Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?
The paper offers two models for looking at land reform as a human rights issues in Namaqualand, South Africa. It argues that South African land reform needs to be grounded in a human rights and policy discourse in local, real-world entitlement processes. It uses two theoretical models: an environmental entitlement framework: analyses how people turn resources into endowments, entitlements and capabilities.
This policy brief argues that the time, funding and institutional support required to carry out tenure reform in South Africa have been seriously under-estimated. Reformed tenure rights are ineffective and vulnerable if isolated from other entitlements such as training, finance and integrated development initiatives.
Urban land can be defined as a commodity that is traded or as a right that is used to obtain access to urban amenities. Both are important components of urban land. Land is considered to be a commodity when it is bought and sold freely and a right to which all members of society should have access whether they are rich or poor. This report provides an analysis of both the formal and informal property markets for urban land in South Africa.
This article discusses the history of land reform in Namibia. The article indicates that at the time of writing (September 1991), it is still too early to comment on the implementation of land reform in Namibia, as it has not yet begun in earnest. Land policy has yet to be detailed and ratified, the institutions for implementing land reform and settlement programmes have to be appointed and in some cases created de novo, and large sums of money have to be found.
Secure access to resources is now recognised in human rights discourse as a universal condition of human well-being. This paper aims to contribute to the theoretical and empirical understanding of land tenure as a human rights issue, by analysing recent land tenure policy in South Africa. Specifically, the paper analyses the implementation of the Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act (Trancraa) in Namaqualand, Northern Cape Province during 2001 and 2002.
Poverty and income inequality persist in South Africa despite efforts to eliminate them. Poverty is more pervasive in rural areas, particularly in the former homelands: the majority (65 percent) of the poor are found in rural areas and 78 percent of those likely to be chronically poor are also in rural areas.
This paper argues that socio-economic dominance based on ethnic and race factors is a long standing phenomena in Africa, which was instigated by colonial rule and perpetuated by elite interests in capital accumulation and political power during the post-colonial era. The report looks at experiences from a range of countries, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, Rwanda and the Congo.It finds that ethnic dominance-building strategies have tended to focus on the control of access to limited resources.
This paper examines the introduction of Restitution Act No 22 of 1994. The main aim of the Act was to provide for the restitution of land rights to persons or communities dispossessed after 19 June 1913 as a result of past racial discriminatory laws or practices.
It has emerged quite clearly from Urban LandMark’s work in South Africa – and increasingly in the region – that the emergence of more sophisticated property markets has taken place locally and in most larger cities in the region. While there might be a need to assist these markets to develop further, in particular the need to build market institutions and professions, these groupings tend to increase their own capacities as the markets develop, mostly with little assistance.
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