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accumulation by land dispossession and labor ... - Land Portal

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Mavuji effectively illustrates this ambiguity. Discussion with village council members<br />

indicates that they are not very sure about the actual size of the <strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong> acquired <strong>by</strong> the<br />

investor from their village, with one village official indicating that it is 16,000 acres <strong>and</strong><br />

thus estimating it to be less than 10,000 hectares. Since the compensation rate used was<br />

Tsh 15,000 per acre <strong>and</strong> the village got Tsh 89,420,000, being 40% of the whole<br />

compensation given, a simple calculation reveals that the size should be about 2,384,<br />

something that does not add up. The Village L<strong>and</strong> Use Plan conducted <strong>by</strong> Tume ya Taifa<br />

ya Matumizi Bora ya Ardhi (2006) indicates that the total available area therein was<br />

52,960 acres.<br />

By the end of December, 2006 out of this <strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong> only 3,000 acres were used as farm<strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong><br />

<strong>and</strong> 43,542.50 as forest<strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong>, prompting the planning team to suggest an increase of the<br />

former. Such information renders the following conclusion suspect: ―In Mavuji village,<br />

the <strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong> relocated to the company was unused <strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong>, which according to the Village L<strong>and</strong><br />

Use Plan was planned as a farming area. The village still has spare <strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong> for Village L<strong>and</strong><br />

Forest Reserves (VLFRs) <strong>and</strong> for other uses, such as settlements‖ (Gordon-Maclean,<br />

Laizer, Harrison & Shemdoe 2008: 24). But a comparative analysis of Figure 4 <strong>and</strong> 5<br />

below which, respectively, graphically present the use of <strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong> in Mavuji Village in 2007<br />

<strong>and</strong> its Village L<strong>and</strong> Use Plan for 2007 – 2017, reveals that a significant part of the<br />

village forest/farm<strong>l<strong>and</strong></strong> has been truncated for the sake of the investor.<br />

45

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