Abstract
Most of the arable communal lands in the former homeland areas in South Africa are currently either underutilised or abandoned. This paper describes a process of developing a land register and farmers’ preference for different mechanisms for transferring land use rights among members within the same community. Landowners in three Thaba Nchu villages, Free State, answered a semi-structured questionnaire to establish the sizes of arable land parcels, land utilisation patterns, and attitudes towards transactions in land use rights. There was interest in upscaling production; 73% of households would consider crop production if viable technologies were available. Most (68%) landholders would enter into one of the following transfer arrangements; sale (4%), lease (9%), sharecropping (65%) or free loan (22%). Selling and leasing were the least preferred. Households (74%) were also willing to transfer their rights for a maximum of 4yr; of these, 41% would lease their fields for 2–4yr and 33% for a maximum of 2yr. The results suggest that with appropriate institutions and institutional arrangements, a market for exchanges in land use rights may emerge, leading to increased utilisation of land and improved agricultural production. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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