3 - ‘Land Belongs to the Community’: Competing Interpretations of the CPA

Summary

The divisions that stymied the integration process in the early transition period in Juba were the result of multiple, intersecting factors, including competition over public sector jobs, political rivalries, and different experiences of the war. Overlaying divisions were competing understandings of the implications of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) for the framework of land rights in Southern Sudan, and for authority over land in Juba and surrounding areas. These understandings were not inherent to particular ethnic or ‘tribal’ identities, but were employed by key local stakeholders in Juba to promote particular interests in local reconstruction. To the degree that they furthered distinct understandings of citizenship, they were strategies of local statebuilding.

During the difficult process of integrating local institutions into the decentralized framework of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS), a tense politics of land was emerging in Juba, which would block the SPLM’s vision for urban development in the town, and further complicate debates over authority and political jurisdiction. At the time of the CPA, there was no unified legal framework for governing land tenure in Sudan. While successive legislation had given the northern government far-reaching powers over ‘unregistered’ lands outside of the towns, in practice the application of land law in southern Sudan was uneven and inconsistent. In much of the region, traditional authorities – chiefs and kings, sub-chiefs and headman – continued to exercise authority over land allocation and management on a de facto basis.

In an attempt to promote the rights of southerners to lands in the region and to safeguard southern autonomy against future encroachment by the north, the SPLM/A team in Naivasha negotiated for an acknowledgement of ‘community’ rights to land in the CPA. Given the history of land alienation by the central government in communities throughout southern Sudan, the SPLM/A leadership believed that institutionalizing land rights held under customary law would give southerners legal protection against being forced off their land. Providing legal protections for southern resources would be especially crucial if the south voted to remain within a united Sudan in the referendum.

The recognition of communal land rights was not only a mechanism to protect the south from the northern government; it was also a strategy of state-building.