Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Provision for the redemption of alienated land exists in the customary law of many African tribes. Nor is it confined to Africa. Rattray, in discussing land redemption among the Ashanti, quotes the Levitical law of the Old Testament:
“The land shall not be sold for ever for the land is mine … if thy brother be waxen poor and has sold away some of his possessions and if any of his kin come to redeem then shall he redeem that which his brother sold.”
2 Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), pp. 236–237.Google Scholar
3 Report of the Committee on Native Land Tenure in Kikuyu Province (Maxwell Committee) (1929), p. 23, para. 40.
page 76 note 1 Ibid., p. 23, para. 40.
page 77 note 1 Lambert, H. E., The system of land tenure in the Kikuyu Land Unit (Communications from the School of African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1950), pp. 34–35.Google Scholar
page 77 note 2 Wilson, R. G., “Land consolidation in the Fort Hall District of Kenya”, (1956) J.A.A. 144.
page 79 note 1 Kamba customary law (Macmillan, 1951), p. 49.Google Scholar
page 81 note 1 In collecting material for this note, I owe much to the work of the late Mr. Jerome Kihori, Assistant District Officer, who was murdered by the Mau Mau in 1953. Before his death, Mr. Kihori set down and annotated many Law Panel and African Court decisions on redemption and other matters. I am also grateful to Mr. G. R. Goldsworthy, District Officer, for advice on redemption and land consolidation in recent years.