SLUM CLEARANCE IN KHARTOUM
| Published date | 01 April 1954 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1954.tb00049.x |
| Date | 01 April 1954 |
| Author | A. J. V. Arthur |
SLUM CLEARANCE
IN
KHARTOUM 73
provincial commissioner.
The
former proposals appear to favour a trend away
from a gradual replacement of customary law and an immediate transfer of control
to the supreme court; the latter enactment indicates apreference for a parallel
system and a special appeal court.
The
question of the speed of integration is mainly one of cost in territories in
which there is no tradition of unremunerated service, of personnel, of the
percentage of literacy, and of
the
extent to which custom, the resilience of which
is well-known, is on the wane for public opinion will be
the
final deciding factor.
Any law conflicting with the law as recognised by the people will find survival
difficult. Elsewhere the transition may be more gradual, and the local courts may
remain representative bodies and their judicial authority continue to be derived
from below and not from above. Statutory law which may depend on English
law in force on a certain date possessing no particular virtue from
the
point
of view
of legal chronology, is not yet entirely adjusted to African customary law which
rests upon the consent of the community and with which there has been little
interference in the past, especially in
the
matter of family law.
SLUM CLEARANCE IN KHARTOUM
By
A.
j.
V. Arthur, M.B.E.} Sudan Political Service.
T
HE
old town of Khartoum was destroyed by the forces of the
Mahdi
when
the town fell in January 1885 and General Gordon was killed.
During
the
:Y1ahdia
(1885-1898) the capital of the
Sudan
was Omdurman and Khartoum did
not again become the capital till after the re-occupation of the country by Lord
Kitchener in 1898.
Kitchener found Khartoum in ruins and his very first legislative enactment was
an ordinance to provide for the settlement of all claims to land in the old town;
successful claimants were not, however, to be given the land which they had
previously occupied
but
were to be givcn an equivalent arca on a new lay-out.
Thus
Khartoum was rebuilt on a new plan and on land held on properly
registered titles, most of which were freehold.
This
replanning was confined to the area within the ramparts which Gordon
had built round the old town.
This
area was not big enough for the accommo-
dation of the labourers who carne to rebuild Khartoum and to seek general
employment in the town, and areas of waste land outside the town proper were
therefore set apart for labour lines in which individual allottees were allowed to
build themselves single
mud
huts
some 5 metres apart in rows which were also
5.
metres apart. Every 100 metres or so there was a 40 metre road. At some
time the allottees were allowed to wall in the space between the huts thus provid-
II1g
a small compound in front of the house and the area then consisted of
.blocks of some 100 plots, each plot having an area of about 50 sq. metres with
Internal straight lanes 5 metres wide, the blocks themselves being divided by 40
metre roads. Plots were only roughly marked out on the ground and so the
lay-out was not exactly regular.
The
tenure of these holdings was regulated in 1912 by an ordinance which
provided
that
no title could be acquired by prescription in areas which were
g.azetted under the ordinance as
"native
lodging
areas"
and laid down condi-
tIons of allotment and occupation; it was also provided
that
the land could be
recovered at any time on the giving of a month's notice and the payment of
cOmpensation for the building. Later it was provided that no compensation
shOUld
be payable if the plot had been in occupation for ten years or more.
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