Land Rights and the Forest Peoples of Africa

Land rights and the forest peoples of Africa – Part I
peoples in Central Africa we need to understand their societies as neither essentially isolated
from their neighbours nor as essentially dominated by them. Their relational approach to
their social, political and physical environment means that to support them in making their
own futures we have to support their processes of inclusivity, rather than set them up as
people who primarily wish to exclude others from their territory. However, while forest
peoples are guided by complex and dynamic customary land tenure systems, and while their
culture is, in general, excellent at undermining and resisting attempts to dominate it, they are
none the less politically weak when it comes to direct conflict with outsiders, and their
egalitarian strategies can only deal with assault only up to a certain level. The final section of
this chapter will focus on the current situation of Central Africa’s forest peoples and will attest
to the severe conditions some forest peoples are living in as a result of such sustained attacks
on their livelihoods and ways of living.
3 Current situation of forest peoples in Central Africa 60
The forest provides the environmental, social, economic and political resource base that gives
forest peoples room for manoeuvre, enabling them to negotiate with others and, to a great
extent, determine their own future. The immediate threat to them comes from the destruction
of the forest itself. After first examining the predicament of the different peoples who
maintain livelihoods based inside the forests, we will look at the predicament of those whose
forest has been destroyed or who have been excluded from it.
A
Forest peoples still living in the forest
To varying degrees, groups such as the Mbuti (Bambuti) and Efe, the Aka (Ba-Aka), the Baka,
and the Bakola continue as hunter–gatherers. The Mbuti and Efe of the Ituri Forest, DRC, are
thought to number 35–40,000; the Aka of northern Congo (including the Mbendjelle) and
southern CAR 25–30,000; the Baka of south-eastern Cameroon 35–50,000; the Bagyéli of
south-western Cameroon 3–4,000. While there is tremendous variation within each group –
with some people mostly sedentarised and engaged in agriculture, and many working for long
or short periods for outsiders such as logging companies, meat traders and conservationists –
most of these people spend some of the year moving through the forest between hunting
camps and some of the year living close to their farming neighbours and working in their
fields.
As Bantu cultivators and fishers moved into the forest from central Cameroon (from 5,000
years ago onwards), ancestors of present-day hunter–gatherers exchanged forest produce
with the farming peoples in exchange for iron and pottery artefacts, as well as for agricultural
produce. This evolved into a system of economic and cultural exchange which continues to
this day: in some places more in the form of exchange relations freely entered into, in others
more in the form of domination by the farmers.
Where the forest is not destroyed and where hunter–gatherers to varying degrees maintain
traditional exchange relations with their farming neighbours, the Baka, the Aka, the Efe and
60 The following section has relied heavily upon the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions of The Indigenous World,
IWGIA, Copenhagen.
Kidd & Kenrick 19
March 2009