Customary land in Zambia-What is its significance
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Date
2013-06-04
Authors
Kalungia, Sam K.
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Abstract
The study has estabhshed that customary land in Zambia is enormously significant because land is central to human existence and a large proportion of Zambians depend on it for their livelihood. Customary land in Zambia is the source of food and other necessaries for human existence for the villagers whose entire spectrum of perceptions of life are rooted in the cultural configurations and heritage of rural activities. Further, the study has found that the land can be made more commercially productive without converting it to leasehold. Other African countries too recognize and uphold the significance of customary land because it prevents landlessness of their citizenry.
The ownership requirements of leasehold land preclude the financial capacity of villagers living on customary land. The existence of customary land tenure thus provides land sanctuary for a commercially weak segment of the citizenry who require free and permanent access to land because a citizen denied land has lost the basic means of sustaining his livelihood. In Zambia, as in other African countries, the concept of land ownership consists of not only communal interests in land but also concurrent interests, individual interests and successive or inheritable interests in the land. Thus, citizens of Zambia living on customary land truly own the land in perpetuity, subject to the statutory reservations against minerals, oil, gas or other valuable treasure reserves that may lie beneath their land.
The vesting of all land in Zambia in the President is only for administrative convenience and does not abrogate the ovmership of customary land by the citizens of Zambia who
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Land tenure --Law and legislation --Zambia , Customary law --Zambia.