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.Not surprisingly, this situation gave rise to fre-quent serious conflicts that the parties involved could not resolve by them-selves, and that they either referred to traditional village conflict mediatorsor (less often) brought to the courts.Each year, households reported on theaverage more than one such serious conflict requiring outside resolution.Andre and Platteau surveyed the causes of 226 such conflicts, as describedeither by the mediators or by the householders.According to both types ofinformants, land disputes lay at the root of most serious conflicts: either be-cause the conflict was directly over land (43% of all cases); or because it wasa husband/wife, family, or personal dispute often stemming ultimately froma land dispute (I'll give examples in the next two paragraphs); or else be-cause the dispute involved theft by very poor people, known locally as"hunger thieves," who owned almost no land and were without off-farm in-come and who lived by stealing for lack of other options (7% of all disputes,and 10% of all households).Those land disputes undermined the cohesion of Rwandan society's tra-ditional fabric.Traditionally, richer landowners were expected to help theirpoorer relatives.This system was breaking down, because even the land-owners who were richer than other landowners were still too poor to beable to spare anything for poorer relatives.That loss of protection especiallyvictimized vulnerable groups in the society: separated or divorced women,widows, orphans, and younger half-siblings.When ex-husbands ceased toprovide for their separated or divorced wives, the women would formerlyhave returned to their natal family for support, but now their own brothersopposed their return, which would make the brothers or the brothers' chil-dren even poorer.The women might then seek to return to their natalfamily only with their daughters, because Rwandan inheritance was tradi-tionally by sons, and the woman's brothers wouldn't see her daughters ascompeting with their own children.The woman would leave her sons withtheir father (her divorced husband), but his relatives might then refuse landto her sons, especially if their father died or ceased protecting them.Simi-larly, a widow would find herself without support from either her husband'sfamily (her brothers-in-law) or from her own brothers, who again saw thewidow's children as competing for land with their children.Orphans weretraditionally cared for by paternal grandparents; when those grandparentsdied, the orphans' uncles (the brothers of their deceased father) now soughtto disinherit or evict the orphans.Children of polygamous marriages, or of broken marriages in which the man subsequently remarried and hadchildren by a new wife, found themselves disinherited or evicted by theirhalf-brothers.The most painful and socially disruptive land disputes were those pit-ting fathers against sons.Traditionally, when a father died, his land allpassed to his oldest son, who was expected to manage the land for the wholefamily and to provide his younger brothers with enough land for their sub-sistence.As land became scarce, fathers gradually switched to the customof dividing their land among all sons, in order to reduce the potential forintrafamily conflict after the father's death.But different sons urged on theirfather different competing proposals for dividing the land.Younger sons be-came bitter if older brothers, who got married first, received a dispropor-tionately large share e.g., because the father had had to sell off some landby the time younger sons got married.Younger sons instead demandedstrictly equal divisions; they objected to their father giving their olderbrother a present of land on that brother's marriage.The youngest son, whotraditionally was the one expected to care for his parents in their old age,needed or demanded an extra share of land in order to carry out that tradi-tional responsibility [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Not surprisingly, this situation gave rise to fre-quent serious conflicts that the parties involved could not resolve by them-selves, and that they either referred to traditional village conflict mediatorsor (less often) brought to the courts.Each year, households reported on theaverage more than one such serious conflict requiring outside resolution.Andre and Platteau surveyed the causes of 226 such conflicts, as describedeither by the mediators or by the householders.According to both types ofinformants, land disputes lay at the root of most serious conflicts: either be-cause the conflict was directly over land (43% of all cases); or because it wasa husband/wife, family, or personal dispute often stemming ultimately froma land dispute (I'll give examples in the next two paragraphs); or else be-cause the dispute involved theft by very poor people, known locally as"hunger thieves," who owned almost no land and were without off-farm in-come and who lived by stealing for lack of other options (7% of all disputes,and 10% of all households).Those land disputes undermined the cohesion of Rwandan society's tra-ditional fabric.Traditionally, richer landowners were expected to help theirpoorer relatives.This system was breaking down, because even the land-owners who were richer than other landowners were still too poor to beable to spare anything for poorer relatives.That loss of protection especiallyvictimized vulnerable groups in the society: separated or divorced women,widows, orphans, and younger half-siblings.When ex-husbands ceased toprovide for their separated or divorced wives, the women would formerlyhave returned to their natal family for support, but now their own brothersopposed their return, which would make the brothers or the brothers' chil-dren even poorer.The women might then seek to return to their natalfamily only with their daughters, because Rwandan inheritance was tradi-tionally by sons, and the woman's brothers wouldn't see her daughters ascompeting with their own children.The woman would leave her sons withtheir father (her divorced husband), but his relatives might then refuse landto her sons, especially if their father died or ceased protecting them.Simi-larly, a widow would find herself without support from either her husband'sfamily (her brothers-in-law) or from her own brothers, who again saw thewidow's children as competing for land with their children.Orphans weretraditionally cared for by paternal grandparents; when those grandparentsdied, the orphans' uncles (the brothers of their deceased father) now soughtto disinherit or evict the orphans.Children of polygamous marriages, or of broken marriages in which the man subsequently remarried and hadchildren by a new wife, found themselves disinherited or evicted by theirhalf-brothers.The most painful and socially disruptive land disputes were those pit-ting fathers against sons.Traditionally, when a father died, his land allpassed to his oldest son, who was expected to manage the land for the wholefamily and to provide his younger brothers with enough land for their sub-sistence.As land became scarce, fathers gradually switched to the customof dividing their land among all sons, in order to reduce the potential forintrafamily conflict after the father's death.But different sons urged on theirfather different competing proposals for dividing the land.Younger sons be-came bitter if older brothers, who got married first, received a dispropor-tionately large share e.g., because the father had had to sell off some landby the time younger sons got married.Younger sons instead demandedstrictly equal divisions; they objected to their father giving their olderbrother a present of land on that brother's marriage.The youngest son, whotraditionally was the one expected to care for his parents in their old age,needed or demanded an extra share of land in order to carry out that tradi-tional responsibility [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]