Assessing Common Property Institutions in the South African Countryside, paper presented to the 8th conference

Communal tenure in South Africa’s rural areas was entrenched through colonial and apartheid policies which sought to manipulate indigenous systems of land tenure and local administration to fulfil the requirements of successive white governments. The resulting systems of communal land tenure were more often than not, experienced as disempowering, unaccountable and authoritarian systems unable (and unintended) to support needs for tenure security and local development (McIntosh et al, 1996). Despite these problems, communal land tenure continued to have support from rural dwellers. This support seems based on the desire for traditional values (understood differently by different interest groups) and on the livelihood support for very poor households, provided by access to land (ibid.,). Poor rural households would be unable to access or retain access to freehold land even with the assistance of land acquisition grants (Vaughan, 1997). In view of this South Africa’s land reform programme (as set out in the Department of Land Affairs White Paper of 1997) supports communal land tenure as one of the tenure forms through which groups of people can access and hold land. In an attempt to address the shortcomings of apartheid communal land tenure regimes, new communal tenure regimes were developed to address the need for legal protection for tenure rights (for both men and women), democratic and accountable procedures of land administration and local institutions to promote and manage local development. Land reform policy proposed a number of purposes for these new communal tenure institutions (also referred to as “legal entities”). · Take transfer of land · Secure tenure of members of the legal entity · Achieve sustainable resource management · Provide institutions for effective and democratic managemen