Senior Research Associate with Phuhlisani NPC.
Curator of specialist land news and analysis website https://knowledgebase.land
Land Portal local knowledge engagement team member developing country profiles for Southern Central and Eastern Africa, profiling researchers, organisations and strengthening knowledge exchange
A review of land news and analysis covering a wide range of issues including farms and farm workers, food security, land governance and administration, land policy, threats to and murder of land activists, land rights and mining and much more
News curated via knowledgebase.land
KB.L seeks to bring to life all aspects of the ‘land issue’, recognizing that land is both a deeply important aspect of our history, and an emotive issue shaping our political landscape. KB.L seeks to develop a comprehensive sense of this history, heritage and memory through a combination of news, commissioned articles and links to research.
A compilation of land related news curated by knowledgebase.land - a website maintained by Phuhlisani NPC, a land sector NPO in South Africa. KB.L seeks to bring to life all aspects of the 'land issue', recognising that land is both a deeply important aspect of our history which simultaneously shapes the contemporary political landscape.
In this land news update from South Africa we focus on:
The government of Lesotho’s (GOL) land reform efforts, enacted in the Land Act 2010, principally seek to create an environment that is favourable to agricultural development and economic investment.3 For years, Lesotho has lacked efficient land markets in which foreign investors could participate. The limitations on foreign landholding by the 1979 Land Act have presented impediments to improving the commercial use of land.
The formal private sector in Lesotho concentrates on housing at the very top of the market leaving the majority unserved by formal housing supply.
State efforts to reform the customary land tenure system of Lesotho have failed to produce intended outcomes. An explanation given for this failure is customary chiefs' opposition to state-sponsored reforms, as these were purportedly meant to curtail their power over land. This explanation initially appeared in 1974 connection with the Administration of Lands Act of 1973, and has since been handed down through generations of academics and policy analysts in Lesotho and outside and uncritically accepted as immutable truth.
Lesotho regularly features in the African and international media as a country blighted by drought, hunger and food insecurity. Much of the discussion about the causes and remedies for food insecurity, including within Lesotho itself, focuses on the rural population and the precipitous decline in domestic food production in recent decades. This report argues that the rural bias of both donors and government ignores the fact that poverty and food insecurity are increasingly important urban issues as well.
This paper draws on research on the enforcement of the Land Act of 1979 in Lesotho. It seeks to show that illegal settlements occur under the shadow of formal state rules, from which social actors borrow selectively and in opportunistic ways to acquire urban property rights. This is possible because of inconsistencies and contradictions in state rules and enforcement methods.
