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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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Communities must benefit more from mining — High Level Panel
Residents of mining areas testified at the Parliamentary High-Level panel on assessment of key legislation and acceleration of fundamental change about the acute disruptions caused in their lives and livelihoods by mining and their concerns are dealt with in several recommended amendments to legislation.
Kgalema Motlanthe’s High Level Panel calls for repeal of Ingonyama Trust Act
The Ingonyama Trust headed by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu should be dissolved and the law that established it on the eve of South Africa’s liberation in 1994 should be repealed. This Act has effectively converted informal rural ownership rights to leasehold. Just days after the report was released, the Ingonyama Trust ramped up its campaign to persuade rural citizens to surrender their informal land rights to the Trust and to accept 40-year leases that could be cancelled for non-payment or other violations of the contract.
Land and Accountability Research Centre
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.
Southern Africa Food Lab
The Southern Africa Food Lab (Food Lab) is a multi-stakeholder initiative that grapples with questions around food systems in southern Africa to foster long-term food security in the region. The initiative brings together diverse, influential stakeholders in the regional food system in order to respond to systemic issues in creative ways and to inspire change in how we think about and act on complex social challenges.
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.