Customary Law and Communal Property in South Africa

Author(s):  
Juanita M. Pienaar

In the geographical areas forming the focus of this contribution, the traditional communal areas in former Bantustan and homeland areas in South Africa, communal ownership flows from the application of customary law, linked to the constitutional right to culture. Living customary law, embedded in communities, entails a dynamic system of land rights which are negotiated in line with particular needs. Recent policy and legislative developments, however, seem to bolster rights of traditional authorities, thereby impacting on land rights and effectively negating spontaneous negotiation. Conceptual clarification in this contribution embodies the complexity linked to communal property, specifically land, in light of the aftermath of apartheid, the commencement of an all-encompassing land reform programme and the operation of a dual legal system comprising customary law and Western-style legal paradigms. The challenges and opportunities for law reform are explored in this context of inter-connectedness of customary law and communal property.

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mokoko Piet Sebola ◽  
Malemela Angelinah Mamabolo

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the engagement of farm beneficiaries in South Africa in the governance of restituted farms through communal property associations. The South African government has already spent millions of rands on land restitution to correct the imbalance of the past with regard to farm ownership by the African communities. Various methods of farm management to benefit the African society have been proposed, however, with little recorded success. This article argues that the South African post-apartheid government was so overwhelmed by political victory in 1994 that they introduced ambitious land reform policies that were based on ideal thinking rather than on a pragmatic approach to the South African situation. We used qualitative research methods to argue that the engagement of farm beneficiaries in farm management and governance through communal property associations is failing dismally. We conclude that a revisit of the communal property associations model is required in order to strengthen the position of beneficiaries and promote access to land by African communities for future benefit.


LITIGASI ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
ILYAS ISMAIL ◽  
Tn. Sufyan ◽  
Tn. Azhari

This paper is going to discuss the sorts of land rights recognized by laws and the implementation of such rights and recopceptualisation  related to the land reform program. Library and field researches are conducted to obtain the data. Library research is conducted by exploring the relevant laws and literatures while field research is conducted by interviewing relevant informants. The research shows that there are about 13 rights of the land that can be found in the regulations. Most of the rights on land is based on customary law which has communal concept. However, amongst such rights in the implementation still faces unjust in dividing its benefit, there is a tendency to increase the gap in owning the land and to disobey the need of housing that more complex in the limited number of it; hence the reconceptualisation  is required for the rights.  Keywords: Recopceptualisation; Land Rights; Law ReformABSTRAKTulisan  ini dimaksudkan untuk menjelaskan mengenai macam-macam hak atas tanah yang dikenal dalam ketentuan perundang-undangan,  pelaksanaan berbagai macam hak atas tanah tersebut dan rekonseptualisasi hak-hak atas tanah dikaitkan dengan restrukturisasi penguasaan tanah. Untuk mendapatkan data bagi kepentingan penulisan ini dilakukan penelitian kepustakaan dan penelitian lapangan. Penelitian kepustakaan dilakukan dengan cara menelaah ketentuan perundang-undangan dan  literatur yang relevan, sedangkan penelitian lapangan dilakukan dengan cara mewawancarai para nara sumber yang terkait. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa paling tidak terdapat 13 (tiga belas) macam hak atas tanah yang terdapat pengaturannya dalam ketentuan perundang-undangan. Sebagian besar hak-hak atas tanah tersebut bersumberkan pada hukum adat yang berkonsepsi kumunalistik. Namun diantara hak-hak atas tanah tersebut dalam pelaksanaannya ada yang masih mengandung unsur pemerasan, cenderung semakin meningkatkan  ketimpangan dalam penguasaan tanah dan cenderung tidak dapat mengakomodir kebutuhan tanah yang semakin komplek dalam keterbatasan ketersediaannya, karena itu diperlukan rekonseptualisasi hak-hak atas tanah.Kata kunci:  Rekonseptualisasi; Hak Atas Tanah; Pembaharuan Hukum


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thembela Kepe

Abstract In addition to challenges facing South Africa’s overall post-apartheid land reform, group rural land claims have particularly proven difficult to resolve. This paper explores the role that the state plays in shaping the outcomes of rural group land claims. It analyzes policy statements, including from policy documents, guidelines and speeches made by politicians during ceremonies to hand over land rights to rural claimants; seeking to understand the possible motives, factual correctness, as well as impact, of these statements on the trajectory of the settled land claims. The paper concludes that land reform as practiced in South Africa is functionally and discursively disembedded from socio-political histories of dispossession, because land has come to be treated more as a commodity, rather than as something that represents multiple meanings for different segments of society. Like many processes leading up to a resolution of a rural claim, subsequent statements by government concerning particular ‘successful’ land claims convey an assumption that local claimants have received just redress; that there was local consensus on what form of land claim redress people wanted, and that the state’s lead role in suggesting commercial farming or tourism as land use options for the new land rights holders is welcome. The paper shows that previous in-depth research on rural land claims proves that the state’s role in the success or failure of rural land claims is controversial at best.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239-260
Author(s):  
Ruth Hall ◽  
Farai Mtero

Land ownership and control historically underpinned patterns of unequal development in South Africa, with dispossession and the migrant labour economy being the basis for agrarian dualism and economic inequality. Yet land reform – the redistribution of white-owned commercial farms to black smallholders – has been a largely unfulfilled political promise during the first 25 years of democratic rule. South Africa’s negotiated transition produced a constitution that provides certain protections to property rights while simultaneously mandating land reforms through land redistribution, tenure reform and restitution, including via expropriation. Initially conceived as a pro-poor programme, land reform was reinvented over time, reflecting wider economic policy shifts, towards the creation of a small prosperous segment of black commercial farmers, thereby deracializing the dominant sector without restructuring landholdings and the agrarian economy. The shortcomings of land reform not only perpetuate inequalities inherited from colonialism and apartheid, but have also led to the production of new problems. We point to three recent and ongoing dynamics driving new and aggravated forms of land inequality: financialization, with the entry of new financial sector actors into corporate landholding, property portfolios and speculation; land concentration driven both by market forces and elite capture of public resources and corruption in land reforms; and land commodification driven by powerful corporate, political and traditional elites combining to expand large agricultural and mining investments in communal areas.


Author(s):  
Dr Wian Erlank

On Friday 27th July 2012 the conference on the "Green Paper on Land Reform: Challenges and Opportunities" was held at the Hakunamatata Estate in Muldersdrift. The conference was a joint project by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) and the Faculty of Law, North-West University. While the main focus of the conference was on the specific issues raised by the Green Paper on Land Reform of 2011, it also addressed current and contemporary issues relating to the Land Reform issue as experienced in South Africa.Papers were delivered on various aspects of land reform relating to or arising from the Green Paper on Land Reform, 2011. The programme included a large number of excellent and thought provoking papers as well as a number of panel discussions that resulted in enthusiastic audience participation. Of these, the following papers and presentations were collected, evaluated and published in this special edition of PER. The first contribution by Wian Erlank (North-West University) gives an overview and discusses the challenges the Green Paper on Land Reform bring to the fore. It sets the stage for the publication at large. This is followed by Juanita Pienaar (University of Stellenbosch) who deliberates on what she calles the “mechanics of intervention” and the Green Paper on Land Reform. Henk Kloppers and Gerrit Pienaar (North West University) gives a historical context of land reform in South Africa and early policies; and Henk Kloppers then considers Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the context of land reform.  He is followed by Hanri Mostert's (University of Cape Town) contribution on land as a 'National Asset' under the Constitution and what this system change envisaged by the 2011 Green Paper on Land Policy means for property under the Constitution.  Elmien du Plessis (University of Johannesburg) article on the lack of direction on compensation for expropriation in the 2011 Green Paper on Land Reform. This special edition ends with Motsepe Matlala, the President of the National African Farmers Union gave an illuminating oratio on the opportunities and challenges of the 2011 Green Paper on Land Reform for the National African Farmers Union (NAFU SA).The timing of this edition is fortuitous, since a follow-up to this conference was held at Hakunamatata, Muldersdrift on 19 and 20 June 2014 with the specific focus on Land Reform and Food Security.More on the theme.The contributions contained in this special edition provide an extensive overview of land reform, especially in their introductory sections - before delving into the more technical aspects. However, a very brief note on the issue of Land Reform in South Africa might be beneficial for foreign readers. As in most other areas of the world, ownership of and access to land is an important issue in South Africa. This is especially topical in South Africa due to the fact that the racial segregation policies and laws of the past had the effect of removing people from their land, of restricting their access to land, and also in most instances of prohibiting their ownership of land. Ever since the abolition of "apartheid" and the introduction of the new, democratic dispensation, the initiative of "land reform" has been identified as requiring actively promotion in order to address these injustices of the past. Mandated by the Constitution and implemented through legislation, the South African Land Reform Programme has seen many developments over the past few years. While it is clear that much has been done to address these issues, it is also clear that current land reform strategies have not have the intended effect and would need to be adapted before this important programme is resumed. The Green Paper on Land Reform of 2011 is one of the instruments that has been used to create new interest and public engagement both in Land Reform, the development of better public policy and - eventually – of legislation. In the context of this brief description of the existing situation, this issue focusses on the most pressing aspects of land reform at the moment.


1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair McIntosh ◽  
Sipho Sibanda ◽  
Anne Vaughan ◽  
Thokozani Xaba

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document