Using local practices and records to secure individual tenure rights in common property situations | Land Portal

Información del recurso

Date of publication: 
Noviembre 2001
Resource Language: 
License of the resource: 

The paper asserts that in order to be effective it is important to work with and from existing tenure systems and to build upon them, rather than expect that they can be “demolished and replaced by efficient new systems”.  Experience both here and elsewhere in Africa also tells us that attempts to change tenure tend to result in a “defaulting” back to what is known, often with increased confusion and conflict over procedures and adjudication authorities.

Yet in areas that have densified over time, the traditional communal tenure has undergone rapid change. An extensive informal land market has developed and in some places this has been accompanied by the emergence of new self-appointed land allocators, which often have negative impacts on weaker people and families as accepted procedures and norms break down and opportunities grow for the powerful to exploit and gain.

Autores y editores

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Ndabezinhle Ziqubu, Tessa Cousins and Donna Hornby

Publisher(s): 

LEAP came into existence in 1988 when a group of KwaZulu-Natal land practitioners from NGOs, government and the private sector began to focus on why the communal property institutions (CPIs) set up under land reform appeared to be failing. The Legal Entity Assessment Project, as it was initially known, questioned the widely held view that the land reform communal property associations (CPAs) and trusts needed capacity building.

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