John W. Bruce, Mark S. Freudenberger and Tidiane Ngaido (1995):
Old Wine in New Bottles:

5.4 Conclusions

The Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development generally gave a cool reception to the Commission Report, perhaps influenced by the report’s frank criticism of the Ministry and its recommendation that the Ministry be replaced by a Land Commission. Land administration bureaucracies have vested interests in systems which give them authority over the distribution of a valuable resource. Since 1992, a World Bank-funded series of consultancies and workshops have provided forums for conflicting points of view on land tenure reform, and some inclinations in government’s thinking are beginning to emerge. A 1995 Ministry policy synthesis based on these workshops (Nyongeza 1995) indicates (1) a willingness to accept many of the Commission’s recommendations on village tenure, (2) an insistence on maintaining the Ministry’s bureaucratic structure, and (3) a reluctance to adopt clear standards which might bind administrative discretion on key issues such as how expansively the territories of villages will be defined.

The Presidential Commission’s report has excited interest throughout the region, but at least to date the prospects of a major reform in Tanzania seem threatened by bureaucratic inertia and self-interest.