Primitive accumulation of wealth means reaping without sowing

In the colonial language, land robbery carried out with the assistance of the state was called land alienation. In the neo-liberal era, the language, forms and mechanisms of land expropriation revolve around promoting efficient commercial agriculture and attracting foreign investment. Issa Shivji examines new forms of dispossession.

Robbery of land, labour and resources was the basis of primitive accumulation by colonial capital. Land was alienated from indigenous users and given to white settlers and colonial companies in the colonies, particularly settler colonies like Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The common pattern was to alienate most fertile and productive land to the settlers leaving behind rocky and most unsuitable land for the Africans.

By the end of the colonial period, some 4,000 white farmers had the monopoly of some 16,500 square miles of the so-called White Highlands which contained 30 percent of all good land in Kenya while over five million Africans were bundled into reserves consisting of the worst lands. Under the Land Apportionment Act of Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), some 178,000 Whites got 75,000 square miles of land while 2,290,000 Africans were left with 63,000 square miles.

Although huge areas of good land were reserved for the settlers, only small portions of these were actually cultivated. The aim was not only to provide land to the Whites but also to create landlessness among the Blacks so that the Africans had no alternative but to work for European plantations, mines and other enterprises at very low wages. Creation of cheap labour was a deliberate policy of the colonial state.

The system of poll or head tax, under which every adult African male had to pay a fixed amount of tax, whether or not he earned any income, was meant to force the Africans to go and work for European farms and mines.

European agriculture was given further advantages such as better infrastructure, prices, state subsidies and monopolies to ward off competition from African peasants. It is under such circumstances that European capital was accumulated. Everywhere under the colonial situation it has been proved again and again that the so-called efficiency of capitalist agriculture as opposed to inefficient and unproductive peasant agriculture is a function of state support and subsidies.

Two characteristics stand out in the colonial form of primitive accumulation. One, the use of extra-economic force, whether justified by law or not, to enable expropriation of resources and exploitation of labour. Two, strategic state intervention to create necessary conditions for capital to reap super-profits. Thus the talk about leaving the economy to the market is so much balderdash. The state always intervenes in the economy; the question is in whose interest.

Under the current conditions, the language, the justification, the mechanisms and forms of capital accumulation may have changed but the processes of accumulation by foreign capital in Africa share these two characteristics - the use of extra-economic force and the intervention of the state - and therefore I call it the primitive accumulation of capital. Let us take the example of land again.

In the colonial language, land robbery carried out with the assistance of the state was called land alienation. In the neo-liberal era, the language, forms and mechanisms of land expropriation revolve around promoting efficient commercial agriculture and attracting foreign investment.

The Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC), for example, is reported to have identified some four million hectares of land under its Land Bank scheme. This scheme has nothing to do with banks, more to do with lands. TIC writes to regional commissioners, who in turn write to District Authorities, who in turn order village executive officers to identify suitable lands in their villages and report back within 11 days. Thus TIC accumulates 4 million hectares in its land bank. Says Mr. Ole Naika, TIC’s Director of Investment:

“Over 2.5 million hectares of land in Tanzania have been surveyed and found suitable for investment. The figure constitutes some 62.5 per cent of over 4 million hectares managed under the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC). The remainder is categorised as land that is potential for investment where additional surveying or infrastructure is required” (The Citizen, 10/09/2004.

An investor, say a farmer from South Africa, who is interested in investing in commercial agriculture, would apply to TIC. Once the investor has chosen his preferred X thousand hectares he would be allocated land under a derivative title - a kind of lease - under the new land laws. The sale of this land would be done under terms which even the members of parliament would not be able to know because these are supposed to be contractual secrets. Going by previous experiences and what has happened in other countries, we know that land is “sold” to investors at dirt-cheap prices. In the mid-90s sisal estates were sold to businessmen at less than 50 US cents per acre.

Armed with his title, the investor gets a loan from, perhaps, a South African bank in Tanzania which holds deposits from Tanzanian workers and peasants, and NGOs, and the Government, and the aid money from donors. Thus the Tanzanian poor provide both land and capital to the investor.

Under an appropriate certificate from TIC, the investor would also have the usual tax holidays and tax exemption under which he would import - most probably second hand - tractors and machinery from South Africa. He would perhaps also have a permit to import his skilled foremen, to supervise his Tanzanian workers, and squatters and share-croppers, the former owners of “his” land.

The state has to provide him with the necessary infrastructure - roads and electricity and water - and an export subsidy so that he may export and earn foreign exchange in the interest of the country. Thus the Tanzanian taxpayer subsidizes the investor.

It is often said that the land given to investors is idle land. Under the colonial language, alienated village lands used to be called uninhabited or un-owned land; now they are idle lands. In practice, these lands are usually prime lands already used by peasants which means when they are alienated the inevitable eviction occurs giving rise to perpetual land disputes. To guarantee protection, safety and stability, the state has inevitably to use force to reassure the investor and keep the recalcitrant peasant at bay. Thus the Tanzanian State shields the foreign landowner from the wrath of the Tanzanian landless.

How is this process fundamentally different from the land expropriations of the colonial era? Primitive accumulation in popular language is nothing but reaping without sowing.

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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