Land Ownership in a New Country (Southern Sudan)

Property Law and Order... "What is your evidence of title?" That's the question that I asked my brother as we walked around his property, Mango Camp, in Kapoeta in the Southern Sudan three weeks ago. His answer: "The local commissioner."

Kapoeta is located about fifty miles north of the Kenya border on the road to Juba, a major city located 150 miles west on the Nile River. (See bottom of this map.) Today the road as far as Kapoeta is relatively safe despite road signs with the caution: "Warning: Mines - Stay on Road at All Times." And humanitarian groups are active as evidenced by this picture of an aid flight unloading at the Kapoeta airstrip.

Land titles are granted at the discretion of the local "commissioner," a powerful civic official appointed by the newly autonomous government of the Southern Sudan, as a result of the peace agreement between the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) and the Government of the Sudan (GOS) in Khartoum.

Needless to say, the transition from the Arab administration of the GOS to the new African administration is a slow and difficult process. Imagine trying to establish a new governmental infrastructure and legal system in a region where two million recently died in a civil war, four million are internally displaced and one million are refugees outside of the Sudan.

Yet I met some phenomenally motivated Sudanese leaders firmly committed in words and deed to building a civil society by developing the necessary educational, healthcare and security institutions. These people are saints.

But for the immediate future, there will not be a Western-style property ownership system embedded in an historical framework of rights and obligations. Local administrators will continue to determine land ownerships and settle disputes. They are the law.

Mango Camp serves as the home base for my brother's company, New Sudan Service & Supply. It includes a machine shop for his primary business of water well drilling and "tukuls," little huts, rented to guests, mainly aid workers for NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Except for running cold water (which is fine because of the heat), there are no utilities of any kind. It is not Club Med, but it is adventure.

-- Peter Pike