Disguised Land Sale Practices among the Arsii Oromo of Kokossa District, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Since the mid-1970s, all land in Ethiopia has officially been declared as a public/state property. Consequently, peasants have enjoyed only land use rights, while land sale has been deemed illegal. Indeed, the government legislation is not the only factor to have constrained land sale in the study area. The Arsii Oromo customs too discourage the transfer of land to ‘outsiders.’ Nevertheless, neither government legislation nor the local customs have exercised an absolute control over land sale, and small-scale land transactions have existed under various disguises. Although most of the land sale, being an illicit practice, is conducted through oral agreements, some land transactions involve informal written papers. At a glance these written materials appear to be attempts to ‘formalize’ an informal activity. Closer examination, however, reveals how some important words are carefully avoided, and other words and concepts with ambiguous or dual meanings are being deliberately employed in these written deals. These disguises and ambiguities introduced into the written agreements demonstrate farmers’ ‘adaptive strategies’ (adaptation both to the policies/legislation, and to the local customs as well) in order to conduct land transactions. Detailed analysis of these informal recordings is the core focus of this paper.