Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa

Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa

Author: William Beinart

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2021-05-01

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1776146824

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This edited collection illustrates contestations over land and political authority in South Africa’s rural areas, focusing on threats to popular rights and how they are being supported.


Democracy Compromised

Democracy Compromised

Author: Lungisile Ntsebeza

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2005-06-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9047407903

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This book argues that the promulgation of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework and Communal Land Rights Acts runs the risk of compromising South Africa's democracy. The acts establish traditional councils with land administration powers. These structures are dominated by unelected members.


African Land Reform Under Economic Liberalisation

African Land Reform Under Economic Liberalisation

Author: Shinichi Takeuchi

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-10-10

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 9811647259

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This open access book offers unique in-depth, comprehensive, and comparative analyses of the motivations, context, and outcomes of recent land reforms in Africa. Whereas a considerable number of land reforms have been carried out by African governments since the 1990s, no systematic analysis on their meaning has so far been conducted. In the age of land reform, Africa has seen drastic rural changes. Analysing the relationship between those reforms and change, the chapters in this book reveal not only their socio-economic outcomes, such as accelerated marketisation of land, but also their political outcomes, which have often been contrasting. Countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique have utilised land reform to strengthen state control over land, but other countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, have seen the rise in power of traditional chiefs in managing the land. The comparative perspective of this book clarifies new features of African social changes, which are carefully investigated by area experts. Providing new perspectives on recent land reform, this book will have a considerable impact on scholars as well as policymakers.


Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa

Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa

Author: William Beinart

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2021-05-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1776146816

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This edited collection illustrates contestations over land and political authority in South Africa’s rural areas, focusing on threats to popular rights and how they are being supported. Who controls the land and minerals in the former Bantustans of South Africa - chiefs, the state or landholders? Disputes are taking place around the ownership of resources, decisions about their exploitation and who should benefit. With respect to all of these issues, the courts have become increasingly important. The contributors to Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa capture some of these intense contestations over land, law and political authority, focussing on threats to the rights of ordinary people. History and customary law feature strongly in most disputes and succession to chieftaincy is also frequently disputed. Judges have to make decisions in a context where rival claimants to property or office assert their own versions of history and custom. The South African constitution recognizes customary law and the courts are attempting to incorporate and develop this branch of jurisprudence as ‘living customary law’. Lawyers, community leaders and academics are called on to assist in researching cases around restitution, land rights and customary law. The chapters in this collection discuss legal cases and policy directions that have evolved since 1994. Some chapters analyze the increasing power of chiefs in the South African rural areas, while others suggest that the courts are giving support to popular rights over land and supporting local democratic processes. Contributors record significant pushback from groups that reject traditional authority. These political tensions are a central theme of the collection and thus serve as vital case studies in furthering our understanding of rights and restitution in South Africa.


Land Matters

Land Matters

Author: Tembeka Ngcukaitobi

Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa

Published: 2021-04-01

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1776095979

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Why has land reform been such a failure in South Africa? Will expropriation without compensation solve the problem? What can be done to get the land programme back on track? In Land Matters, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi tackles the past, present and future of the land question in South Africa. Going back in history, he shows how Africans’ communal systems of landownership were used by colonial rulers to deny that Africans owned the land at all. He explores the effects of the Land Acts, Bantustans and forced removals. And he evaluates the ANC’s policies on land throughout the struggle years, during the negotiations of the 1990s, and in government. Land Matters unpacks the government’s achievements and failures in land redistribution, restitution and tenure reform, and makes suggestions for what needs to be done in future. The book also explores the power of chiefs, the tension between communal landownership and the desire for private title, the failure of the willing-seller, willing-buyer approach, women and land reform, the role of banks, and the debates around amending the Constitution. Steering clear of the simplistic and polarising terms of the land debate, Ngcukaitobi argues for a return to the nuanced constitutional requirements of justice and equity in South Africa’s land policy. Thoughtful and provocative, Land Matters sheds light on one of the most topical, complex and urgent issues in South Africa today.


Traditional Leaders in a Democracy

Traditional Leaders in a Democracy

Author: Skosana, Dineo

Publisher: The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)

Published: 2019-03-31

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0639923836

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Post-1994, South Africa's traditional leaders have fought for recognition, and positioned themselves as major players in the South African political landscape. Yet their role in a democracy is contested, with leaders often accused of abusing power, disregarding human rights, expropriating resources and promoting tribalism. Some argue that democracy and traditional leadership are irredeemably opposed and cannot co-exist. Meanwhile, shifts in the political economy of the former bantustans − the introduction of platinum mining in particular − have attracted new interests and conflicts to these areas, with chiefs often designated as custodians of community interests. This edited volume explores how chieftancy is practised, experienced and contested in contemporary South Africa. It includes case studies of how those living under the authority of chiefs, in a modern democracy, negotiate or resist this authority in their respective areas. Chapters in this book are organised around three major sites of contest: leadership, land and law.


Contemporary Customary Land Issues in Africa

Contemporary Customary Land Issues in Africa

Author: J. Oloka-Onyango

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2018-07-26

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1527514374

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This book examines current trends in customary land issues in Africa, focusing on the practice of converting customary land into leasehold tenure, particularly in Zambia. Since the enactment of the 1995 Lands Act No. 29 in Zambia, conversion of customary land has become a controversial policy, raising questions about the future of customary land and rural communities, and the role of traditional authorities in a changing environment. Alienating customary land into leasehold tenure has serious implications for local and national politics and gender dynamics. Analysis of these trends suggests that the policy of creating land markets on customary land is subjecting customary systems to the forces of change. However, governments that have adopted this policy have not, by and large, adopted measures to respond to these challenges. Although customary tenure is widely believed to be resilient, it is not clear how the customary system will navigate the current winds of change. Chapters in this book draw from the Land Use and Rural Livelihoods in Africa Project (LURLAP), a collaborative research project undertaken by staff and students at the University of Cape Town and the University of Zambia.


Citizen and Subject

Citizen and Subject

Author: Mahmood Mamdani

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-04-24

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1400889715

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In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either "direct" (French) or "indirect" (British), with a third variant--apartheid--as exceptional. This benign terminology, Mamdani shows, masks the fact that these were actually variants of a despotism. While direct rule denied rights to subjects on racial grounds, indirect rule incorporated them into a "customary" mode of rule, with state-appointed Native Authorities defining custom. By tapping authoritarian possibilities in culture, and by giving culture an authoritarian bent, indirect rule (decentralized despotism) set the pace for Africa; the French followed suit by changing from direct to indirect administration, while apartheid emerged relatively later. Apartheid, Mamdani shows, was actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa. Through case studies of rural (Uganda) and urban (South Africa) resistance movements, we learn how these institutional features fragment resistance and how states tend to play off reform in one sector against repression in the other. The result is a groundbreaking reassessment of colonial rule in Africa and its enduring aftereffects. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicities, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.


Chiefs in South Africa

Chiefs in South Africa

Author: Barbara Oomen

Publisher: James Currey Publishers

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0852558805

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There is a surprising resurgence of traditional authority, custom and culture in post-apartheid South Africa, as part of a conscious African renaissance. Yet customary law studies highlight the artificial origins of these 'traditional' institutions. This book poses three questions: what is the relation between the changing legal and socio-political position of traditional authority and customary law in the new South Africa? Why are they changing in this way? and, what does this teach us about the interrelation between laws, politics and culture in the post-modern world? BARBARA OOMEN is Assistant Professor of Law & Development in the University of Amsterdam North America: Palgrave; South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press


Land, Power & Custom

Land, Power & Custom

Author: Aninka Claassens

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13:

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Accompanying DVD-ROM contains ... "current and historical legislation affecting communal land and affidavits by rural applicants, state officials and traditional leaders in pending litigation concerning land rights and chiefly power"--Page 4 of cover.