Location
LARC is a research and advocacy unit within the Law Department of the University of Cape Town concerned with power relations, and the impact of national laws and policy in framing the balance of patriarchal and autocratic power within which rural women and men struggle for democratic change at the local level. There has recently been a push from government to introduce laws and policies giving traditional leaders unaccountable powers over “subjects” living in the former homeland areas of South Africa. The objective is to hold back traditional leadership laws that threaten rural democracy and propose alternative laws and policies that promote rural democracy and are consistent with living law.
LARC grew out out of the Rural Women’s Action Research unit (RWAR) of the Centre for Law and Society (CLS).