Inappropriate land-grabs in Tonga

For some Pacific Island states, land issues have reached critical points, which is why land could be the central theme of key reform debates in the next decade or so.

In an article by Gemima Garrett of Radio Australia in 2011, she mentioned Lopez Adams who was spokesperson for the youth group ‘Last Voices in Vanuatu’, which was established to draw attention to the land problem in that country.

Adams said: ‘The fear young people in Vanuatu have (is)… they have no job(s), and there are thousands and thousands of them …and they have the same fear as the group that we started.’

‘All the land is gone,’ he said. ‘Port Vila is on Efate, and on Efate alone, 80% of the land is gone. It is registered and it is taken away from the indigenous and the indigenous can do nothing. They have no money to take it to court and the legal system is not on their behalf and the government is using the land development to give to people who can invest on them – it is hurting everybody.’

Selwyn Garu, General Secretary then for the National Council of Chiefs, together with women’s groups, and church groups expressed concern.

He said: ‘We discourage the leasing out of land, especially customary land… because people’s livelihood is all based on land. It is all founded on land. The people are not really for it. The government encourages it…’

What some ni-Vanuatu, especially on Efate are feeling in regards to land is that they have lost a large percentage of their land to leases by foreigners. There seems to be no land laws limiting land leases or at least restrict it so as to ensure there is land that is still in the control of the indigenous people, and utilised for their benefit.

As in other Pacific states, the people’s livelihood is based on land.

In a country like the Kingdom of Tonga where the land tenure system has ensured local ownership, and strict enforcement of the Constitutional clause that bans any sale of land ‘forever’, there is a looming problem if unchecked, that could approach the kind of situation Vanuatu has found itself in.

Despite the ‘no sale’ land clause in Tonga, there is provision in the Tongan land laws for leases, and in some cases up to 99 years. Most of the leases are to foreigners, corporates, churches, or schools, but also to individual Tongans who live overseas, and who have a greater level of wealth than their local counterparts.

The situation of leasing to foreigners in the northern islands of Vava’u for example is pretty bad, according to many locals.

As the most popular tourism destination in the island kingdom, the commodification of land for foreign retirement or business interests may have been slowed by the 2009-2010 hearings in Vava’u by the Royal Land Commission, but the current situation is back up to the pre-2009 activities.

Many foreigners lease land in Vava’u to build holiday residences. Most of those leases are for 20 years, but the foreigners intend to renew their leases after they expire. And they usually come up with money sweeteners to entice approval.

On the other hand, the leaseholders are thinking that after 20 years when the lease expires, their children or the inherited landowners will take back the leased land with a nice house on it.

The Royal Land Commission was created in 2009 as an initiative of the late King George Tupou V. Their assigned task was: ‘Not to change the basic land tenure of our kingdom, but to ascertain the prevailing practices and consensus of opinion, legal or otherwise in order to recommend changes that will provide a more effective and efficient application of land laws and practices.’

The Royal Land Commission conducted its work over a period of three years at a cost of over $3 million pa’anga.

Dr Teena Brown-Pulu, a Tongan academic from New Zealand’s AUT University wrote: ‘In effect, the not-so-independent land commission would act as an advisory body to the minister of lands who by Tongan law could only be a noble’s representative to parliament. In all honesty, how classless and democratic in principle was the proposed set-up? Considering the land commissioners appointed by King George Tupou V were three lawyers and members of the King’s Privy Council, where one was a noble estate-holder and one had life-peerage and a lord’s title, how impartial and nonpartisan were these advice-giving men making suggestions for change?’

The Land Commission report was released in 2012, two weeks after King George Tupou V’s death, and gave 120 recommendations; 99 of these decided by the commissioners themselves based on public meetings conducted all over Tonga, and 21 put forward by the nobility, the constitutional estate-holders of the greater part of Tonga’s landmass.

Tonga’s pro-democracy leader and longest member of parliament, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, said the Land Commission’s report still has not been tabled and debated in parliament, despite the fact that twice during 2013, there were motions for it to be debated in the house.

‘To this day, the report and all the recommendations it made still has not been presented to Parliament,’ Pohiva said. ‘In the meantime, the nobles who are the large estate holders are already trying to amend land laws to make it favorable to them.’

But what are the nobles trying to amend in Tonga’s land laws?

Dr Teena Brown-Pulu wrote: ‘The trouble with the 2010 parliamentary restructuring which enabled 17 people’s representative seats to outnumber the nine allocated for nobles was this; the nobility interpreted the system change as a potential destabiliser to their power and resource base — land.’

Because the present land laws require cabinet approval for all land leases, one of Tonga’s large landholding nobles brought a private bill into the legislature in 2010.

The bill aimed at taking cabinet’s function of authorising leases and tenancy agreements on noble’s estates, giving this legal responsibility to estate holders themselves. Cabinet would be confined to approving land occupancy matters solely on crown holdings belonging to the state.

Amending the current land laws would mean that the hereditary estate holders have the explicit rights over issuing leases and allotments on their estates without the approval of cabinet. Land disputes will be negotiated with the minister for lands, who is by law a noble representative in parliament.

A point that reformers are starting to debate openly is money generated from leases for publicly used land such as the airport, the wharves, power stations, and schools should go to public services that benefit the citizens of Tonga, rather than to estate-holders.

Nobles get rich through land leases, and millions are being paid for land used for schools, airports, wharves, and other publicly used areas.

The questions surrounding the nobles’ control of land leases are undergirded by the original role assigned to them by His Majesty King George Tupou I.

In a sweeping political move in 1839 and progressively in the years following, he abolished the existing chiefly system of the day and replaced it with the nobility system that has lasted to this day.

King George I not only gave the nobles he appointed hereditary titles but also large estates with the purpose of redistribution to the people of Tonga.

The nobles were to be custodians of the land, and would systematically grant land ownership to their people, free of charge — not only town allotments for residency but also out-of-town allotments for planting crops.

The critical issue facing Tonga is that while nobles are leasing out large quantities of their land for millions of dollars, there are a lot of their people who are without land.

Land reform may indeed be a major issue in the region, and not just in Vanuatu and Tonga.