Following the Shivji Land Commission of 1992, the twin Acts kept all land vested in the President as public land but divided it into reserved, village and general land. The Village Land Act made the village council the land administrator and gave the customary right of occupancy the same legal force as a granted right, registrable by certificate; the Land Act governs general and urban land, granted for 33, 66 or 99 years. Both allow land to be mortgaged, including customary holdings, and require compensation on acquisition.
This is Africa's most-cited attempt to place customary tenure on an equal statutory footing rather than extinguishing it — the explicit alternative to the Torrens-style individual-title model imposed elsewhere in the colonial world. Because African cities expand onto village land, the boundary between village and general land became the front line of Dar es Salaam's growth, of land-acquisition disputes and of later formalisation drives.
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