Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape
Abstract
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
