BURUNDI: Land remains key challenge in reintegration of returnees

Although he looks frail, Cossan Ntabwigwa, in his late 60s, is a determined man. He recently returned from Tanzania, where he had been a refugee since 1972, and is seeking to resettle on a piece of land he left years ago.

Despite finding someone else occupying the land, Ntabwigwa is determined to reclaim it, and he says sharing it with the current occupant is out of the question.

"I left two other brothers there [in Tanzania] who are married and with children and who must also get a share of this land," he said.

When he repatriated from Gatumba settlement in Tanzania at the beginning of August, Ntabwigwa, who heads a 10-member family, spent three days at the commune headquarters in Nyanzalac, Makamba province, waiting to go home.

Like most Burundians, Ntabwigwa's strong attachment to land means he is unwilling to share his piece of land with the current occupant, whom he considers an outsider since he is not a family member.

Also in Nyanzalac, Alexis Anthony Kifumu, his wife and six children, have been squatting at an elementary school for two weeks. He returned to Burundi to find part of his land occupied by the school while a businessman had used another portion to put up a pub and a shop.

Local administrative officials advised Kifumu to use the remaining 30 metres to build himself a house.

"I have started making bricks, I think it will take me 14 days to get them ready and if I build a house, I will try to work and live as best as I can while waiting for my case to be settled," he said.

Sharing land

Although Kifumu calmly accepted the situation, in line with his Christian faith, he seemed disillusioned.

"I am surprised to find that I am not even authorised to use a classroom while waiting to build my house; when there is a disaster, people seek shelter in schools yet they have no pity for us," Kifumu said.

In March, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, launched a repatriation operation for up to 46,000 "old caseload" refugees from the Tanzanian old settlements of Katumba, Mishamo and Ulyankulu.

According to a UNHCR factsheet for July, 11,020 of the returnees in 2008, estimated at 59,877, are refugees from the 1972 caseload.

While returnees who fled the country in 1993 find it slightly easier to resettle, the case is not the same for the 1972 caseload, as exemplified by the cases of Ntabwigwa and Kifumu, for whom disputes over land ownership can at times take long to resolve.

Indeed, the complex problem of land remains a major challenge to the reintegration of returnees. Not only do many, if not all returnees have a land-dispute related story to tell, but land has become a scarce commodity.

Bernard Ntagumuka, an advisor of the administrator at the commune of Nyanzalac, said the number of returnees who have resettled was insignificant compared to the number of returnees who find their land occupied by others, "either legally or illegally".

"Others [returnees] find that the government used them [their land] for social infrastructure; take the urban centre of Nyanzalac for instance, it was built on people's land," Ntagumuka said.

Ownership hitches

In other instances, returnees find their land has been resold and divided to the extent that reclaiming it becomes difficult since it has passed from one owner to another. In some cases, refugees returned home, sold their land and went back to Tanzania.

When civil war broke out in Burundi 1972, thousands of Burundians fled to neighbouring countries, leaving their property behind and their lands vacant. In many regions of Burundi, especially the southern provinces of Bururi and Makamba, the then government encouraged people from other regions to occupy the land.

Nestor Niyonkuru, an information officer for the Commission on Land and Other Properties, said: "Logic would dictate that the new occupant vacates the land and return it to the owner, but it is not as simple as it seems.
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