ABSTRACT
The Land Tenure Law of 1970 was the main serious attempt for the transition to a modern society. It had initially been forged through the agricultural reform initiative to help settle nomadic qabilahs (Abbala) by distributing areas of about twenty feddans (1 feddan = 0.6 hectare) each for their animals and crops. However, the then incumbent government of Numerei
abolished the smooth fl ow of the existing grassroots democratic system of the native administration. Rather than further developing it in a way that is commensurate with transition to a modern economy, it was left wide open for abuse by corrupt politicians and senior public service retirees. Acting as large-scale entrepreneur capitalists, they managed to change the initial government plan of settling nomadic qabilahs, with twenty feddans each, and shifted the mechanized farming schemes for their own entrepreneurial interests into large-scale farming of about a thousand feddans for each farm.71 Thus, some of the nomads who left nomadic life found themselves working on these mechanized farms as laborers rather than owning their own farms. Although Darfur did not have any of these large mechanized farming schemes, the failure of small-scale projects that were intended to help settle nomadic qabilahs and transform traditional (subsistence) societies to modern economies was a missed opportunity.
