Issues in Women's Land Rights in Cameroon

Chapter Five - Women and Land Registration in Anglophone Cameroon: Lessons from South Africa

87 Chapter Five Women and Land Registration in Anglophone Cameroon: Lessons from South Africa Michael A. Yanou & Patience Sone Abstract The Anglophone region of Cameroon has a significant problem of inequality in land holding between men and women. This paper reviews the land registration mechanism in the region in the context of this inequality of the landholdings between the sexes, which has resulted in a situation where over 80% of the registered lands in the region are in the hands of men. After identifying the Land Consultative Board as the principal body dealing with land registration, the paper criticizes it for consolidating patriarchal rules of land ownership. It argues that the prominent role given to the chief and two notables in the Board who are generally committed to customary law is a major obstacle inhibiting women from registering land on equal footing with men. The Supreme Court of Cameroon was also criticized for giving credence to the notion of ancestral property in Ekolena Fouda Jean Inheritors v The State of Cameroon (MINDA) because the concept strengthens patriarchy. It has, in this paper, been demonstrated that the land registration law in Cameroon is similar to that of South Africa, as both have been used to achieve the exclusion of certain segment of society from owning land. Just as Section 5 of the Glen Gray Act was used to stop Africans whose lands had been dispossessed during apartheid from rebelling to get back their land, section 12 of Decree No 76/166 of April 1976 is used to give the chief and his two notables in the Board a strong voice to protect customary rules that restrict women’s rights 88 to own property. The difference between the South African situation and that of Cameroon is, according to this paper, very minor. While in South Africa race was the basis of exclusion during apartheid, sex is the basis of discrimination in Cameroon to date. Introduction The main theme of this paper is the land registration process in Cameroon with particular emphasis in the Anglophone regions. The paper timely calls attention to the worrisome fact that most Cameroonians, including the government, seem to take the centrality of land as a resource for survival and security of the individual for granted. This attitude is partly connected to the much wider phenomenon associated with the casual assumption that land disputes do not raise human rights concerns since land law and human rights are not natural bedfellows. This view assumes that human right stresses concern for the other person, while land law, which is opposed to this idea, is concerned with the notion of personal appropriation with its tendencies to exclude others75 . The above conceptualization invariably causes government and policy-makers not to take the issue of the limited access to land by women seriously. However, lessons in Cameroon and elsewhere have demonstrated that this view is fundamentally erroneous. Indeed according to Leroy,76 the Commission on Human Security (2003) had identified competition over land and resources as the number one cause of internal conflicts in Africa. It is obvious that the preponderate majority of inter – community/village wars are landdriven in the North West Region of Cameroon. 75 Gray, K. (2002) ‘Land Law and Human Rights,’ in Tee, I., Land Law: Issues, Debates, Policy, Devon: William Publishing 211. 76 Leroy, M. Environment and Conflicts in Africa Reflections on Darfur. Addis Abba: University for Peace, 2009 p51. 89 This same trend was graphically captured in South Africa by Letsoalo (1987)77 who had noted that whatever minor causes there may have been for the many Bantu European Wars in the country, the competition for land was at the root of these wars. Although the general tendency is to interpret this competition and resultant violence over land in the context of the struggle between different communities over land, a comprehensive review of the phenomenon shows that there are a variety of different strands in this conflict. This paper reviews the land registration process in Anglophone Cameroon in the context of the strand that stresses the struggle over land between men and women, which has resulted in the bulk of registered lands being in the hands of men. Theoretical framework of the paper The paper situates the subject of women and land registration within Locke’s theoretical conception of the equality of human beings. Locke believed that it was possible to tie the right to property...