Legal insecurity and land conflicts in Mgeta, Uluguru Mountains, Tanzania

This article explains why people in Mgeta become locked in long and expensive land disputes. These disputes cannot be explained as rational choice strategies: the value of the land involved bears no relation to the costs people claim to incur: and people have recourse to the State legal arena without any reasonable expectation of a resolution of the conflict there. The explanation offered here is that there is a breakdown in the social definition of reality. The quest for justice is seen as a legal expression of a search for such definition.The Waluguru reason about land mainly in terms of a matrilineal ideology. This ideology is not, however, an ahistorical identity which gives automatic answers in disputes; it has to be continuously constructed as society copes with social change. The problem cannot be seen as one of cultural lag, where modern forms of law clash with older forms. Case material shows that recourse to individual title, for example, requires as much social construction of reality as recourse to Luguru systems of law. It also shows that these forms of law are inextricably intertwined. The failure to express a social construction of reality which is experienced as authoritative and binding is exacerbated by a vacuum of authority which has emerged in Luguru society.The obvious force driving these seemingly irrational conflicts is envy. In a situation, as here, where there is a breakdown in the social construction of reality and where a vacuum of authority exists, this disruptive force can manifest itself in unbridled form.