THE AUTHORS
- Patrice BIGOMBE LOGO is a Political Scientist, Lecturer and Researcher, Group for Administrative, Political and Social Researches (GRAPS), Cameroons chapter of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS), University of Yaounde II, Associate Lecturer, Panafrican Institute for Development, Douala (Cameroon) and the General Coordinator of Planet Survey – Cameroon, a national NGO for Environment Protection and Sustainable Development.
- Elise – Henriette BIKIE is an Anthropologist, Research Assistant, Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaounde, Cameroon and at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Yaounde, Cameroon.
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Gender role and behavior and the culturally ascribed statues develop the subjective awareness that one is a member of the male or female sex. They create the motivations to conform to the culturally determined expectations and to determine the rights, duties and power relations within the socio-economic system of society. Womens subordination existing in societies of every degree of complexity is not something that can be changed by rearranging certain tasks and roles in the social system. The potential for change lies in changing the social institutions at the same time as changing cultural assumption through consciousness – raising and involvement by both men and women.
Tsehai Berhane- Selassie (ed.), Gender Issues in Ethiopia, Addis-Ababa, Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis-Ababa University, November 1991, p. 3.
FOREWORD
This work is the result of (6) months of research and work. It was realised from October 1997 to March 1998 by two researchers :
Miss Elise Henriette Bikie, Anthropologist, Research Assistant, Yaounde Central Africa Catholic University and myself , Patrice BIGOMBE LOGO, Political Scientist, Lecturer, and Researcher (GRAPS)/University of Yaounde II, Associate Lecturer at Panafrican Institute for Development, Francophone Central African Region (Douala) and Co-ordinator of Planet Survey, a Cameroonian non profit making NGO working in the field of environment protection and promotion of sustainable development.
We have enjoyed the collaboration of some lecturers, researchers, and magistrates, notably: Miss Celestine Yvette EBENE, Anthropologist of Yaounde Central Africa Catholic University, Mrs. Louis-Marie-Magloire NKOUM – ME – NTSENY, Political Scientist, GRAPS, Institute of International Relations, Yaounde II University, Paul DASSE, Jurist, Faculty of Judicial and Political Sciences, Dschang University, Chimère DIAW, Anthropologist, Researcher, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA, Yaounde), Fidèle MANDENG, Magistrate, Attorney General at the Ebolowa Court of Appeal and Jean-Georges ZALANG, General Tropical Agronomist, Provincial Delegation for Agriculture in the East. To all the above cited, we wish to express our profound gratitude.
It would be an illusion to think that this work is thorough. How could it have been possible, within (6) six months, to analyze the topic in all its aspects and all its intricacies ? However, we believe to have outlined the problem area and, moreover, to have formulated the hypothesis in order to enable a thorough study. To some extent, the theme is new and original. It does not cover the land problem globally, it is limited to the analysis of the land status of women in Cameroon, the appraisal of the domain and the extent of their rights as well as the limitations and restrictions related to it, in both a systemic and a dynamist perspective.
The topic is also complex. On the one hand, the categories on which it is based are not homogenous ; they are heterogeneous, fleeing and fleeting in space and time. On the other hand, the socio-anthropologic, ecological and cultural contexts covered by the work are various and varied. It was therefore necessary to combine many methods and analysis grids in order to study and seize extent.
This is to say that me have not exhausted to topic, we have just seized the slightest part. There is no doubt that at the end of your reading, you will contribute to enrich the content of this study. Your remarks, criticisms and suggestions are welcome. To quote a Latin saying ² Knowledge is a gathering² each one brings in his share.
Patrice BIGOMBE LOGO
Lolodorf, 22nd March 1998
Summary
Presently bot Cameroons land legislation and its customary land practices make womens access to land, right to property ownership, and control of land difficult. In fact, in spite of their demographic weight, about fifty-two percent of the global population, and the fact that they are the major users of the land resource for farming activities, women face some difficulties to access to land property.
The modern land law in Cameroon is more liberal and more flexible whereas the customary practices are rigid and authoritative. The positive law does not set any discrimination between men and women in the access to land. All Cameroonian citizens, indiscriminate of sex, religion or race, have free access to land. It is necessary to fulfill the exigencies defined by the law. It is at this level that women are underprivileged. They are ignorant of the steps to undertake, and fear to defend their rights at court, notably in the case of heritage or succession.
The customary land rights exclude the women from proprietary ownership of land. They just have the benefit of customary using rights. The modalities of exercising the rights of use are precarious enough and different from one area to another. The situation is even more complex because in the traditional societies, the womens land status is closely linked to their social status. Now, the women do not have power in the traditional public space. Therefore, they do not take part in the making of the norms regulating the society and the land management. Taken as social and political process, the land process is far beyond the womens control.
Modern religions do not yet have a great influence upon womens struggle for land rights. It is true that some of the principles of religions favor womens rights, but they are not effective on in actualizing those rights.
Nonetheless, the women of Cameroon do not give way to domination. They continue to organize themselves more and more to increase their knowledge and fight for their rights. Slightly perceptible but profound changes are occurring. These changes will not lead to a radical change of the womans land condition, but they will gradually improve it. So that the womens social and political status can be improved, efforts presently being made by women must be supported both by the State, international organizations, the NGOs, and other agents. The struggle takes place on in politics, socio-economics, and within the cultural sphere.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND CONTEXT OF THE STUDY
The study on ² Women and Land in Cameroon, Overall Inventory and Evolutionary Prospects² falls within the larger research project implemented in (5) five African countries (Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Senegal, South Africa) by the project on Religion and Human Rights of the Law and Religion Program, School of Law, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (USA). It seeks to draw an overall inventory of the land status of women in Cameroon, its possible evolutionary prospects; to propose and to analyze the activities to be undertaken or likely to be undertaken to improve that situation. It is therefore an action-research project. At this stage we would like to locate the theoretical framework of the study, to present and analyze its political, economic, socio-anthropological and cultural context. These are prerequisites that help to fix the analysis and, more so, to understand the fluctuating and unstable environment of the land problem in general and the womens land condition in Cameroon, in particular.
- THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY
Determining the theoretical framework will help to understand the meaning and content of the phenomena to be studied, the problem area, the methodological outlines, as well as the weaknesses and limitations of the analysis.
- Conceptual clarification and delimitation of the study field
Any scientific research is based on the assumption that the explanation of social phenomena is not dependent on immediate data of consciousness. It is therefore necessary to define the fundamental concepts of the study and land mark its spatial field.
- Conceptual clarification: How to define Women and Land in Cameroon?
The ritual of defining the projects core concepts is analytically necessary. It aims at launching research, breaking off with the pre-notions, determining the facts to study, and defining the nomenclature. As Emile Durkheim has explained, ” la première démarche du sociologue doit être de définir les choses dont il traite, afin que lon sache et quil sache bien de quoi il est question” (1981, 34). This is to say that the first step of a sociologist must be to define the facts he is concerned with, so that one knows and that he knows well what it is about.
In the field of this study, what do the notions of women and of land entail? How can we define them?
- a) Definition of woman: from a biological to a sociological approach
At present, two tendencies dominate the definition of woman. On the one hand, the naturalist tendency insists on a biological definition. On the other hand, the socio-anthropological tendency favors the role and social status of the woman as determinate of her definition. The biological definition, or definition by sexual difference, valorizes the “real” being of women. In this sexualized sense, women are human beings of the female sex, that is the sex which gives birth. From this perspective, the operative characterizing and differential element of women compared to men lies in sex, in biological differences. Such a biological approach is more and more integrated to a more global and operational one, the so called socio -anthropological approach. The socio-anthropological approach definition of the woman puts an emphasis on her social role and status, on her social existence. Here, the woman is known as an actor in the same capacity as man. Thus, one thinks of the woman in a multidimensional view, by going beyond the classical opposition between the domestic and the political, and integrating the feminine dimension in the global understanding of society.
But it is worth acknowledging that neither roles and status alone nor sex alone are sufficient to render an account of the extent of the differential values between sexes and the functions that are specific to the woman. Roles and status refer back in each socio-cultural milieu to a world of representations, which is itself inherent to a conception and vision of the world. One should therefore consider the games of symbolism, ideology, power that ensure a societys internal equilibrium and reproduction. The social status of women and the relationships between them and men can not be thought of outside the question of power that determines the social dynamics. “Woman” must at once be naturalized and sociologized. To be a women is to be both a biological being and a social actor. One does not happen without the other. The biological and the social are linked. They influence each other and, sometimes, determine each other.
Our study privileges the socio-anthropological approach. The land status of the woman is fundamentally determined by the socio-anthropological structure of womens conditions by the regulation of power functioning in terms logic between women and men in the society. The socio-anthropological perspective enables us to sketch out an operational categorization of women in Cameroon.
The endeavor to define, to categorize, or to draw a typology of Cameroonian women has certainties and uncertainties. With certainty, it is known that the Cameroonian woman is a complex and diversified reality. There is not a unique category or type of woman in Cameroon. There are many, according to their social origins, their training, their professions, their marital status and their area of life. However, uncertainties because of the certain changes and dynamic character of the womens identities in Cameroon. Womens identities are not primordial data, intangible and immovable. In so far as they are social creations, they are moving, dynamic and changing. In a certain milieu, a woman can valorize her peasant identity and in another, she can display her professional status public or private, whether public or private, all being done in relation the interests at stake in a given situation or to her personal expectations.
In the frame of this study, we have made an operational choice that takes into account the living place of the woman and her matrimonial status. The category of woman that we consider is the one who lives in the rural zone or in a partially urban zone, whether married, single, widow or divorced. In the Cameroonian context, it is the women who most use the land and who most need it for their different producing activities. The rural women are therefore in the heart of the present work. This choice is not only operational, it is also ideological, related to our social condition, to our philosophical and professional position.
- Definition of the land notion: Land as a heritage and as a resource
In Cameroon, the land is both a heritage and a resource
In civil law, heritage is defined as the sum of goods and obligations of a person considered as a universality of law, that is to say, as a moving block whose liabilities and assets cannot be separated. In this case, it is necessary to consider it in a wider sense that goes beyond the individual, and embraces the group, the community. In almost all Cameroonian societies, the land is considered as a common heritage, that is, as a physical, cultural collective space inherited from the ancestors. It is a community resource space transmitted from generation on to generation.
In the name of the community the land is managed by the communitys legitimate representatives. This management ensures the social reproduction of the group, both in terms of its identity and of its survival. As communal the land has a cosmological or topographic. It functions as a visible link with the invisible. As a resource space the land is not a property. Not to be appropriated, out of commerce, the resource space territory in both judicial and farming terms is identified to a lineage or village community, to be used or managed, without a right to be owned. In this sense, this heritage is peculiar. It is different from the civil heritage and is dependent on to the community and not the universal solidarity. The land is nobodys property, but a common property, it is shared wealth (Barrier, 1997, 15-25, Le Roy 1991, 338).
However, land is also conceptualised as a resource, as property. In present practice, the land in its different shapes (farming, forestry, judicial) is a resource highly solicited both by the state and by the populations. It is the object of many stakes: political, economic, social and cultural. For the State it is a political and economical stake. The State poses itself as the regular owner of the land. The land is the spatial expression of the States power, its sovereignty, and also a source of financial revenues. For the populations, the stake is political and economic, but also social and cultural. The land is a factor of power and strength. The withholder, owner, or user of land has power in the society and controls the dynamics of production and reproduction of social groups. Land is a vital resource. But, culturally and symbolically land is a sacred object that ensures the mediation of men and women to the sacred. It is an element of the social status in the sense that it determines the relationships of individuals to the different social networks to which they belong. Economically and socially, the land ensures life and means of subsistence means. Its use is indispensable for survival.
Although lands are understood both as a heritage and resource, they are more and more understood merely as an exploitable resource. Accordingly, land in Cameroon has come to take on the predominant sense of farming lands and forestry lands. These lands, as exploitable resources, are in the center of growing covetousness, on the local, regional, and the national scale.
- The field of the study
This study covers the whole country, but it divides it into two main socio-anthropological zones. The two zones are the centralized communities in the North and West Cameroon and the segmentary societies in South-Cameroon. Preference is given to the rural and near rural spaces where most of the struggles for the access and control of the land take place. Our conception of rurality is fairly extensive. It takes into account the land structures integrated to urban spaces controlled and managed by traditional communities. It is the case for suburbs of cities as Yaounde, Douala, Bafoussam and Garoua. In those spaces one can notice a process of perenization of the rurality in an urban environment. At this point, the traditional systems of land management prevail over the prescriptions of positive law.
This study on women and land in Cameroon integrates in a global problematic of the questioning and the analysis of cultural transformation processes going on in Africa in a human rights perspective as it is envisaged by the Project on Religion and Human Rights of the Law and Religion Program, School of Law, Emory University. The research project tends to grasp the cultural transformation processes through the lens of a human rights perspective. Its task is is to show, among other things, that the protection and the promotion of human rights constitutes one of the means and finalities of cultural transformation in Africa, and that law and religion are appropriate institutions to encourage these processes. The analysis of the womens land condition is an experience in the questioning of the dynamics of the integration of the human rights paradigm into the endeavor of cultural transformation in Africa. Specifically, this study poses the question of the use of the human rights paradigm as an appropriate factor of evaluation of social change in Africa in terms of the relationship between women and land. (Abdullahi An-Naim and alii, 1997, 287-289).
This work must contribute to the analysis of the role played by the norms and the customary, religious, judicial practices in the building and the promotion of economic, social and cultural rights of the women, and to the development of attempts to question the practices that limit the total enjoyment of these rights by women. The work must come out with concrete reform proposals that are realistic and achievable, in order to improve and to change the womens situations. These reform proposals will be taken to policy makers, both political and social at different levels, for their effective implementation. The question is therefore and finally that of an action-research whereby one has to analyze womens present land condition in a human rights view and make land reform proposals that are capable of implimentation in the geographic areas which they address.
The gobal perspective described above is completed by a local perspective based on the preoccupations of accountability, systematization and questioning of discriminatory practices and customs as regards women. Locally, proposed reforms must be integrated in the process of claiming and valorization of womens rights in general, and their land rights in particular, as developed by Cameroon feminine associations, NGOs, and the Cameroon Government itself. Indeed, the emergence of gender issues as important in the activities of the NGOs has contributed to the renewal of the question womens status in relation to land. In particular, the involvement of NGOs with gender issues has helped to increase recognition of the pivotal role of women in development, and to revive debates on the expansion of womens political, economic and social rights in Cameroon. There is almost no womens association in Cameroon rowing against the current of this planetary move of recognition and valorization of the women’s rights and social status. Even the government has joined the struggle mainly led by the civil society and has implemented a policy of promotion and defense of women’s rights.
Thus, for two successive years, 1997 and 1998 the celebration of the Women International Day was devoted to the analysis, the denouncement and the calling into question of judicial norms, discriminatory customary practices on women. On this occasion, the question of the women’s land status in Cameroon was many times brought forward. The fundamental questions raised are the following:
What explains the difficulties in access, acquisition and appropriation of land by women in
Cameroon?
What justifies the fact that women, who constitute fifty-two percent of the total population
and who work more in farming, the main productive activity in the rural area, have
difficulties obtaining access to land and are almost totally excluded from property
ownership?
Is it possible to remedy that situation?
What is to be done?
How to do it?
The process of action-research elaborated for the project was suggested and retained by most of the actors committed in that endeavor of identification and denouncement of discriminatory customary practices on women. In order to determine the analysis process of the problem area, there was need of an appropriate methodological clarification, and it was necessary to mark the insufficiencies and the limitations of the analysis.
[AWKWARD PARAGRAPH ABOVE — AWKWARD TRANSITION]
- Methodology outline and limitations of the study
Outlining the methodology of this study and it limitations will enable us to grasp the theoretical setting of the work and its main deficiencies. Importantly, this allows for a more objective appraisal the scientific aspect of this study. First, we will outline our theoretical paradigms: syncretic logic and interdisciplinary logic. Then, we will outline our data collection and research techniques.
- Theoretical paradigms of the analysis: the syncretic and interdisciplinary logic
The study is part of a research on the present situation and evolution perspectives of women’s land rights. From such a perspective, land cannot be studied by itself, out of its environment or out of its social setting. Land is a reflection of social relationships, and the problems raised by exploitation of land are political. These political problems of land are correlated to the structure and functioning dynamics of the societies, to the interactions between them and their environment, and to their own evolution.
Thus, we give pre-eminence to systemic and dialectical analysis in this project. The land status of women is analyzed as an element of the social system, determined by its internal laws, but subject to the influence of external factors having a dialectical evolution in space and time. This evolution is caused not only by contradictions resulting from the internal functioning of the social systems, but also by the constraints of the environment that impose cooperation, adjustment and adaptation processes. The vision is contextual, systemic and dialectical, set in the double dynamic of tradition and modernity.
It is in this view that we locate the integration of gender analysis in the course of the study. Opposing its predecessor, l’IFD (Women’s Integration to Development) developed during the 1975-1985 world womans decade, and based on account of women’s contribution to development (quest for equality, anti-poverty policy, attempts at efficiency), the GED concept (Gender and development) refuses to appraise the women as an entity isolated from the social unit and takes into account the dynamics of the relationships between women and men. It puts women and men together, to analyze the unequal relationship symbolized by the sexual division of labor, and poses the global problem of the status and roles of women and men in the social stratum, and the impact of the sex social relationships in social life.
With the gender notion, feminists point out the fundamentally socially constructed notion of sexually based differences. – The analysis of gender is therefore perceived as a militant study approach to the relations socially structured between men and women in all the domains of the economic, social and affective life. It is based on the empowerment approach (acquisition du pouvoir) developed by Latin – American feminists. Such an approach, postulates that one can only improve women’s situations and promote equality between the sexes if the rapports of power historically and socially valorized between men and women are put into question. (Hesseling et Locoh 1997, 3-5 ; Sow 1995, 1-17 ; Locoh Labourie Racape et Tichit 1996). It is in this sense that women’s access to land in Cameroon is in the heart of the matter of this action-research project. It is one of the major stakes of the question of gender rapports. It is conditioned by the relationships of power and subordination developed in everyday social systems.
This study has also considered the heuristic contributions of the institutions analysis and the comparative approach. These have permitted clarification and presentation of the extreme hold of institutional, traditional and modern dynamics on the women’s land status, Also, these methods enable appraisal of the contradictions, differences, and similarities between the different customary land systems, the modern land system and their respective improvement and management approaches of the women’s land problem.
Beyond the methodological syncretism that has given shape to the theoretical analysis, the study was enriched by the contribution of many scientific subjects notably, Law, Sociology, Anthropology, Economy, Geography, Political Sciences, History and, to some extent, Agronomy. Until a very recent period, law was still seen as the authorized subject for the study of the land in Africa. Such analysis was based essentially on the study of the status and practices, without any other major reference to space and to the social relationship of production. That approach is largely out dated in the present context. The land question can no longer be confined to purely juridical-analysis, nor even to economic analysis. Although necessary for analysis of land rights in Africa, even when coupled with economic analysis juridical analyis remains insufficient in regards to the analysis of women and land in Africa.
The contributions of Sociology, Anthropology, History, Geography, Political Science and Agronomy, History and has become essential as well. As Professor Etienne Leroy explains, “Le foncier est un rapport social ayant la terre ou le territoire comme assise et enjeu et où les variables économiques, juridiques et les techniques d’aménagement de la nature sont ponderées par le facteur politique aux différentes échelles locales nationales et internationales” [Land is a social relationship having the soil or the territory as foundation and stake; whereby the economic, judicial variables and the improvement techniques of nature are leveled out by the political factor at different local, national, international scales] (1997, 455). [What is proper citation form for quotation plus authors translation?] Within interdisciplinary approaches, Sociology and Anthropology help to appraise the influence of the social organization of the land structures and the relationships between men and women concerning the land. History and Political Science put an emphasis on the historic building of the land status and the power rapports that determine them. Geography, Agronomy and Economy consider the land dynamics in the framework of agrarian systems. Both subjects appraise the question of land tenure in terms of localization, spatial disposition, agrarian systems efficiency, whereby the land is considered mainly as a basis for the farming activity. Thus, by means of a syncretic, interdisciplinary methodology, the normative dispositions and the concrete realities faced by actors within the areas studied may be better reconciled.
- b) Data collection and Research Techniques
The collection of data and information in the field was part of the logic of the action-research process, that is to say a research method orientated towards the solution of a practical problem in local a context led by those who are involved in the process of solving that problem. This approach has made it possible to involve all actors with stakes in the issues surrounding land (those at the top and those at the bottom) in the study of the theme. The survey in the field has referred to the local administrative, political, regional, and traditional authorities, as well as to feminine associations, NGOs, and the grass roots populations. The field survey (conducted as interviews, focus group approaches, and field visits in villages) was complimented by the results of documentary and bibliographical analysis, plus attendance at national and international seminars. About fifty publications were read, some related to the land question in general, others related to situations specific to women. Four seminars on the land question and women’s problems were attended. Two were at the National level:
– Seminar – workshop on “Woman and Heritage, Land Property and Management in Cameroon organized by the National Association of Professional and Media Women (NAPMEW) and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Feminine Condition with the financial support of the Bristish Council, in June 1997 in Yaounde, and a
– Round table conference on ² Discriminatory Practices and Customs on women in Cameroon² organized by the International Woman’s day Supervision Committee in Lolodorf on March, 07 1998.
And two seminars were at the International level: The Regional methodology workshop on Gender and Community Forestry in Africa – organized by the ” Forests, Trees and People Program, Panafrican Institute for Development – West Africa / Sahel, at Ouagadougou in Burkina-Faso in November 1997 and the Global Workshop organized by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (FIDA) and the “United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) on Land Security Rome in Italy, February 1998.
[AWKWARD PARAGRAPH ABOVE]
Despite all the efforts described above, the study remains limited at two levels: time constraints and methodological insufficiencies. On the first point, the working team was compelled to round off the study within a period of six months as demanded by the Project Direction. For the follow up, the Cameroon team intends to integrate the project in the formal activities of a local NGO, Planet Survey – Environment and Sustainable Development, Lolodorf Regional Antenna which is going to develop a pilot project in the South/East of Cameroon for the promotion of women’s land rights. Instead of waiting for the hypothetical outcome of the reforms proposed to the Government and International organizations, it is imperative to undertake local actions for the information, sensitization, and training of women and traditional chiefs at the level of villages, and grassroots communities. That is feasible: recent experiments on the professionalization of primary and secondary education at the local level have proven the efficiency of that type of action, when done directly at the population level. On the second point, the research team has come across two major difficulties. The team faced weakness and unavailability of reliable statistics and quantification difficulties. The study therefore does not show any statistics regarding womens general situation or womens land rights.
- CONTEXT OF THE STUDY
The land problem in Cameroon is a very complex problem area and unfolds in a fluctuating and dynamic political, economic, social and cultural environment. It is important to determine the outlines of these dynamics and to measure its effects on the land situation of women. For example, the evolution of the political and economic situation in Cameroon is marked by the imposition of liberalism. Cameroons economic life was suffocated for a long time by political monolithism and state economical interventionism. Both Cameroons politics and its economics, however, were gradually liberalized at the beginning of the nineties owing to the mobilization of the local society, international pressure, and the Cameroonian Governments adaptive measures.
- Political context evolution
The political context is marked globally by the process of liberalisation and especially by the movement of political emancipation of women. The process of the liberalisation of the Cameroon political system dates from the nineteen-nineties. Responding to pressure from local society and the international environment, the ruling body engaged in a process of progressive deconstruction of its authoritarianism. This slow mutation is characterised by the consecration of liberties, the creation and functioning of political enterprises, the institutionalisation of political competition and the participation of citizens in the management of public affairs. This process is not linear. It is made up of contradictions, forward and backward movements. This liquidation or questioning of authoritarianism is not total. Here, as in most parts of Francophone Africa, the materialisation of the liberal change is accompanied by the persistence of authoritarian traditions of governance. Cameroon practices an authoritarian process of democratisation: this problematic construction of democracy has at the same time liberal novelties and “authoritarian repetitions.” The liberalisation is marked by order and disorder, by both liberal discussions and authoritarianism (Mbembe, 1992, Sindjoun, 1994, Bigombe and Menthong, 1996).
The adaptation to the liberalisation is expressed in the recognition of socio-cultural pluralism, the recomposition of the atmosphere and the process of construction of the state of law. In fact, the consecration of pluralism in the legitimate socio-political space is considerably advanced. Pluralism shapes the socio-political field at various levels. It manifests itself through a proliferation of multiple roles of associations, professional political orders or groupings, political associations, syndicate associations for human rights, defence, etc. The structural or organisational emancipation of the society contributes to the slowing down of the totalitarianism of the State, to the failure of the Jacobean enterprise.
Pluralism is also perceived in the media and in the partisan domain. Media pluralism participated in the construction of the public sphere and the destruction of the founding myths of the post-colonial State. Newspapers, such as Le Messager, La Nouvelle Expression, Mutations, Générations, by their critical or provocative orientation have disrupted the media immunity which was previously enjoyed by the governing bodies. Despite the persistence of censures and other methods to prevent press freedom, the analysis of the political and social life of States has become permanent in the media field.
In the socio-political field, we observe a multitude of frameworks of collective action and popular mobilisation. Political pluralism has finally imposed itself. Multipartism has taken the place of the monopartism of the post-colonial State of the first generation. The relative institutionalisation of political competition contributes to the structuring of a competitive political market. The opposition parties have succeeded in imposing themselves as unavoidable in the national political game. The diversification of the political class and the multiplication of frameworks and modes of mobilisations are such that total and effective control by the State is now illusive or impossible. This movement is also accompanied by a process of redefinition of relations between the center and the periphery. The liberalisation puts in question the very centralised Jacobean state. The already consecrated decentralised process in texts is progressively being applied with the aid of international and local funding bodies. However, its social accomplishment will be achieved only in the long run.
The participation of women in the political life evidences one of the major aims in the process of political liberalism in Cameroon. Politics has been taken up by women who do not wish to play the role of figures or marginal roles in the field. They are more and more present in the formal and informal decision-making centres. Of course, their representation is low in the executive body. They occupy ministerial positions and are in charge of social matters and the feminine promotion. In the parliament and municipal councils, the female situation is appreciable.
This situation began ameliorating largely because of the awareness of female associations which made campaigns before the different elections to “incite women to register on the electoral lists, to get into the municipal management, to organise electoral campaigns and to invest in their political parties” (Beleoken, 1996). In their political parties, the enlightenment of the female electorate contributed to enlarging womens field of action and to increasing their responsibility. During elections, parties did not need much effort to assure womens votes. They only assumed the simple duties of mobilisation and animation. They participated in the different processes of the management of political enterprises. Their advance in the public and private political sphere is very significant. This political emancipative process is greatly supported by the juridical and cultural associations and by emancipation movements. In public services as in political parties and cultural associations, female associations develop, multiply and intensify all actions of revindication, defence, and promotion of their political, economic and social rights.
An example is the Association of Cameroonian Female Jurists (ACAFEJ) which, together with other activities, organises and manages juridical consultations to inform and advice women on their rights. Women more often now use their political or social actions to defend or to activate the advancement of female grievances. They question the social inequalities culturally engendered between men and women.
The process of political emancipation of women, which is very developed in the urban milieu is also extending to the rural milieu. Rural women do not only express themselves in the domestic sphere. They have started investing on the political field in order to make themselves heard. Activism and progressive indocility is replacing passiveness and docility. The associative dynamism that accompanies this evolution contributes to reduce domination or masculine influence and to reinforce female ascension. The conservative inversion of the role in the home (to the female advantage), the economic devalorization of cash crops and the valorisation of food crops have legitimised the ambitions of domestication of even the commonplace male command.
In parallel to the evolution of liberalism in the political context, the economic context has experienced a liberalising evolution. However, before analyzing this evolution in the economic context proper it is relevant to define the demography tendencies of the country. During the last two decades, Cameroons population has almost doubled. It has gone from seven million in the seventies to more than fourteen million today. Thirty-eight percent of the population is urbanized. The major part of the population is located in the far North. The population of which is made of eighty-percent farmers. The most populated provinces are the far North which has eighteen percent of the total population, the Center with sixteen percent, the Littoral and the West each with thirteen percent. The less populated areas are the South with only for percent of the total population, and the Adamawa and the East, each with only five percent of the population. The average density of the population is twenty-three inhabitants per square-kilometer. The less populated provinces do not go beyond ten inhabitants per square-kilometer.
More than thirty of this population is aged less than ten, and about sixty percent of it is aged less than twenty. As a result, a heavy demographic pressure creates serious difficulties for all the economic and social services, as well as in the domains of education, health and employment. In the urban zone, the reduction of parents revenues has reduced the rate of childrens education. In rural areas, the increasing poverty, the poor state of the infrastructures, and the unemployment of graduates aggravates the school devaluation.
At present, the economic situation is dominated by the persistence and the continuation of the economic crisis. In fact, since the second half of the eighties, Cameroon is under a heavy economic crisis resulting mainly in the collapse of raw material rates, the decline of exports and imports, the crisis of the banking system, the decrease of the Gross National Product, the drop in the oil production, the increase in the states interior and exterior debt, the CFA devaluation in 1994, the increasing degradation of peoples living conditions, the states disengagement, the massive lay off of staff both in the public and private sectors, and the increase of poverty. From 1988 to 1989, under the pressure of the main sponsors, the Government has implemented Structural Adjustment Programmes aimed at reducing the role of the state in the economic activity, the creation of an administrative institutional and judicial frameworks more favorable for the boosting of the private sector, and the adaptation of producing activities to the requirements of global economy. These Structural Adjustment Programmes have had limited and fragile effects on macro-economic variables, but a considerable impact on individuals behaviors as well as on social systems (Touna Mama and Komon 1997, 67-68, Komon and Ezo, 1997).
- The disengagement of the State and the emergence of the private sector
In Cameroon, economic and social activity has benefited for more than 30 years, from important incentive measures and an undeniable and varied protection from the state which was both sponsor and benefactor of the produce exporting networks (Janin, 1996 ; Touna Mama and Fouda, 1994). That protection had three main directions: the protection of salaries and prices guaranteed to producers, the protection of customers, and the protections companies. In theory, the salary is retribution gained, as against work done and the price is the payment of a product sold. In a free market system, there is a relationship between the productivity of the work and the salary, between the utilities produced and the riches. In the economic environment of Cameroon the guaranteed salary and price have lost their rewarding function of the productivity or of the contribution wealth making. The states interventionism in the economic activity by means of producing companies (UCCAO, SODECAO, ZAPI, SODECOTON) and marketing companies (ONCPB, UCCAO) has made the market agents stand at a distance. The price policy led by the State has enabled agents to become rich without making much effort. The guaranteed salary and prices enabled the State to corrupt the society to be feared and to legitimate its domination. The concern of the political elite to launch a national identity at the eve of independence and to have full control of the political field explains the quick increase of the public expenses and the fixation of rates, without any relationship with the world market. This conception of the State was made clear by a costly regulation by the State based on a customership and hereditary redistribution of resources (Medard, 1983, Bayary, 1989, Touna Mama and Konon 1997).
With the necessity to create a system of political support, and to reinforce the basis of the regime then in power, there were a series of behaviors aimed at the appropriation of the public riches and privatization of the State by the people in power positions and their relatives. The expansion of the governments generosity will also be seen in the secret attribution of social privileges such as contracts, subsidies, and authorizations. Such a system of management of public resources for the sake of redistributing revenues, instead of creating wealth, has led to a non-efficient allocation of resources and to the fringing of a good part of the national community.
In fact, the company did not escape from this new trend. Being well located in a social area impregnated with an administrative spirit, and where one can notice serious difficulties in adopting laws and respecting them, the company will become a field of expression of the arbitrary, violence and authoritarianism. This explains the various difficulties in the functioning of companies: poor production due to the great numbers of employees recruited not on the basis of their professional qualifications but upon tribal and customership criteria, the preeminence of ethnic, confessional, familial and political criteria in the management of work and production and in informalisation of their functioning. All these are incompatible with profit exigencies, benefit, competitiveness and economic production. For the employers, the company is a sinecure and the employer a parental face. The relationship between employer and employees within the companies and between companies and the State are mostly made of either protection or submission.
At the beginning of the eighties, Cameroon found itself with a plethora of companies, all showing a debit balance and most of them were State companies. In order to avoid general bankruptcy and eviction from the world economic sphere, Cameroons economy had to adjust and was compelled to apply the IMF measures, notably the disengagement of the State and the outbreak of the private sector. At this stage, the disengagement of the State looks like a breaking up. It was actually shown by the withdrawal of the State from some key sectors of the economy (agriculture, transport, commerce, etc), the limitation of protections, and important reduction of subsidies. It was also coupled with a revival of private investment and with reduction of the States constraints and controls. This liberalism has taken effect by bringing with it all its unfortunate economic exigencies: performance contracts and staff lay-offs in both the public and private sectors. The fastening of Cameroons economy to the neo-liberal economy has brought about the redefinition of the role of the public powers in the socio-economic activity, the dismantling of the community, and a questioning of the bilateral mutual aid and solidarity networks. And, imposition of economic liberalism has increased poverty (Ela, 1996).
In spite of the macro-economic indicators, there is a clear growth of poverty in Cameroon. In macro-economic terms, decision-markers boast of economic revival and of the relatively good shape of the economy during the past two years. Yet, growing poverty is particularly acute for certain regions. And, this deepening poverty cuts across regional boundaries as it effects specific social groups and socio-professional categories.
In rural zones, the households are severely struck by poverty. The rate of inhabitants living below the poverty rate has increased from forty-nine percent to seventy-one percent. The considerable spread of poverty was more extreme for peasants producing export crops. The decrease in their income has reached sixty-percent. The price of food crops also decreased, causing a sixteen-percent diminution of the total farming revenue both for export and food crops as compared to 1983. The prospects of income increase offered by the CFA devaluation were not fully exploited. Population growth has been at two-percent per year in the rural areas, while the income per inhabitant has been reduced by about twenty-five-percent during the time of this population growth. Given this situation, the implementation of strategies to revive these areas must incorporate intensification of food crop production and market integration. Poverty has greatly increased with the job crisis and the subsequent growth of unemployment. More than forty-percent of the active population is today unemployed, or has converted into farming which requires acquisition or management of land, or into the informal sector. These sectors of the population are less or not at all regulated, especially as concerns social protection. So a good fraction of the population lives on a day to day basis, subject to an uncertain future, without any formal social aid.
As a result, social cohesion and stability are highly disturbed. The proliferation of informal activities has declined under the implementation of neoliberal economic development approaches. These neoliberal reforms urge those in informal sectors of the economy to return to lost identities or to reaffirm their modernity. There is a real move of chaotic reconstruction of the social unit. It is done in disorder, pluralism and relative integration and exclusion. The outbreak and rise of social extra state flows, is a sign of reconstruction of a complex social unit, more or less linked to the State.
- B) Socio-Anthropological and Cultural Context of the study
Beyond the political and economical context, it is important to also outline the socio- anthropological and cultural context of Cameroon. The socio-anthropological context is marked by the diversity of the social groups, the breaking up of the religious field, and the evolution of the womens social status and the recrudescence of the land competition. Cameroon is a land of diversity and contrasts. It gathers on its territory the major types of social groups in the equatorial and tropical zones. There is on the one hand, the so-called centralized social groups that are predominant in the North and the West of the country. On the other hand, the so called segmental groups in the Center, South, East of the country.
The Northern, Western and Littoral regions do not constitute monolithic blocks, they are heterogeneous regions. Diversity is their major characteristic: physical, geographical and human diversity. The North is specific with its low tropical lands, in the Benue basin and the Chad plain, and by the Mandara mountains. The people comprise two major groups: the non-muslim Kirdis or Habes, and the Islamic Peulh. In the local collective imaginary, the Kirdis are pagan populations, not converted to Islam. This view does not resist reality. The Kirdis are not exclusively pagan, some of them are Christians and some are Muslims. Niether sub-group, however, denies their ² kirditude.” Kirdis are divided into three groups: the mountain Kirdis known as farmers, the plain Kirdis, known as farmers and stock breeders, and the Logone riverside Kirdis who are farmers, stock breeders and fishermen. The most commonly known are the Mafas, the Tupuris, the Mundangs, the Guizigas. These groups are “clichéd” as the dominated and pagan groups, based upon their opposition to the Islamic Peulh group.
The identification process is centered upon the religious differentiation as compared to Islam. Concerning the social organization and spatial foundation, the Kirdis are segmental societies in a more or less Islam dominated environment. They occupy clearly limited spaces in the far North province where they constitute a solid demographic majority. The Peulh group is essentially made of Fulanis, Haussas, and Choa Arabs. They are found in the three Northern provinces: Adamawa, North and far North. Their major identification element is the adherence to Islam and the high social hierarchy setting.
The West is a set of high lands. It corresponds to the West and North-West provinces. The relief is dominated by the Bamun plateau and the Grass fields. The people are composed of socio-linguistic groups such as the Bamilekes, the Bamun, and the ² Anglophones.” Here, identification construction around non-fractionable blocks is acute. However, all these groups are complex and heterogeneous. For instance the Bamileke group gathers by itself about fifty ethnic groups: Baham, Baleng, Batufam, Batie, Bafunda, Balengu, Bandjun. The ² Anglophone² group is a result of the British colonial mark left in the North-West and South-West provinces. It has more a linguistic basis. Actually, it gathers about sixty ethnic groups: The Kom, Pinyin, Akum, Nso, Bali-Kumbat, Awing, Bafut in the North-West, the Bakweris, Bakundu, Balondo, Bafaw, Isangele and Bayangi, in the South West (Sindjoun, 1995, 360-368). Globally, the Western region is a highly human concentrated zone. The population is dense, young and dynamic. The demographic growth forces people to undertake intensive land cultivation. Farming, commerce and stock-breeding are major economic activities. Competition for land is intense between local farmers, traders and manufacturers. Thus, occupation and exploitation of the territory is almost total.
The Littoral region is entirely located in the Duala Basin, the largest in the coastal plain. It has a low altitude and wide estuaries between the Atlantic Ocean and the plateau of the West and the Center. The region is the first cradle of urbanization in the country, the Duala region. It is one of the major developing centers in the country. The region has a powerful attraction on the entire population. The human mingling, which has been noticed ever since the German colonization, has made the region into one the most populated regions in the country. The population increases more by immigration than by natural growth. The region is cosmopolitan, but still is occupied by major local ethnic groups: the Dualas, the Pongos, and the Mungos. Industrial production, commerce, agriculture, and tourism dominate economic activity. There is a great concentration of industrial centers and agro-industrial complexes in the region. Crop farming is very developed. The peasants do not only produce for consumption, but also for selling. Competition for land is tough, especially between “alien” populations and “autochtons” on the one hand and between farmers and manufacturers on the other hand.
Beyond those peculiarities most of the communities in the North, the West and the Littoral share the same fundamental characteristics more: all the regions are highly differentiated and have hierarchical social structures. In most of them, the phenomenon of religious syncretism and social hierarchy exists. Social life is built around traditional centralized chieftancies. At the summit of the hierarchy is a first grade chief whose function is hereditary. Whether Lamido in the North, Sultant, Fon or Fo in the West, he is the holder of extended powers: political, economic, judicial, and magico-religious. He uses his power both on men and property (land and wealth) via dignitaries and notabilities gathered in councils or sometimes secret bodies, as well as servants of the “royal court!” Below the king and under his orders are the second class and third class chieftans. Named Lawan, Ardo or, Djaoro according to the case in the Peulh monarchies, they are great notabilities at the head of villages, districts or quarters under the chieftanship. They are in charge of ruling their respective territories. At last, at the bottom of the pyramid are the highly submissive and subdued fawities.
Chiefs are tax collectors and managers of the land space of the chieftanship: the chiefs lands, lineage lands, the common pasture lands, the sacred woods, and the vacant lands often attributed to young village people or new immigrants. The chief is the regular manager of the lands. He manages them according to the principles of common law. Talking about Bamilekes, Emmanuel Ghomsi has written: “The fon in so far as he is the holder of the lands of the chieftancy, responsible for justice, creator and president of the customary societies, political chief, has a lot of revenue sources: first of all he is a great land owner, and his many lands are cultivated by his wives. After each harvest period his women give him a portion of the crops. Each time a free land is given to a peasant, the latter has to pay by giving a rent in kind” (1972, 155-185). The two above paragraphs need further clarification!
This dynamics of political structuration extends beyond the rural areas. It extends Progressively, these social dynamics are structuring more and more of the socio-anthropological contexts of the urban areas. A hegemonic control of urban spaces by the traditional chiefs and of reconstruction of village and tribe in the urban area is happening. This ruralisation of the cities is evolving under the mask of urban transposition of the traditional technologies of government into new urban centers. The Bamileke, Hausa and Bamun chieftancies in the cities of Yaounde and Douala are striking examples (Tchandeu, 1985, 72-94) of this movement.
Segmental social groups exist in Cameroon, and particularly in the Centre, the South and the East. Coined in the 19th century to name the societies based on community solidarity, the notion of segmental society has dominated the anthropological theory of the forties. Today, it is used to name the social societies in which the political relationships are seen in terms of parental ties and are therefore structured essentially according to lineage. They are therefore decentralized societies characterized by a weak differentiation of their structures and their own resources, but using the material and symbolic resources offered by the lineage (Hermet and alii, 1996, 258-259). They are opposed by their structure and functioning to the so called centralized societies , which centralization a monopoly of power to be relative.
In Cameroon, the social segmental space comprises mainly the Center, the South, and the East provinces. It takes up a part of the coastal plain and a vast region of the South Cameroon table land. The demographic density is low, although one can find highly human concentrated zones; especially in the South province. The population is made up of two large groups. The Pygmies and the Bantu. In the Pygmies group, there are Bakas, Bakolas/Bagyeli, and the Medzan. They are considered as autochtons, the first forest dwellers. The Bantu are more numerous and are divided in many other ethnic groups: the Ewondos, Bafias, Evouzok, Yebekolo, Yambassa, Manguissa, Yabassi in the South, and the Maka, Badjue, Mezime, Kaka, Mbethen, Bikele in the East. The populations are organized in village communities, they are relatively independent and autonomous in the management of their lands. They are lineage communities ruled by a chief chosen on the basis of customary criteria and nominated by the administration. They can be elders, deans of age or people chosen for their personal qualities, moral or political reference. They ensure the regulation of social life with the help of a board of notabilities. Here as elsewhere, the communities exhibit a stronger hierarchy in the will, a logic of power.
Dynamism and fragmentation of the religious field
Cameroon is a multi-confessional country. It is a concrete evidence of the principle of secularity and freedom of consciousness and religion, as stipulated in the preamble of the June, 02, 1972 constitution, revised and reformed on 18 January 1996. Cameroon has three dominant religions: Animism, Islam and Christianity. Beyond these religions, a multitude of esoteric sects of Asian or American origin exist in the country, with a very dynamic presence in the school and university environment. Religious practice in Cameroon is free. Religious feasts, whether Islamic or Christian are celebrated in the entire nation. In spite of the persistence of some Islamic and some Christian centers, different religious movements are evolving in all the regions of the country. The classical distinctions, between a Muslim and Animist in the tropical region and between Christian and Animist in the equatorial regions, do not portray the real situation of the religious dynamism in the country.
The social penetration of religions is complex and diversified. One notices that the cities of Yaounde in the Centre of Douala in the Littoral are becoming large Muslim towns in the country. Ngaoundere in the Adamaw, Garoua in the North and Mokolo in the Far North have a considerable Christian population.
The development of the urbanization process of migratory flows and moreover the outbreak of the world are major terminals of the (qualitative and quantitative) transformation and the recomposition of the religious field. But the influence of the religious movements on the political, economical, social and cultural life of the populations remains questionable. To us it seems reduced, superficial and marginal.
ONLY BELOW DOES THE STUDY REQUESTED REALLY APPEAR TO BEGIN!!!
Permanence and evolution of the womens social status and the land issue
The study of womens land status and what is at stake for them in the land question is unavoidable in the analysis of womens endeavor to gain status as bearers of property rights. Womens social status remains caught by constraints that hinder the real emancipation of women; their formal recognition, and the protection of their political, economic, and social rights. The multiplication and diversification of the games and stakes around the land issue contribute to the reinforcement of the womens exclusion from the formal processes of land rights negotiations.
The notion of status is often used in law to determine either the set of rules defining the rights and obligations of an individual or group of individuals, or the constituting text of an association, a company or a set of judicial rules about the State and capabilities of people. Here, the question of womens status and rights in relation to the land is a question of a prescribed situation given to individual women and women as a group by the law. In Sociology or Anthropology status indicates the individuals situation, his position/rank in society, the role that he plays, the social function that he bears. Status may be either ascribed status or achieved status. Ascribed status is that which the individual receives at birth or at different stages of his life, without having to win it or deserve it. Achieved status is what one gets by what he does, that results of his activity proper. Ascribed status differs from achieved status just as to be differs from to do.
Our analysis is inspired by a socio-anthropological conception, accordingly a juridical analysis will be set aside until a follow up study can be performed. It is uncomfortable at present to give an objective account of the womens social status in Cameroon. The issue is complex and difficult. It raises passions and contradictions. The anthropological and developmental literature impose stereotyped images of women as either subdued by men or simply lowly classified, but they are always considered as exchange or trade objects (Titi Nwel, 1995, 25). Reacting to that debate, the Cameroonian sociologist Henri Ngoa published a pamphlet with a polemic and provocating title, “No, the African woman was not oppressed” (1975). Far from being speculative, the Ngoas analysis is based on concrete facts. But that does not eliminate the fact that in some of our societies, women are more or less sold exchanged against goods like pieces of land handed down as heritage.
Is it possible to decide between these opposed and contradictory points of view? Are women those poor subdued and submitted to sex mutilations and given to marriage without consent, exploited in their families and households, or rather those shadow actors that really manage our societies? The contrast observed in the analysis is the evidence of the complexity of facts and situations. Womens social status is the expression of a multiple reality, influenced by the space, the time, social groups, and organizing movements, coupled with the structuration of the social and political field. Thus the necessity to contextualize analysis in relation to tradition and modernity, while fundamentally bearing in mind the fact that the caesura between the former and the latter is not tight. Tradition and modernity are not mutually exclusive. Tradition is dynamic and there is an interpenetrating between both modernity and tradition.
Womens status in the socio-traditional context
The position held by women in the traditional milieu is somehow complex, ambivalent and controversial. The social norms that define the roles and social status assign to them an inferior position to the man. The social practices and the symbolic representations confer to them an important role in social life. It is through the institutions and the systems of representations that the contradiction is revealed. It is inherent to the dynamics of power in the traditional societies (Copet-Rougier, 1985, 153). After analysis, it appears that the traditional sphere submit the women to a double logic: the logic of submission and subordination in the public space and that of power and affirmation in the domestic space.
The public space represents the constructive and destructive area of the social order and the guidance of the society. It is the place of exercise of power, of manufacturing, elaboration and creation of regulatory norms of social relations. Women are fundamentally excluded from the process of public space management. Even when it happens that they are associated, their participation is marginal, their role reduced, and their influence limited. It is true that there are societies where women participate in the organization and management of the public space, but they are not many, and even in those cases, the men always keep the control of the social activities and the management of power. It is the case, for example, of the Baka, Bakola/Bagyeli Pygmies and the Bassa societies of the forest South Cameroon. Here, the women and particularly the old women take part in the management of power, but that participation is peripheral. It has a mirror role in the public space, but a major role in the domestic or private space. In general, the men in the public withhold the power and manage it without sharing with the women. The men rule and the women obey and are submitted. The traditional order institutes the male domination in the public space. In the Ewondo clans of South Cameroon for instance, the ² So² and ² Mevungu² rites are shown as the institutions for the legitimization of the male power and the second shows the womens support of male hegemony. To some extent, they legitimate phallocracy, womans subjection and the passive role of the woman on the power stage.
Transition
The Ewondo traditional order also assigns a politically instrumental role to women. In the political game of the clan, the woman is a resource, a means for the acquisition of influence: “the fundamental form of power [with the Betis] is the power to possess women in all the senses of the word: power to acquire them, power to fecundate them” (Laburte – Tolra, 1981, 356). The more a man possesses wives, the more he is honored. The mans leadership is measured by the number of his wives. There is a clear polarization of mens dynamism on women. This dynamics of traditionalist construction of the womens status is valid for all Cameroonian communities. It is subtle in most segmental communities and rigid in centralized ones where social dynamics almost treat the women as pure objects.
However, the women do not let themselves be dominated. They develop strategies to pass round the means of social seizure implemented by the men and to consolidate their control of the domestic space. The passing round of the male social order implies the construction of an exclusively feminine social universe, a kind of “womens sphere” that goes beyond the domestic space (Droy, 1990, 17-20). Once out of the public space, the women do not remain passive. They express themselves elsewhere, away from the males presence: in domains such as wells, farms and womens associations.
The domestic space is the favorite place for womens use of power. In spite of the formal sex based hierarchy that assigns an inferior position to them, the women have a real power in the households, the parentages and the lineages. That power is inherent to their productive and reproductive function. Women play a major role in economic production. They are in charge of farming activities, small trade, fishing and sometimes hunting. Procreation depends upon them. The womans priority in the procreation domain has religious justifications. Thus the Fali in North Cameroon believe that God has left to each woman the role to continue, by uniting with the soil, the creation that he (sic) initiated. Procreation is perceived as a continuation of the divine order, this makes the women in a certain way closer to God. Women also control the process of organizing and managing the matrimonial ties. They influence and determine the choice of spouses. By so doing, they are responsible for movement of women from household to household (Yana, 1997, 38). Finally, women ensure the education and the care taking of their spouses. They are ² home office ministers.” They take care of the families morally and materially (Mbock, 1989, 99). Given this subordinated yet empowered situation women in the traditional social space, what is it like in the modern context?
The womans status in the modern social context
In the modern social context, womens status is gradually leaving the traditional cultural burdens that confine women in the domestic role of production, reproduction and family care taking. Modernity puts into question the extent and content of males social powers and offers room for womens valorization. It is true that there still exist resistance and conservatism biases that perpetuate domination, banalization and marginalization of women. However, these are highly dismantled by the dynamics of womens mobilization. The patriarchal project of domination and submission of women is in trouble. This is the period of the emancipation of women. There is a sort of ² womens spring² within the political, economic, and cultural trilogy. The world mobilization initiated with the womans world decade (1975-1985) followed by the Cairo 1994 and the Beijing 1995 conferences have helped to knock over the archaic norms and behaviors, and to sensitize womens blossoming by a consciousness of their rights and duties.
On the political scale, Cameroonian women occupy more and more space. Womens representation in the political institutions, political parties, and decision-making circles is in clear sign of progression. Women now play a role of flag bearer of popular claims and democratic struggles. In both rural and urban areas of Cameroon, the number of women chiefs of families continues to increase steadily.
On the economic and cultural scales, Cameroonian women are more devoted to activities that give a positive effect to their social position and reinforce their authority. This is the case with the ² tontines² (mutual savings) for instance and the mutual aid associations. Some of them have succeeded in launching credit unions, saving banks and popular banks where access to loans for women is facilitated. The blossoming of womens socio-economic and cultural associations contributes to the social emancipation of women. The massive and increasing commitment in the social and formal economy is a strategy of social and political positioning. Concomitantly, the economic weakening or the loss of their husbands imposes an inversion of roles in the homes and leads to the changes in status. The women therefore manage the household. In some cases, the mans authority is battered. In this fashion, a kind of silent but profound revolution is talking shape in the Cameroonian society (Sow, 1995).
However, the traditional ideology that stipulates the propriety of womens subordination and their exclusion from the public space, particularly in the political sphere, is still dominant in Cameroon. The preeminence of men is socially, politically and culturally remains established. It is rooted in the institutional infrastructures. It proceeds by the integrated rules of the social construction of hierarchical relationship of men over women. It continues as these rules are practiced by the society.
In spite of the survival of traditional ancestral practices that express an unequal conception of the social masculine and feminine role, some changes less visible but real and profound are going on. They can be observed partially for the time being in the structure of the households, the process of circulation of women, and the configuration of social responsibilities. They show that the redefinitions of respective and complementary power spheres are in the making. Still, it is difficult to foresee their final outcome of these ongoing changes.
The land stakes in Cameroon
Almost everywhere in Sub-Saharian Africa, competition for land is tough and intense. It brings forth many actors, each with multiple and divergent interests: the State, economic actors, customary communities, and local populations. In Cameroon, the competition is extremely strong within the rural communities, most notably among the autochthon and alien populations and between the State and the populations. These conflicts between the State and the populations are a clear indication of the divergences between the modern land law and customary land practices. The State policy of land appropriation is opposed to customary systems of land management (Bigombe, 1996).
The persistence of the States land monopoly
The cardinal principle of Cameroonian land law is determined in line 2 of article 1 of ordinance N 74-1 of 06 July 1974, which structures setting the land system: “the State shall be the keeper of all the lands. In that capacity, it can intervene in order to ensure a rational use or in order to take into account the imperatives defense of economic options of the nation.” The text affirms the States monopoly on land. This judicial and political construction dates from colonization. By putting Europe and Africa in contact, colonization brought into contact two different conceptions of modes of production, social order and the judicial systems of the land. The western land system is based on the right to property while the local land system is based on collective appropriation. The Western approach conceives of land as property, and the African approach conceives of land as common resource. Clearly, the land law ordinance above embraces the colonial view of land as property.
In Cameroon, colonization has favored the penetration and generalization of the right to property. The colonial masters showed great determination in controlling the management of the lands by implementing a policy of dispossession of the natives. Colonizers based this dispossession on the theory of an automatic appropriation of all the lands known as vacant and without master. According to the German colonial land regulation of the end of the nineteenth century, all the vacant lands, except those belonging to the chiefs and their communities where the property of the German Imperial Crown. British colonizers had a different land property approach. The British view stipulated that all the lands, whether occupied or not, belong to natives. But, that they were under the control and the disposition of the British Governor who manages them to the benefit of all (Land and Native ordinance of Northern Nigeria, number 1 of 1916, made applicable in Southern Cameroon in 1927, number 1 of 1929). The French colonizer was in accordance with the principle of vacant lands and lands without a master being appropriated by the colonizer (French decree of 12 January 1938). The French regulation carried out a massive expropriation to the benefit of the State, in the name of “vacant lands without master.” It developed three major land systems: the tenurial system that integrates into the States private domain, the “vacant lands without master,” in a view to redistribute them either for colonial needs or to the profit of individuals to exploit them; the land property system in relation with the former will transforms customary rights into ² definitive and unquestionable² land titles by a registration process; and the system of establishment of customary land rights. The prime objective of generalization of the private land property was coupled that of the solidification of the State land monopoly (Le Roy, 1991, 16-17).
The postcolonial State has maintained the systems of colonial land command (Breton, 1994). The set of legislative and regulatory texts adopted between 1963 and 1970 have preserved the States land monopoly against the customary land rights. The legislator has chosen the private property. So decree no 64-9/COR of 30 June 1964 taken by application of law decree of 09 January 1963 setting the land and tenurial systems of Eastern Cameroon assigns only a use right to customary communities. The unification of the land and domanial rights achieved after 1972 led to the transformation of the collective heritage into a national domain comprising two major categories: the land previously occupied for a period of ten years, and the free, unoccupied lands. The postcolonial land policy established in the 1974 reform and in force, has instituted the theory of the national land domain.
The system of the tenurial status of lands has become the common law of the land system confining by right or by fact the populations to the benefit of simple enjoyment or real conditional rights. This is a tool for the realization of political objectives of national integration and economic development. The States ownership of the land and soils has taken the shape of a priority appropriation by the State. The theory of national domain is more and more setting the State as the master of the land in its capacity as exclusive owner and manager of the quasi totality of the national territory (Kamto, 1996, 90-95). The national domain corresponds to two land categories: the non-exploited but occupied, and the empty and virgin lands. Without prejudice of the rights applied by the State, the populations can only have access to the national domain by trying to protect their rights or acquiring some, by virtue of registration. In the first case, the populations must establish land development by occupation or exploitation. In the second case, they must register the land occupied (Le Roy, 1987, 41-52).
As concerns the land system globally speaking, the 1974 reform institutes only one judicial form, that is absolute and exclusive private property, and one procedure, the registration. As a result, the attribution of a land title in conformity with the references written in the registers of the land book. The land title is the official testimony of land property. It can be obtained in many ways: purchase by mutual agreement, donation intervivos, legacy, States attribution with an obligation to land development.
The set of procedures and formalities relative to the acquisition of the land title are set by decree n 76-165 of April, 24, 1976. Everything that refers to the registration procedure is dependant on the administrative judge, whereas the conflicts related to anterior or post procedures to the registration fall within the competence of the judicial. In practice, if registration is a widely practiced rule in the urban area, it is scarcely applied in the rural area. The ignorance of the law, the complexity of the steps to be undertaken as well as the fiscal system conditions that weigh on the registered lands are such that most of the farming lands, and pastoral circuits are part of the space controlled by the State. The State asserts itself as owner and exclusive manager of the land. This States land monopoly comes up against the resistances of the customary law.
Resistance and persistence of customary land practices
In Cameroon, the customary land practices are tenaciously continuing even in the wake of liberalization. They resist the State logic of land monopoly. They are an obstacle to the States imperialism and to the legally centered land policy. Although positive law does not recognize them, customary land practices still regulate an important part of the judicial reports on land , most notably the practice of forest use rights. The practices of the general populations are countered by a legislation that cuts off their traditional rights on the lands. The people remain linked, by ignorance or by contestation, to their customary rights. Thus, viewed from the lens of modern legislation many people appear as poachers and illegal users of lands that the customarlly have a right to use (Kamto, 1996, 93). As a study by the Ministry of Environment and Forests reveals, the populations and customary communities attitudes are not identical in all regions of the country; but the sociology of customary resistances sets identical justifications for questioning the modern law.
These justifications are many and are not only of judicial order.
The incorporation of the occupied and developed lands
According to custom, lands have generally been developed and occupied by the ancestors to whom they belong and will always belong to them. They serve as a blessed link between the present and ancestral generations. Modernity legislative texts can not abolish these time honored
relations all at once.
The notion of free lands
These are lands that the Germans had stole from the natives and declared “lands of the crown” or “vacant lands without master.” The populations denounce the notion that these lands were “vacated” and were ever free for possession by colonizers. It is true that the lands were vacant, but they had masters. They had always belonged to the ancestors. The customary communities consider themselves to be the legitimate owners of these lands.
The preponderance of conflicts of interests
In the spirit of the legislation in force, the State is aiming for the general interest (economic and social development for all the citizens) whereas the populations and the customary communities pursue an objective of private interest: sale or rent and personal exploitation. They want to keep the lands in property, whether they are developed or not, whereas the State wants to attribute them only to those who will have developed them.
The uselessness of the 1974 reform in the conception of the communities
The customary communities are indifferent to the reform that they consider as useless in the rural areas where people continue, and without title, to occupy and peacefully exploit, as by the past, the same lands which nobody, except the State, is questioning neither the limits, nor the property. The reform should only concern the urban area.
So, in spite of the compulsory aspect of land registration, introduced in Cameroon in 1974, the majority of farming lands remains under customary occupation.
In 1987, less than 30 000 of the 1 145 700 rural farms in Cameroon were registered lands (Cameroon Agricultural Census, 1987, 10). It therefore appears that there is insecurity in the enjoyment of lands. The lack of land title does not enable the full use of the lands so that business men or the elites make use of the economic crisis, striking peasants, to purchase the lands, register them, and later on rent them to peasants or evict them.
The evidence of land development as conditions of access to full property:
The customary communities wish that the evidence should not take into account the duration of the development (MINEF, 1995, 37-57).
Various conflicts and tensions are developing between the State land law and the customary land practices. They are related to the rural land status, and, moreover to the use of land for farming aims. There is a clear recrudescence of land disputes due to illiteracy, double demarcation, opposition to registrations, migratory problems, overpopulation of some spaces, most notably in the plains of the Far North and the Mandara mountains.
How do we reconcile the law and the custom in the land issue? The question is fundamental and unavoidable. It is evident that it is necessary to promote the construction of a land law that will reconcile the modern legislation and the customary norms. The baroque land law would be the coexistence of customary systems and modern law but also of social practices, socio-economic resually mixed or intermediary. There is therefore a necessity to reconcile the indigenous practices and the modern ones.
PART ONE
THE WOMENS LAND STATUS IN CAMEROON
The notion of womens land status has a double reality. On the one hand, it has to do with the place and roles of women in the land relationships. On the other hand, it refers back to womens situations as prescribed by the normative order in the land acquisition and management process. Our analysis draws inspiration from both approaches.
The problem is that of the judicial improvement of the womens land condition: how do or may the modern and customary normative orders improve womens access to land? In other terms, womens land status gathers all the rights that women can have on land, and the systems of guarantee and management of those rights. The improvement of womens access to land is different from one normative order to the other. The modern normative order seems to be more liberal and open, whereas the traditional normative order is rigid and authoritarian.
- THE LAND STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE MODERN LAND SYSTEM
The Cameroon modern land system which is considered as a set of positive law regulations related to the acquisition and the management of land in Cameroon, is composed of a set of legislative and regulatory texts resulting from the 1970 land reform. These are ordinances taken by the President of the Republic and ratified by the National Assembly, and laws voted by the National Assembly as well as related application decrees. There are three main ordinances: Ordinance n 74/1/06 July 1974 determining the land system; Ordinance n 74/2 of 06 July 1974 determining the domanial system; and Ordinance n 74/3 of 06 July 1974 relative to the expropriation procedure for public utility and to indemnification modalities, modified by law n 85/09 of 04 July 1985. There are three main laws: Law n 80-22 of 14 July 1980 relative to the repression of land and tenurial offences; Law n 19 of 26 November 1983 relative to the competence of the Consulting Committee and that of the Jurisdiction authorities; and Law n 94/01 of 20 January 1994 setting the forest, fauna, and fishing systems. There are also 3 major decrees: Decree n 76/165/ of 27 April 1975, setting the conditions of acquisition of a land title; Decree n 76/166 of 27 April 1975 setting the conditions of management of the national property; Decree n 76/167 of 27 April 1976, setting the condition of management of the States private property. Also of importance, decree n 84/311 of 22 May sets the conditions for the application of law n 80/22 of 14 July 1980, relative to the repression of law and tenurial offences. AWKWARD PARAGRAPH ABOVE AND BELOW
Globally speaking, many constant features can be drawn from the analysis of these texts.
They bear a general significance. They are applicable on the National Territory (Former Anglophone West Cameroon and former Francophone East Cameroon), but they are similarly applicable in rural areas as in urban areas, ignoring the fact that the two areas each have peculiarities. The texts stipulate the accession to individual land property without forbidding the collective appropriation of lands. They provide for creation of the State domain managed by the State and having two dependencies: the first is based on the lands occupied or exploited by individuals or traditional communities and the second on lands yet to be occupied. These unoccupied lands old lands know as “vacancies without master.” They enact suppression of the ² usucapion² (prescriptive acquisition) (Article 2265 of Civil Code) which was before the land reform a way of permanent appropriation, with good will, of land occupied or used for ten years. Since the reform, registration, which is conditioned by the development of the land, has become the unique mode of access to full ownership of lands.
The land space subject to registration must have been developed before August 5, 1974. In
the analysis of the womens land status in Cameroon, the modern land system seems to be more accessible to knowledge and the affirmation of womens rights than the traditional systems. It does not set any difference nor discrimination between men and women in the process of acquisition and management of lands. But one can notice however some hindrances to the benefit and full enjoyment of those rights. Those hindrances are related to the problem of womens education and the insufficiencies and the weaknessess of positive law.
- FORMAL INDIFFERENTIATION AND INDISCRIMINATION BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN IN THE ACCESS TO LAND
The modern land law is applicable to all citizens irrespective of sex, race, religion or social status. It has a global significance both on the legislative and the juristic levels. There is no formal disposition to subordinate the women or to make men superior.
Legislative and Statutory In-discrimination
The revised Constitution of 18 January 1996 and 2 June 1972 stipulates in its preamble that “We, the people of Cameroon, declare that the human person, without distinction as to race, religion, sex, or beliefs possesses inalienable and sacred rights.” One can rightly think that the right to land property is one of them. The constitution specifies that property is the right to use, enjoy and to have all rights guaranteed to all by the law. While recalling that the State guarantees to all the citizens regardless of sex, the rights and liberties enumerated in the preamble of the new Constitution further differs from the old Constitution in stipulating that “the nation protects and encourages the woman.” This constitutional statement makes the issue of recognition of womens rights and their necessary protection clearly into an issue constitutive of the State of Cameroon.
Furthermore, the legal texts on the land and its tenurial aspects do not discriminate between men and women. Law n 74/1 of 6 July 1974, regulates in a non-categorical way the property or land appropriation by Cameroonians. In fact it stipulates at its opening that “the State guarantees to all the persons physical or moral possessing lands in property, the right to enjoy it and to deal with it freely.” Moreover, the conditions as well as the procedures of acquisition of land titles are identical both for the man and for the woman, as decree n 76/165 of 27 April 1976 confirms in its setting the conditions for title. A woman wishing to get a title must complete the same procedures and the same conditions as a man.
Cameroons land laws ensure the right to land property indiscriminately. No judicial disposition, legislation, or statutes forbid women from owing land. Article 1 of Ordinance n 74/1 of July 6, 1974, which organizes the land system, clearly stipulates that “the State guarantees to all the persons physical or moral possessing lands in property, the right to enjoy it and to deal with it freely.”
But it is necessary to recognize that the land regulation is deficient referring to the setting of the feminine succession. It is based on restrictions that do not enable the womens access to the land heritage. Beyond these difficulties, women are in practice discriminated against, as the length and complexity of the land titling procedure hinders them more that it does most male, and as long as cultural and practical barrier continue to make womens access to justice more difficult than that of mens.
Juristic In-discrimination
Even on the juristic level, the problem of discrimination does not explicitly arise. The Cameroonian law recognizes and protects the womens rights of access to land, both for the acquisition in full property and the use of separated rights. For the acquisition in full property, the situation is simple. With titled land, the owner can easily deal it to any purchaser of his choice. In there, there should be no more difficulty when the transfer of a plot is done in via succession, since the formal jurisprudence ignores the custom with all its sex based inequities which make men the most likely to be validated as heirs of land. But, the situation is different in the case whereby a woman would like to acquire full property of a piece of land through customary practice. The importance of management lies in the fact that in addition to her customary possession of the land, a woman can develop the land and decide by virtue of development efforts to begin the registration procedure. Registration may in the long run bring her to have title of the land, whereas custom would likely only leave her with rights of use.
Still, even at the juridical level, women face barriers, generally in the form of counterclaims initiated by relatives in order to hamper women’s claims to titles. In fact, when the customary acquisition is done by way of succession, the disputes are brought about by the peer heirs. Women, however, can exercise her separate and non-familial based rights, the most common is the usufruct, a real right of use and enjoyment of somebodys property. Under usafruct, the property is divided, and the owner only remains with the ² abusus,² the right to deal, which is the most profound although not the most visible nor the most living. In conformity with article 767 of the civil code, the spouse still in life will be granted the usufruct on a portion of the property left by the deceased. It is not evident that this right is always understood or admitted by the heirs or the beneficiary. Nonetheless, in the modern land system, the women have therefore free access to lands, titled or not. The law is clear. However, in practice, the women come across many difficulties, because of illiteracy and ignorance.
- HINDRANCES TO WOMEN’S ACCESS TO LAND IN THE MODERN LAND SYSTEM
Factors limiting women’s access to land in the modern land system are located at two levels : socio-économic/cultural level and the institutional level.
Socio-economic and cultural hindrances to women’s access to land are due to women’s illiteracy, to ignorance and to poverty. In fact, if we consider the present tendencies, the global rate of education is very low in the rural areas and decreasing in the urban zone. It is even lower for girls. This is to say that the number of women having access to education is limited . Now, the modern land law has enacted the titling and the land title as major means of acquiring lands both in rural and in urban zones. The complexity of procedures, the rigidity of the conditions demanded and the bureaucratic slow procedures constitute serious obstacles for the illiterate and ignorant woman. As Jean Marie ELA has explained, very few peasants can easily get those titles in administrative departments where corruption is greatest. Obtaining a land title supposes formalities that illiterate peasants can not fulfil. Most of them get lost in the ² kafka-esque² universe of bureaucracy (1982,97). Cameroonian women are not only illiterate and ignorant, they are also poor. The high cost of the procedures for land titles discourage and disable women. Those who can gather funds must still face the harassment of the tenurial and administrative authorities. Whatever the case, the way to full property acquisition of lands is long, tenuous, and riddled of obstacles.
The socio-economic and cultural factors are coupled with institutional hindrances. These institutional hindrances include the voids and muteness of positive law on some important points relative to the women’s land status, as well as fear and the banalisation of justice. The positive law has deficiencies relating to womens successorial rights in relation to those of other peer-heirs. The women also fear justice. Most women are incapable of defending their rights at court. Very few of them choose a judicial solution, because they lack confidence in the institution as a result of the ever-present corruption. Finally, they fear the retaliation that they are likely to be subjected to in their families or villages following judicial actions. Thus, they would adopt attitudes of resignation or compromise.
- THE WOMENS LAND STATUS IN THE TRADITIONAL LAND SYSTEMS
- The impossible appropriation of land by women in the customary land systems.
Globally speaking, Cameroonian customs are more rigid towards women. They are marginalized to the benefit of men who are decision-makers even when these decisions directly concern women. When talking about land on a traditional or a modern scale in Cameroon, one thinks of the man in the front line. Men rule management of land. The women exceptionally comes into play depending no more on custom but rather on individual families that try in a way or another to give a reasonable position to their sister or daughter. Generally, women are disqualified from land management because of the labor division that exists in the traditional society. The man is the producer of marketable crops such as coffee, cocoa, and cotton. These products are considered as providing revenues to the household. Whereas women specialize in food crops farming, which are not considered prestige crops.
- Recognition and guarantee of womens customary rights to the use of land
In various traditional societies, women’s access to land is brought to the rights of use likely to be lost in the case of divorce if she is married.
In spite of womens exclusion from land management, they are however allowed the rights of use on their fathers’ or spouses’ lands. These rights of use however remain precarious in the sense that women can lose them in the case of the breaking of marital ties. In the Beti region, for example, the custom is strict as concerns the land use. Once a woman has got married, she no more has access to the family lands, except if she happens to break her marriage link. She is therefore entitled to the fathers land if the latter agrees. In the framework of the rights of use, women use the land for farming and specifically for food crop farming, revenue crops are rather a sign of appropriation of the land on which they are practiced. However if a woman embarks in that process, she automatically becomes the owner of the plot. The custom recognizes various modalities of access to land by women.
They are mainly two modalities for womens practice of the rights of use: acquisition for sustainable use and for temporary use. Traditional Acquisition for long term use takes the forms of the donation, the inheritance, or succession.
The donation is a practice that exists in the traditional practices. It covers various aspects of the social life. In the land domain, it consists of lending a piece of land to somebody without any financial pay back from the receiver. It is a loan. This is motivated by parental or philial ties. However the donation is not accessible to all women, and the discrimination is justified by the instability. The donation is generally done between men. If it so happens that a donation is made to a woman, then it means that she has remained single while having natural male children. This is justified because the woman has male children and also because in her lineage she can inherit. In order to avoid queries between her sons and their likes of the same lineage, a donation is necessary and more over out of the womans lineage.
Traditionally, the lands used by individuals at the level of the village are inherited. Can girls also inherit? The usual rule is that the sons inherit from their father, this can be extended to children born of a girl before the marriage. In this case it is the will of the deceased father that can prevail if, while living, he had demanded that the children of his unmarried daughters be taken into account. In principle, the sharing of the lands is done by the father, or if he dies before having shared his lands, it is the eldest who does it. The partitioning is done into as many as there are male sons, but it still remains unequal since the eldest is entitled to the largest share. This is justified by the fact that the latter generally hosts the widow or the widows of his late father as well as his brothers and unmarried sisters.
The women, whether in centralized or in segmental societies, however, do not inherit land but in exceptional cases. The unmarried girls are taken care of by a family member, the eldest brother in principle until their marriage and then they normally get into another family. It would therefore be abnormal for them to own something in their village. There are exceptions and a number of women happen to manage their husbands property. When a widow has male children in low age, the land left by her late husband will enable her to raise them. In this case the real heir is the son and the mother is just a usufructuary. A widow can equally inherit her husband even if she had no children, in this case the land is used for food crops, the revenue crops usually fall on the brother of her late husband. In another case, a widow can inherit her husband although having only daughters. In this case she would be given the means to raise her children, the land would later on return to the late husbands family.
Traditional Acquisition for Temporary use generally takes the form of a loan. In the forest zone, and more particularly in the Lekie region, the land issue is very acute and that is why the people from that region are compelled to move to neighboring regions for loans. These land loans fall under various rules. They are a specific allocation, the borrower has to specify what he intends to do of the land he is requesting. Food crops are easy for the loan because they are of a short duration. Women can also borrow land for a determined period of time. In this case it is usually a large piece of land that remains unexploited. Loans also have a pecuniary sense, that is to say the borrower has to pay some amount of money to the lender. If not money, the payment can be done in kind.
- Hindrances to the extension of traditional womens rights to use
The fluctuating nature of oral cultures and the non- codification of traditional customs continue to hinder the extension of women’s rights to land beyond the narrow scope of their customary rights.
The fluctuating nature of traditional land systems
Variability and instability of traditional land practices characterize the custom in the land situation. In other terms, land practices vary from one region to another. All the customs exclude women from land ownership, but some customs are more rigid than others. If we take the case of rigid customs, the Beti region is a clear illustration. According to the Beti custom, the lands are patrilineal, that is to say land is transmitted from father to son. And, if the father had only daughters, the lands generally would come back to the deceased family member, that is to a father or to a male relative if he had one and, very exceptionally, to a woman.
All the same, if a woman has already married, she is not allowed to come and cultivate the lands of her lineage. The reason being that she is no longer considered a member of that lineage. The only thing she can afford to do is to help her mother if the latter calls upon her. But the custom is more and more variable. Even in the Beti region where it is more rigid, there are families that are gradually reacting against the custom when they find some inconvenience in it. The custom is sometimes modified on the land issues, whereby it is not seldom to notice a woman inheriting from her father. Similarly, in West Cameroon, it is not rare to see a woman take the management of the fathers heritage although the filiation is patrilineal. Still, womens rights to use are precarious. That precariousness is explained by their instability.
Orality and the Non Codification of Traditional Land Practices
Customs are characterized by orality and non-codification. There is no organizing, written document about customary land practices. The knowledge and practices in the traditional systems are transmitted orally from generation to generation. They are generally scattered and spread, different from one clan to another.
The questionable socio-anthropological womens status
In the Cameroonian society women are considered inferior to men. It is in this sense that one can understand women’s exclusion from the different social decisions, since the priority is given to the men. Cameroon’s mythologies attribute a good place to the men-women relationships because they help them to explain some situations. It is impossible to understand the womans situation without relating it to that of the man and without placing it in the frame of the basic institutions where all the social relations are carved, even the eating taboos (Droy, 190, 16). The division of tasks between men and women are carved in the persisting dominant cultural models. The woman assists the man in the fulfillment of the necessary tasks for the familys life (Yana, 1997, 42).
The current changes face grave obstacles, among which are the women themselves. The women play foul among themselves, because within the woman category, there are supporters of modernity and traditionalists. In this way, they are never agreed on the situation and needed improvements of the womans condition. The supporters of the evolutionist thesis think that the woman must be treated equally to man on the fundamental principle that all men are born equal in rights ; but the traditionalists think that it is a pointless claim.
As a testimony, the Beijing Conference is a clear illustration. Most of the women do not identify in the chart drawn by the urban women. Even within the urban population, unanimity is far from being reached. In Beijing, the talks on the agenda were most about the excision, the dowry, the equality. Now, the dowry in some regions is not a problem. It is rather a love sign. The so called emancipated women, according to traditionalists want to have the same rights as men, but do the five fingers on the hand have the same height ? Are men even equal among themselves ? Those are some pertinent questions. In the same line of thought, for the traditionalists, the urban women are struggling for themselves and not for the feminine gender. One thing is sure; this tiny minority of ² emancipated women² cannot pretend to talk in the name of village women with whom they have nothing in common.
- Religion and the womens land status
The revealed religions are more or less flexible as regards the woman in relation to traditional religions. Our analysis will be based on Christianity and Islam for modern religions, and some traditional religions. Our list is far from exhaustive.
The woman land status in the Modern Religions
Womens land status in Christianity is determined by the foundation of Christianity upon a basic belief in the equality of individuals, no matter their gender, before the Christian God. The equality that Christianity advocates means that all individuals of both sexes as long as they descend from God the Father (sic) should have the same rights in all the domains of life, even in the customarily exclusive male domains. This being said, Christianity can acknowledge the same land rights to both man and woman. The latter has the right to inherit from the father, for she is first of all a daughter before being a wife. In his pastoral message to the populations of the Yaounde Archdiocese, the Archbishop says, “Women and men in so far as they are descending from a divine creature must communicate everything in the same impulse, for God our father loves his children on equal footing. Thats the reason why he wishes that all his children should have a considerable share of his heritage. We too have to love our children on equal footing and share to them what we have without any difference.” These remarks, to some extent, testify the place that Christianity gives to the woman in so far as she is a human being.
According to Christianity, the woman is the engine for life. It is her who gives birth, and as such she has a right to a place of choice in the society within which she lives. Far from being subordinate to man, she is rather a complement, that is to say she is part and parcel of his (sic) being: As the Christian God is believed to have decreed, “love yourselves mutually as I loved you.” That love apparently presupposes the recognition of the same rights to man and woman, notably in the management of the land.
Womens land status in Islam differs from that within Christianity. A rising integration movement wants to turn the woman into an invisible being. Compared to Christianity, Islam seems to be more rigid, because in that religion, the woman spoken of in terms of duties, but hardly in terms of her rights. Womens condition in Islam remains dominated by the traditional systems. They bear more than their male counters parts the effects of violence (Mohamed Arkoun 1994, 71). In the traditional family, the chief of the family has an almost absolute power on his wife and on his children (Delcambre, 1991, 101). Even if Islam tolerates women’s intellectual emancipation, it still forbids women to claim the same rights as men. Women must accept the mens domination under all its forms. One generally takes grounds on the Koran to explain the womans status in the Islamic world. Many Muslim reformers have pleaded for the improvement of the still humiliating womans condition. However, the situation has remained static. It is obvious that the Islamic law is being put into question by social practices.
Recognition and affirmation of the womans land rights in Islam
Islam, however, remains complex. The situation of women in the Islamic world is dominated by the customs that devaluates the woman. Thus, one would be tempted to think that Islam does not recognize any rights to the woman. But, a clarification has to be made. Islam, as it is consigned in the Koran, is different from the current practices in the Islamic societies. Islam acknowledges some rights to women, notably the right to inheritance. The woman inherits from her parents (Koran, Chapter 4, Verse 12) She has a right to half the share of a man. Half the share is justified by the fact that she is taken care of by her husband. These guidelines of the Koran are applicable in all the domains, even for the land. It is therefore recognized to the woman, the right to inherit from her fathers lands, but not at the same rank as the man. In common practices in Cameroon, one notices that those guidelines as dictated by the Koran are flouted to the benefit of the custom. So on the land issue, it is not surprising to notice the systematic exclusion of the woman, says Juliette MINCES (1990, 146). According to men, that exclusion has its grounds, in the exigencies of the Sharia’s major principle as it declares women inferior and rightfully subordinated to men.
2- The womens land Status in Traditional Religions
The traditional religions are equally considered as animist religions whose beliefs are dependent on subjectivity.
Those religions are rigid with regard to women to whom they request great submission in relation to man. On the land field, these religions do not know the right of property to the woman as in the Islam and the custom.
PART TWO
EVOLUTION TENDENCIES OF THE
WOMENS LAND STATUS IN CAMEROON
- Process of transformation of the tenurial setting in Cameroon
- Permanence of the crisis and the logics of social Mutation and Reconstitution
The situation of women is not static. Cameroon is in actual change and women are involved. Without having acquired the same social status as men, they have become the heart of development in spite of their invisibility. It is not difficult to come across women involved in domains reserved to men. For instance, since the beginning of the economic crisis, they are involved in the marketing of revenue crops, because they needed to diversify their revenues. This noticeable change in the Cameroon commercial landscape is mostly explained by the 1994 CFA devaluation that has brought a increase in produce prices such as cocoa and coffee. In other respects, most women coverted into the sector to gain emancipation their husbands’ financial guardianship, and bring their contribution to the families more and more slimming budgets. Men diversely appraise this change of occupation by the woman, for some of them the reconversion is a sign of independence or of contempt of the husband and, for some it is a help to the husband.
The transformation of the land setting is also perceptible in the process of commodification of the land. Land is no longer a heritage or a resource. It has become a marketable good. It henceforth has a monetary value. One can therefore sell or buy it. This justifies the development of the land market in Cameroon. Everyone can buy land. It suffices to have money (Le Roy, 1997). Women are also free to buy land. Those who have financial means already do it. They are therefore landowners.
- Multiplication and diversification of the womens process of organisation, mobilisation and struggle
In order to better express themselves and make their capacities known at the local level, women have gathered into associations. In Cameroon, one can notice a multitude of associations militating in favor of the womans cause. One can name among others, mutual help groups for agriculture tontines (financial contributions specialized for help in case of joy or misfortune). Mutual help groups for agriculture are in fact contributibutions of man power for the creation of large farming spaces in order to sell the crops on the market once harvested.
The tontines on their part consist in gathering money and saving it. They are also a group of mutual aid, because they bring moral and financial contributions to all the members. All these associations on the local scale have as an objective to free the woman from the males guardianship so that she can supply for her own needs.
Womens organization systems at the local scale serve as a basis to the national scale. The womens associations that one sees here and there are a basis for co-operation between village and urban women. Womens national organizations have as field of activity the local organizations. This means somehow that the female organizations one finds in big cities work more at the basis. The domains in which they devote are health, education, economy and culture.
In this perspective, the purpose is to help women have access to a level of knowledge that will enable them to manage daily common problems that they face, to be able to tackle objectively the situations in order to achieve self fulfillment without having to wait indefinitely to the male support that sometimes takes time to be felt.
- TENDENCIES AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WOMENS LAND STATUS IN CAMEROON
A – Disruption and bypassing of the customary land order
As said above, a woman on the traditional level, can not pretend to become a land owner. But, considering the present evolution, the woman can freely and by means of finances acquire lands. Purchasing enables women to counter all inequities and discriminations they are subject to. It is worth remarking that the reason for which women buy lands is either to practice farming or to build a house to show that they are not incapable of taking their situation in hands as one would often be tempted to say.
B – Searching for solutions to womens barriers to access to land
Information and sensitization of women on their land rights
In order to help the women know their land rights, it is important to hold training and sensitization sessions in the villages. Similarly in the media, the feminine associations have to take the relay by providing explanations to women in local languages, so that they know that they can also claim their rights because the law protects all the citizens.
Assistance and support follow up of women in need
Taking into consideration that there are divergences within the feminine society (education wise), it is imperative, if one wants to help the feminine gender to bring support to needy women. In that perspective, educating the uneducated women becomes necessary, because one can only claim ones rights if one knows what they are and wants you want. Now, in that view the women are still held back, most of them are illiterate and ignorant. To help the women, an education, development and knowledge transfer process has to be implemented. It also must be materially and financially supported. Some women want to achieve micro-projects, such as small commerce and farming. Those of them who do so show evidence of a good will to leave the yoke under which they live as eternally receiving aid. The revenues so obtained will help to acquire a plot.
GENERAL CONCLUSION
- The land issue as it appears poses a lot of difficulties that have to be solved. It is difficult to believe that the struggle is won for the women as long as they remain under the yoke of masculine domination. In the social stratification they have an inferior position. Now there is a close link between the social and the land status; the first determines the second. An inferior social status will correspond to an inferior land status. Land is a reflection of social rapports and the problems that it poses are of a political nature.
- In order to better tackle the land issue, it is necessary to make use of all social science subjects because the land question is a total social fact, that is to say it refers to economy, anthropology, psychology, and law. These different social sciences will each help to understand the problem of the exclusion or involvement of the woman in the land issue.
- The land question as it appears shows that there is a connection between tradition and modernity, between endogenity and exogenity.
- The predominance of customary practices is real in the rural area and the land regulation is done in major part away from the modern law. It is closely linked to social and religious practices. However the land policy nowadays does not take into account these aspects that limit womens access to land.
- If the traditional land practices are rigid with regard to womens access to land ownership they however recognize to women’s right of use. The modern land law is more liberal. It establishes the womens land rights. But here and there, there are hindrances that limit womens rights. In order to reduce those hindrances, it is important that womens power be reinforced at all levels and that the State should see to it that its authority is restored and the law respected.
FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS
- Actions to be taken
1-Judicial and institutional reforms
- a) In the (global) State space
Encourage womens education so that they can grasp their rights, without fearing to claim them. In that perspective, it will be necessary to render the law more accessible ; one of the handicaps being the judicial esotericism. This phenomenon is a consequence of the judicial proceedings formalism often ignored of people subject to trial, notably the women.
- b) In the customary and local space
It is true that custom is an integral part of the culture of a society. But, when it does not fulfil nor contribute to social harmony, custom becomes problematic. Thus, actions to be taken at this level must contribute to the empowerment of women in their socio-economic activities. Then, they will be able to advocate and lobby for the transformation of their social status. Another way of looking for change is to bridge the gaps between the State land law and the customary practices, to build a conciliatory approach. In that process, the State land Law can serve as a subversive system for the transformation of the cultural foundations of the customary land system.
2-The Necessary Socio-Anthropological and Cultural Transformations
We must demand modernization of the traditional values and adjustments adaptating to modernity. This process can be built through the identification and the promotion of the cultural innovation produced and constructed by the social actions. At this Stage, the question is to know how we undertake these actions.
B- Proposed Strategies of the actions to be undertaken
There are two main activities to be undertaken: through study on the Women s land Status. The strategies are based on two main approaches.
Actions Strategies from the Up
Information and Sensitization of policy. makers (international actors, State and Traditional Chiefs) and support to the process of agrarian reforms.
Actions Strategies from the Bottom
These activities can be undertaken at this level: building dialog and communication ( information and sensitization of both Women and men ); strengthening the Women action capacities and support the realization of pilot projects for the transformation of the Women land Status ( security of access and control) in the grassroots.
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