South Africa

  • Formulation: 2018
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5

Members

Working towards these commitments

Respect, protect and strengthen the land rights of women and men living in poverty, ensuring that no one is deprived of the use and control of the land on which their well-being and human dignity depend, including through eviction, expulsion or exclusion, and with compulsory changes to tenure undertaken only in line with international law and standards on human rights.
1

Secure Tenure Rights

Ensure equitable land distribution and public investment that supports small-scale farming systems, including through redistributive agrarian reforms that counter excessive land concentration, provide for secure and equitable use and control of land, and allocate appropriate land to landless rural producers and urban residents, whilst supporting smallholders as investors and producers, such as through cooperative and partnership business models.
2

Strong Small-Scale Farming Systems

Recognize and protect the diverse tenure and production systems upon which people’s livelihoods depend, including the communal and customary tenure systems of smallholders, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, fisher folks, and holders of overlapping, shifting and periodic rights to land and other natural resources, even when these are not recognized by law, and whilst also acknowledging that the well-being of resource-users may be affected by changes beyond the boundaries of the land to which they have tenure rights.
3

Diverse Tenure Systems

Ensure gender justice in relation to land, taking all necessary measures to pursue both de jure and de facto equality, enhancing the ability of women to defend their land rights and take equal part in decision-making, and ensuring that control over land and the benefits that are derived thereof are equal between women and men, including the right to inherit and bequeath tenure rights.
4

Equal land rights for women

Respect and protect the inherent land and territorial rights of indigenous peoples, as set out in ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including by recognizing that respect for indigenous knowledge and cultures contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of the environment".
5

Secure territorial rights for Indigenous Peoples

Enable the role of local land users in territorial and ecosystem management, recognizing that sustainable development and the stewardship of ecosystems are best achieved through participatory decision-making and management at the territorial-level, empowering local land users and their communities with the authority, means and incentives to carry out this responsibility.
6

Locally-managed ecosystems

Ensure that processes of decision-making over land are inclusive, so that policies, laws, procedures and decisions concerning land adequately reflect the rights, needs and aspirations of individuals and communities who will be affected by them. This requires the empowerment of those who otherwise would face limitations in representing their interests, particularly through support to land users' and other civil society organizations that are best able to inform, mobilize and legitimately represent marginalized land users, and their participation in multi-stakeholder platforms for policy dialogue.
7

Inclusive decision-making

Ensure transparency and accountability, through unhindered and timely public access to all information that may contribute to informed public debate and decision-making on land issues at all stages, and through decentralization to the lowest effective level, to facilitate participation, accountability and the identification of locally appropriate solutions
8

Transparent and accessible information

Prevent and remedy land grabbing, respecting traditional land use rights and local livelihoods, and ensuring that all large-scale initiatives that involve the use of land, water and other natural resources comply with human rights and environmental obligations and are based on: the free, prior and informed consent of existing land users; a thorough assessment of economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts with respect to both women and men; democratic planning and independent oversight; and transparent contracts that respect labour rights, comply with social and fiscal obligations and are specific and binding on the sharing of responsibilities and benefits. Where adverse impacts on human rights and legitimate tenure rights have occurred, concerned actors should provide for, and cooperate in, impartial and competent mechanisms to provide remedy, including through land restitution and compensation.
9

Effective actions against land grabbing

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Achievements

1. Committed to monitor land governance by using LANDex tool

26 delegates from civil societies, academia, the private sector and government completed their LANDex training. The training allowed them to understand how the land monitoring tool has been used successfully in other countries such as Colombia, Nepal and Senegal. Paticipants learned how to use LANDex and agreed to adapt the land monitoring tool to South Africa's context.

2. give grassroots communities more influence on land policy through new LandNNES platform

In 2018, the new platform Land Network National Engagement Strategy in South Africa (LandNNES), supported members and their grassroots level communities to attend public hearings held by the President’s Advisory Panel on Land and Agriculture. As a result, LandNNES members were included on discussion panels to debate the need to review the country’s Redistribution policy. LandNNES members interacted with a range of Government Departments and Ministers. They were also given an opportunity to critique proposals for urban and rural tenure and the need for an overarching Land Governance policy as well as an integrated land administration system. The occasion allowed LandNNES to promote its credibility and work within a diverse policy environment consisting of government, private entities and civil society oprganisations.

Click to follow LandNNES on twitter

HOW OUR MEMBERS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO CHANGE

FULL REPORT ON THE CHANGE ILC MEMBERS HAVE MADE IN SOUTH AFRICA

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Country Context

Land Rights in South Africa

Following over two centuries of land dispossession in South Africa, based primarily on race, in 1994 the democratic state inherited a land governance framework that excluded the large majority of South Africans, through a largely “dual” land tenure framework.

The first democratic government clearly articulated a vision for pro-poor land reform aimed at redressing dispossession and creating more equitable land distribution, amongst other objectives, and the new Constitution extends and protects land and property rights, and allows for the expropriation of land. Sections 25(5), (6), (7) and (9) guarantee

  • equitable access to land through redistribution; and
  • restitution to those whose rights were historically dispossessed as a result of racial discrimination.

Implementation however has not been equal and South Africa now has a complex, confusing and increasingly incoherent legislative and policy framework regarding land.

  • Formulation: 2018
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