ABSTRACT
There may be areas where rights to graze stock are free, in the sense that any member of the tribe may exercise such rights, while rights to use particular areas around water-holes are restricted. The position among agriculturalists is more complicated; but in Africa land-tenure laws seem to fall into a general pattern, of which the Lozi tribe who dwell in the great flood-plain of the Upper Zambezi River are strikingly representative. Ultimately the Lozi consider that all the land, and its products, belong to the nation through the king. Property law in tribal society defines not so much rights of persons over things, as obligations owed between persons in respect of things. In a Nigerian case in 1930 where land was required for public purposes, the British Privy Council held that the individual African holders were entitled to compensation, and the chiefs only to compensation for their reversionary rights.
