Policy Briefs

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Land Reform in South Africa: Is it meeting the challenge?
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2001) Lahiff, Edward
As recent events at Brendell and elsewhere have demonstarted, land and landlessness remain critical issues in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper presents a brief overview of the key challenges facing land reform in the country today and suggests a number of ways in which the current reform program can be accelerated to fight poverty and inequality.
Sustainable development: What's land got to do with it?
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2001) Turner, Stephen
Ahead of the September 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa is reviewing its plans and progress towards sustainable development. This paper argues that more attention needs to be given to land reform as a key component of sustainable development strategy. It raises a number of questions and concerns that need debate before and after the Summit.
Radical land reform is key to sustainable rural development in South Africa
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2002) Kepe, Thembela; Cousins, Ben
Sustainable rural development in 21st century South Africa will never be achieved without a radical assault on the structural underpinnings of poverty and inequality inherited from three centuries of oppression and exploitation. A large-scale redistribution of land and resources, accompanied by the securing of tenure rights in practice as well as in law, is required for long-term sustainability.
Reforming communal land tenure in South Africa – Why land titling is not the answer
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2002) Cousins, Ben
The long-awaited draft Communal Land Rights Bill sets out government’s proposals to resolve urgent land tenure problems in the former ‘homeland’ areas, where most rural South Africans still live, and where land is registered in the name of the state. These problems derive from lack of adequate legal recognition of communal tenure systems, abuse by powerful elites, breakdown of the old permit-based system, and gender inequalities. They result in conflicting claims to land and bitter disputes over authority. Development efforts are severely constrained by lack of clarity on land rights, and the tensions that result. Tenure insecurity also results from the forced overcrowding of these areas under apartheid. This means that de facto rights often overlap and are in conflict.
Land use and rural livelihoods: Have they been enhanced through land reform?
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2003) Andrew, Maura; Shackleton, Charlie; Ainslie, Andrew
It is often assumed that transferring land to rural households will provide people with valuable assets that can be productively used to enhance their livelihoods. Unfortunately, few rural people or land reform beneficiaries are perceived to be using land produc- tively because they do not engage in significant commercial production for the market. Transferring land to subsistence users is therefore seen as a waste of resources. However, an examination of land use in communal areas and amongst land reform beneficiaries indicates that resource-poor rural people do use land productively and resourcefully, but the constraints to production and participation in agricultural markets they encounter limit their livelihoods to survivalist mode. Land reform can enhance rural livelihoods beyond this survivalist mode if it is integrated into a broader rural development programme aimed at providing subsistence land users with the support they need to overcome the constraints to production, and to connect them to the markets.
The Communal Land Rights Bill
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2003) Claassens, Aninka
Tenure legislation is urgently necessary. There are serious problem in the communal areas in the ex-homeland provinces. These areas are characterised by severe poverty, overcrowding and isolation from economic growth and opportunity. One of the issues that inhibits development, is the lack of clarity about the status of land rights in communal areas. Who has what rights? Who must agree to changes? Who has the legal authority to transact land? One of the consequences of this confusion is that the people who actually use and occupy the land are often pushed aside and dispossessed when development and land transactions do take place. Others, purporting to act on their behalf, take the money and run. The underlying confusion about the status of land rights, has been exacerbated by the breakdown of the land administration system in the ex-homeland provinces. In most provinces nobody has the legal power to allocate land rights, and there is no budget or staff to survey sites, maintain grazing camps, enforce dipping regimes or control the plunder of common property resources such as medicinal herbs and forests. Double and disputed land allocations are the order of the day, illegal and informal land sales are increasingly common and stock theft has reached alarming proportions. There is a serious and deepening crisis concerning land rights and land allocations in communal areas, which is impacting negatively on rural poverty. One of the inevitable results is that investors and formal and financial institutions avoid these areas. Local people find it almost impossible to raise loans for businesses, or to access housing subsidies.
TRANCRAA and communal land rights: Lessons from Namaqualand
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2003) Wisborg, Poul; Rohde, Rick
The Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act, Act 94 of 1998 (TRANCRAA) is the first comprehensive legislation to reform communal land tenure in South Africa. It aims to transfer land in 23 former coloured rural areas to residents or accountable local institutions. The TRANCRAA process in Namaqualand holds lessons for wider processes of tenure reform, including the implementation of the proposed Communal Land Rights Act. This policy brief argues that the time, funding and institutional support required to carry out tenure reform have been seriously under-estimated, and that reformed tenure rights are ineffective and vulnerable if isolated from other entitlements such as training, finance and integrated development initiatives. A neo-liberal assumption that property rights and markets by themselves will transform rural areas where people are in deep crisis due to unemployment, corruption, food insecurity and HIV/Aids is ill-founded and dangerous.
Community conservancies in Namibia: An effective institutional model for commons management?
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Skyer, Patricia; Saruchera, Munyaradzi
Common property resources (CPRs) remain of great significance for livelihoods among rural and poor communities of the world. CPRs are particularly important because in many contexts they remain resources of last resort since they provide grazing, timber, wood fuel, thatching, fruits and other products for domestic use and income generation. Access to collectively-managed resources is important for poor rural households and yet many governments continue to pursue policies that undermine the livelihoods of those most dependent on CPRs by privatising them or entrenching monopoly and state control over them. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) policies have been developed and implemented in a number of southern African countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa and Namibia. The experience of Namibia provides important lessons for how to implement policies which provide tangible benefits for rural communities living on communal land.
Multilateral environmental agreements and land and resource rights in Africa
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Saruchera, Munyaradzi; Kameri-Mbote, Patricia
Many African countries are signatories to a number of international and regional environmental treaties. These include the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the World Heritage Convention, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Governments should meet their legal obligations under these treaties in such a way that the land and resource rights of the poor in their countries are not compromised.
Joint ventures
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Mayson, David
South Africa s land reform programme is based on the state providing grants to landless people who negotiate with white landowners to purchase land. The high price of land, among other factors, has led to the emergence of joint ventures. In these ventures, black people who have land rights or who are land reform beneficiaries engage in joint agricultural or other land-related production with white commercial farmers, corporations or sectors of government. Are these schemes the answer to the difficulties of entry into agriculture faced by land reform beneficiaries? Do they really contribute to agrarian reform, transforming the countryside in South Africa, or are they mechanisms through which commercial farmers and others are able to reduce their risk and in which poor people are exploited in new and different ways?
Common property resources and privatisation trends in Southern Africa
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Saruchera, Munyaradzi; Fakir, Saliem
Access to common property resources (CPRs) is a significant part of the land resource base and therefore the livelihoods of many poor rural people. However, despite their central importance, CPRs are declining throughout the world due to neglect, under- investment, expropriation and mismanagement. Other factors contributing to this phenomenon include inappropriate policies and weak community institutions; the actions of powerful and influential elites; unequal socio-economic and political relations; and the impacts of globalisation. Over-exploitation of CPRs, through unsustainable harvesting, and privatisation of CPRs through legal processes or illegal seizures, are commonplace. Both have major environmental and livelihood consequences. The decline of CPRs is accompanied by rising poverty among the poor people most dependent on them.
The context of land and resource rights struggles in Africa
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Saruchera, Munyaradzi
Africa’s poor are heavily dependent on land and natural resources for livelihood, but some governments continue to resist transferring full resource management rights to them. This risks the loss or degradation of these resources, or their transfer into private hands. The continent’s development challenges are compounded by many factors, including unequal social, economic and political relations, the legacy of colonialism, globalisation, and collusive neo-liberal policy which favours capital and powerful elites. In addition, the voice of Africans in the debates which shape important processes at global, continental and national levels are seldom heard. The Pan-African Programme on Land and Resource Rights (PAPLRR) is a civil society initiative which sets out to address these issues.
Nepad, land and resource rights
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Saruchera, Munyaradzi; Omoweh, Daniel A
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) is an overarching programme for revitalising Africa’s fortunes. It has a visionary tone, yet the way that it proposes to overcome Africa’s underdevelopment uncritically adopts neo-liberal policy prescriptions that have repeatedly been shown not to work in Africa. Because it has been designed around promoting international foreign investment and attracting Western donors, Nepad may not address the real needs of the African rural poor or deal with the core problems hindering Africa’s development. By supporting the interests of multinational corporations, Nepad risks opening the continent up to further exploitation and degradation. Other problems that have been identified include the lack of civil society participation in its formulation. In spite of all of the problems associated with the programme, it is incumbent upon civil society to engage with Nepad and influence its development and ensure that land and resource rights for the poor are enhanced.
Rural settlement
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Bannister, Sue
The focus of South Africa s land reform programme is the acquisition of land and securing tenure rights. Land reform has provided many people with land. However, access to land is only one component of settlement. Settlement includes the acquisition of land and shelter, but is not purely about solving the physical accommodation needs of the poor. The creation of viable rural human settlement is multidimensional: it is the creation of living environments through access to land, infrastructure and housing. At present there is no clear national policy to guide the processes of rural settlement creation.
Budgeting for land reform
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Hall, Ruth; Lahiff, Edward
The primary purpose of land reform in South Africa is to redistribute agricultural and other land in order to address the racially skewed pattern of landholding and promote development. Slow progress in land reform over the past decade underscores the urgency of finding ways to accelerate the process. The state has adopted a market-assisted approach to redistribution. This means that land is usually bought at full market price. In addition, substantial funding is needed for the implementation of the programme and for post-settlement support to beneficiaries. The budget allocated to land reform is therefore of central importance to the programme. This publication surveys trends in the land reform budget over the past decade, with particular emphasis on the redistribution programme.
South African fisheries reform – past, present and future?
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Isaacs, Moenieba; Hara, Mafaniso; Nielsen, Jesper Raakjar
Two approaches to transformation of the South African fishery industry were adopted after the advent of democracy: the broadening of access rights to new rights holders (individuals and companies) through state intervention (external transformation); and market-led change within state black economic empowerment policy (internal transformation). The government has largely missed its opportunity to ensure the restructuring of the industry was managed in such a way as to achieve broader societal goals such as the alleviation of poverty and upliftment of fishing communities. While some progress has been made in terms of the reallocation of quotas to previously disadvantaged individuals and groups, real problems remain. Much ‘transformation’ within established fishing companies in terms of advancing historically disadvantaged individuals and groups is cosmetic. Not all bona fide fishers were able to secure quotas. Many quota allocations were too small to be financially viable. New entrants to the industry do not have sufficient access to capital, infrastructure, equipment and technical know-how to establish viable businesses. Certain rights holders are quota holders on paper only. The state should intervene more vigorously to support new entrants by providing access to capital, business and management skills, providing institutional support, protecting bona fide fishing communities, and setting up an effective watchdog to monitor real progress towards transformation of the industry linked to granting long-term fishing rights.
Civil society and social movements: Advocacy for land and resource rights in Africa
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Saruchera, Munyaradzi; Odhiambo, Michael O
Civil society formations in Africa have historically played an important part in the establishment of organising people in the pursuit of common goals. The majority of Africa’s people reside in rural areas where they derive their livelihoods from land, and for this majority secure access to land is the foundation of any efforts to alleviate poverty. Land reforms in Africa are at various stages of development in a number of countries, partly in response to pressures for liberalisation and privatisation from the World Bank and other like-minded institutions. Civil society organisations have played an important role in the development of progressive policies in some countries. The lessons learnt from those countries must be applied in continuing advocacy for reforms which increase access among the poor to land and resource rights.
Municipal commonage
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004) Anderson, Megan; Pienaar, Kobus
The Municipal Commonage Programme of the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) aims to enable poor residents to access commonage lands in order to supplement incomes and enhance food security. New commonage accounted for 31% of all land transferred within the redistribution programme by the end of 2002. However, DLA s budget for the period 2003 2005 allocates a mere 3% of budget to this programme. Situations of open access, domination by local elites and land degradation are experienced in many commonage projects. However, this is not unusual such situations are common in a number of land reform programmes. Commonage, with the built-in involvement of the public institution of local government and its regulatory framework, may have a greater chance of success than other forms of land holding. Improved commonage rights allocation processes in Namaqualand and the Hantam-Karoo districts are ensuring sound commonage management and increasingly secure livelihood benefits are delivered to beneficiaries.
From ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ to a people-driven land reform
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2005) Lahiff, Edward
The concept of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ has dominated the discourse on land reform in South Africa since 1994. Now, following the national Land Summit of July 2005, it appears that government is willing to abandon this approach, but there is little indication of what this might mean in practice. This paper explores the origins and meaning of the concept of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ and the alternatives that might take its place.
Land and resources in a transfrontier setting
(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2005) Büscher, Bram
Amongst the many initiatives in legislative and policy change affecting land and common property resource management in Southern Africa today, transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) seem particularly prominent because of their massive scale, huge political and donor support and the many (rural) livelihoods they are likely to affect. In general, TFCAs are large conservation and development areas across international borders that involve different land-use options such as biodiversity and cultural heritage conservation, range management and community-based natural resource management areas. These different land-use options also make for different legal and practical ownership arrangements in one TFCA, such as private, state-owned or common property management. This policy brief examines issues of legislative and policy change affecting land management and common property resource management brought forth by one specific TFCA: the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Area between Lesotho and South Africa.

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