Evaluating the Community Land Record System in Monwabisi Park Informal Settlement in the Context of Hybrid Governance and Organisational Culture

Michael Barry,Rosalie Kingwill

doi:10.3390/land9040124

Abstract

The study examined the effectiveness of a community-operated land record system (CRS), a product of an evolutionary information system planning approach under hybrid governance arrangements in Monwabisi Park informal settlement in Cape Town. To structure the analysis, the authors adapted an analytical framework for analysing land registration effectiveness to community records systems. It serves as a tool for analysing, designing and managing similar information systems. The CRS is an element of a participatory planning and development project involving a triad: (a) community-based organisations (CBOs); (b) a non-governmental organisation (NGO), which has acted as a change agent, facilitator and resource provider; and (c) the City of Cape Town. The hybrid governance institutions comprised a set of local community and government protocols. Of further significance are the organisational cultures of the CBOs, and the NGO’s information system team differs markedly from that of most land registries. The researchers examined the CRS database and operations management, interviewed key-informants and interviewed shack residents door-to-door. The CRS was effective because residents used it and largely adhered to the associated documented community protocols to defend their tenure and to effect transactions in shacks. Further contributors were the NGO and CBOs continually managed the institutional and leadership dynamics relevant to the CRS, factors often ignored in similar projects.

Highlights

The article examines the development and effectiveness of a digital land tenure information system (LTIS) in Monwabisi Park, an informal settlement of some 26,000 residents in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, Western Cape province, South Africa [1]
We explored parts of the residents’ life histories relating to how they had come to live in Monwabisi Park, and this logically followed to the strategies they had used to acquire an occupation interest
The analytical framework proved to be a useful tool in structuring and analysing the data for purposes of evaluating a land tenure information system (LTIS), providing additional factors such as hybrid governance and organisational culture are correctly identified and analysed in a LTIS evaluation

Summary

Introduction

The article examines the development and effectiveness of a digital land tenure information system (LTIS) in Monwabisi Park, an informal settlement of some 26,000 residents in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, Western Cape province, South Africa [1]. The Monwabisi Park LTIS is distinctive in that it was developed under hybrid governance arrangements as part of a participatory informal settlement upgrading planning process where resident volunteers operated the information system on site. To structure the data collection and analysis, we applied minor changes to a theoretical framework for evaluating the land tenure information system (LTIS) that the first author has been developing since the 1990s. The framework was originally designed for evaluating how landholders use or are predicted to use a conventional LTIS, such as titles or deeds, in complex socio-political situations. The underlying supposition was that an effective registration or certification system is one that landholders

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