The Communal Land Rights Bill

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.