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The following pages from part of Phase 1 of KB.L’s development.
KB.L is curated by Dr Rick de Satge, a senior research associate of Phuhlisani NPC who gathers and collates land related content from the web to stream a regularly updated selection of land news together with a Twitter feed. If you are looking for news and views on land related issues you will find a selection of links to the most substantive articles, organised into 15 categories to make things easy to find.
The Bill of Rights in the Constitution provides the foundational guarantees for property and land rights. Section 25 — the so-called “property clause” — requires the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures to remedy the impacts of past racially discriminatory laws and practices which dispossessed people of their land and houses and rendered their rights in land insecure.
KB.L provides a clear explanation of the different clauses in Section 25 and how they are given effect through laws of general application. This will link to our land law section which provides overviews of essential legislation.
KB.L provides a tour of the entire land reform landscape. We explore how the different rural and urban land settings are connected.
We examine:
The KB.L curator also works as part of the Land Portal Local Knowledge Engagement Network. This work involves developing country profiles and data stories providing insights into land governance across Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.
Phase 2 of KB.L envisages the provision of more in-depth resources.
We cast fresh eyes over the history of land and dispossession in South Africa. We start from the position that the past shapes the present.
“But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present…”
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Where land is concerned, the past significantly influences our collective future. Yet, despite its importance, the history of land in South Africa remains poorly understood and is frequently reduced to single stories which oversimplify complex and messy realities.
The dominant narrative around land is one of colonial conquest, indigenous struggles of resistance, loss and displacement culminating in the seizure of land and livestock. This story is made up of many episodes, starting in 1652. The story usually opens with accounts of colonial conquest and resistance triggered by the arrival of the Dutch and followed by British settlers in 1820. This story usually skips over interpretations of the causes and consequences of the mfecane.
The story tells of how a combination of force, trickery, taxation, treaties, the imposition of Roman-Dutch property law and the surveying of farms introduced a system of private property and land titling which ignored indigenous social orders and rights in land. Increasing limitations on access to land undermined local economies and livelihoods, forcing African people to become migrant wage workers, and transformed people making a living from their land into sharecroppers, labour tenants and finally farmworkers.
The story recounts the discovery of diamonds and gold; the consequent demand for labour and the simultaneous growth of capitalist agriculture. State subsidies and support boosted emergent white farmers and made it increasingly difficult for black peasant farmers to compete.
In the 20th century, a succession of racist laws and practices completely redrew the rural and urban landscapes. The growth of the migrant labour system backed by labour bureaux, the system of passes and influx control restricted access to the city. Evictions and forced removals swelled the reserves creating conflicting and overlapping rights in land.
The colonial and apartheid state sought to extend control over the countryside by elevating and co-opting traditional leadership. The creation of the independent homelands and self-governing states generated opportunities for the expansion of local elites. As full-blown apartheid accelerated in the cities, the creation of groups areas and the planning of townships cast racial segregation in concrete.
These episodes speak of humiliation, of loss and of anger, but they also chronicle the agency and resistance of many rural and urban people who combined persistent low level non-compliance with campaigns of social mobilisation and insurrection.
These foundational narratives of dispossession encounter a range of contemporary counter-narratives as South Africans debate the land question. These draw on alternative interpretations of history and are shaped by different priorities. They privilege property rights, investment and the workings of global value chains and markets. They headline national food security, exports, economic growth, employment and prosperity. They argue for orderly change, compensation and market-led land reform. They focus primarily on agricultural land and propose mentorship, strategic partnerships, equity-sharing to give farmworkers a stake in agricultural enterprises and support emerging black commercial farmers. There is frequently a silence on the need for well-located urban land.
KB.L aims to surface and feature a range of hidden histories to provide critical perspectives on these dominant narratives. In the process we aim to combine storytelling and photographic resources to explore a wide range of topics including:
KB.L will provide a timeline of key events shaping this broader landscape. KB.L seeks to promote a deeper understanding of our history and how it shapes our contemporary context. We ask difficult questions which seek to enrich thinking and inform the development of land policies and programmes.
This page will provide links to key source documents to track how the thinking of all the major political formations have evolved over time. Find out more from original sources how political parties past and present understood the land question.
These pages unpack the design and implementation of the land reform programme from the mid 1990s to the present day.
We examine the three focal areas of land reform:
S25(7) of the Constitution provides for the right of restitution for those dispossessed of property after the passing of the 1913 Natives Land Act.
In practice, giving effect to the rights in Section 25(7) has proved difficult, expensive and time consuming.
We reveal the evolving implementation of the restitution programme. We unpack what is involved in lodging a land claim and the process of restitution claim research. Short case studies illustrate the complexities of investigating and settling large community claims.
We pose difficult questions about the impacts of the restitution process and the widening mismatch between expectations and reality. We examine the politics of reopening restitution claims and the implications of revisiting the cut-off date for land claims.
We map how the redistribution programme has developed, tracking the different grants and shifting programme objectives. We profile different perspectives on the costs and benefits of the programme and examine why so many redistribution projects end in failure. We present a range of perspectives on what can be done practically to enable more equitable access to land and support the growth of smallholder livelihoods.
We review the different tenure security measures and their implementation. Many of the key laws seeking to protect tenure rights have been poorly implemented. The failure to properly secure tenure and record off-register rights has also been a major contributory factor in the failure of land reform to date. Weak implementation has left the door open for land grabs and elite deals, especially in some of the mineral-rich former homelands.
We discuss the extensive tenure related recommendations made in the 2017 HLP report and examine what has happened to these recommendations.
Restitution in urban areas has mostly focused on providing cash compensation to families forcibly removed and dispossessed of their property through the Group Areas Act. Some high profile restitution claims like District Six in Cape Town have remained stalled for years. Aside from this has been no programme of urban land reform, other than through housing and human settlements policy.
We examine how, to date, the construction of RDP housing has mostly been on cheap land on the urban edge. We look at a range of urban land issues and problems and introduce the latest thinking on how best achieve inclusive urban development.
Land law is a complex area.
We aim to provide a comprehensive listing of current laws on the statute books, together with a brief explanation of each. We also provide an overview of major precedent-setting court judgments which have interpreted land rights guaranteed in Section 25 and given them effect through related laws of general application.
We examine land administration in South Africa and explore what needs to change so that 60% of South Africans whose rights remain unrecorded and off-register can obtain legally secure and transactable rights in land.
We highlight growing empirical evidence from around the world that customary systems of tenure are not inherently inefficient. We review various studies examining the links between the formalisation of land rights and agricultural development in SSA. We investigate how to develop a modern and inclusive property rights registration system which affordably secures rights and prevents powerful elites from grabbing land.
We examine what can be done to enable those with access to land to make use of it to enhance and diversify their livelihoods. We review the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) launched in 2009, providing links to programme evaluations. We highlight the argument that rural development should be a function of District Municipalities rather than a national programme run by the DRDLR.
We highlight comparative examples of land reform programmes in other countries to identify possible lessons for South Africa. Overall, we aim to progressively develop and aggregate resources so that KB.L will become the definitive platform for access to reliable information and resources on land in South Africa.
All photos used on this site are open source. Thumbnail images accompanying news articles may be subject to copyright.
A project of Phuhlisani NPC supported by Absa. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. International License.