towards private property in land ownership. This assures individual liberty and ensures economic progress. That is the only way Eritrea can progress in agriculture. This does not mean the state should have no role in land ownership; it can and should have but it should not monopolize it. (For more about this subject see: [1] “Property and Freedom,” by Richard Pipes; [2] “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” by David Landes.)

An attitude of an Eritrean on how land ownership should be handled tells a lot. In particular, it reveals if once mind is still cluttered with unworkable collectivist and socialist ideas. A baggage that is still around with us. An ideology that is still crippling some in the opposition. This is a test for the opposition. It is a test if the opposition really believes in the rule of law and the liberties that entail from it. Like the respect of property rights and enforcement of contractual obligations, two fundamental requirements for a market economy to operate smoothly. Agriculture is the biggest sector of the Eritrean economy. Well, if one believes in a market economy, let us see how one handles the issue of land ownership in Eritrea. There cannot be a market economy in Eritrea if ownership of land is socialized and monopolized by the state; this is irrespective of whether it is the PFDJ or the opposition that is in control of state power. Ideology matters. No two ways about it.

Thanks.

Mogos Tekeste