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Rick has over 40 years experience working in the land sector in Southern Africa. He is part of the Land Portal knowledge engagement team working to research and develop knowledge resources including data stories, blogs and in-depth country profiles for Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.
Rick is also a Senior Research Associate with Phuhlisani NPC - a South African land sector NGO and the curator of specialist Southern African land news and analysis website https://knowledgebase.land
He tweets on land related issues Twitter account https://twitter.com/KnowledgebaseL
He has a PhD from the University of Cape Town. His research in Langa, Cape Town features as the central case study in a recent book Urban Planning in the Global South (2018), co-authored with the late Vanessa Watson, which examines the on-going contestations over land and housing in the rapidly growing cities of the global South.
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Agricultural developments on Middelrus farms on land not part of the joint ventures – livestock and arable options
Phuhlisani undertook this study to investigate agricultural options for six land holding communities which had each contributed land to a joint venture. The study focused on potential land uses for land hweld by the entities but that was part of the joint venture: including
- Arable land for household production
- Arable land for small‐scale commercial production
- Sustainable use of the grazing land
Recommendations on role of municipalities in land reform and an assessment of land reform related resources in the Cape Winelands District
The Cape Winelands District Municipality has identified land reform as one of the key factors that can address empowerment and poverty eradication in its municipal area. Its role and the availability of resources for land reform in the District are not
clear and it is seeking the support of an agency to achieve the following objectives:
Community development and land acquisition plan for Ebenhaeser and Papendorp (CDLAP)
The key focus of this document is the settlement of the Ebenhaeser restitution claim in the Western Cape. This is guided by the Settlement Framework Agreement which was signed by the Community, the then Department of Land Affairs and the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights in March 2005.
The CDLAP has three main components:
What's the big deal about land?
A presentation focusing on facts about land and land dispossession in South Africa
New angles on the impact of land redistribution
This article explores the impacts of the now discontinued Land Reform for Agricultural Development Programme on household consumption but argues that more work needs to be done to fully understand the connection between asset treansfer programmes and a reduction in persistent poverty
Allocating farmland to rural women - new insights
Land reform in South Africa intends to redress racial imbalances with regard to ownership and access to land. On the surface, the various strategy documents also talk to transferring land to black women, the youth and the disabled. This article examines interesting patterns that are emerging with respect to gender relations and land ownership driven by land reform including mounting evidence of exclusive female ownership and co-ownership of land among land reform recipient households.
Customary law research on group and individual rights to common property
Customary Law has been a subordinate element in the South African legal order in that it was subject to state legislation, certain Courts could not take judicial notice of it, and it could be applied only if compatible with principles of public policy and natural justice. These were the requirements of the so-called “Repugnancy Proviso”. In addition customary law was subordinate to Roman-Dutch common law and the common law provided the model to which customary law was expected to conform. In fact all legal analysis or comments on customary law are mediated by western legal categories.
Choosing legal forms to fit people’s tenure requirements
A common misconception in relation to common property situations is that the choice of the legal form will determine whether communal property institutions function well or not. The reality is that whether good, fair management and land administration takes place or not is often largely determined by issues like the following, which can undermine effective governance and land administration irrespective of which legal entity is used:
• Do the majority of residents understand and agree with how land administration processes work?
Look before you leap
This paper argues that the focus in the community based natural resource management (CBNRM) literature on the devolution and decentralisation of state authority and responsibility over natural resources to communities does not pay sufficient attention to the role of the state in creating and maintaining a coherent institutional environment.
Traditional land matters – a look into land administration in tribal areas in KwaZulu-Natal
This paper is concerned primarily with the functions of land administration. Its
purpose is to describe the current land administration practices as understood by
traditional structures with a view to unpacking some of the components of the existing
African tenure arrangements in KwaZulu-Natal. This, it is hoped, will help to create a
base to understand how communal land systems operate, regardless of which structure
governs them, in order to support practices that secure tenure effectively.