"Communal" land tenure and common property resource management: an evaluation of the potential for sustainable common property resource management in Zimbabwe's "communal" areas

"A tenure" is simply a bundle of rights. Rights to use land, trees and their products in certain ways and sometimes to exclude others" Bruce and Fortmann (1988:2)? It can also be appropriately added to this definition that a system of tenure rules is both determined by the production process it seeks to regulate and also has a definitive bearing on that process of production.Moreover, a system of tenure rules can be imposed on a mode of production to suit "external" interests rather than those of the people engaged in it. This, it is contended here, is precisely what has historically happened to the "communal" system of land tenure in Zimbabwe's "communal" areas.

A conference paper on sustainable management of the commonly shared environmental resources. Paper prepared for the conference on "Land Policy in Zimbabwe after Lancaster," 13-15 February, 1990.