Land Debate Research Articles

The Land and its People: The South African ‘Land Question’ and the Post-Apartheid Political Order

Why is it that South Africa’s ‘land question’ is so stubbornly resistant to resolution? This think piece re-examines 30 years of debate, concentrating on the disjuncture between the discourses of policy deliberation and those of contentious politics in debates about land in South Africa. It argues that the South African land debate as it unfolds in the public realm is best understood as a displaced discourse indirectly addressing the terms of political belonging and the nature of the post-apartheid political order. Far from being a distraction, this is a challenge that urgently needs to be confronted in its own terms. Drawing on the work of Ivor Chipkin, the paper argues that confronting the crisis of the post-apartheid political order requires a rethinking of the terms in which national identity is conceived. The paper explores the possibilities and challenges facing a politics of belonging centred on the Constitutional invocation of a political community ‘for all who live in it’ and what this might imply for a more constructive and productive engagement with land struggles in urban and rural South Africa.

Enkele Suid-Afrikaanse beplanningsvraagstukke / Some South African planning issues by Das Steÿn

South African planning issues are always a point of discussion considering the colonial and apartheid history of the country. There are different viewpoints on such planning issues, about which Steÿn writes from the position of an Afrikaner. The book is bilingual and consists of eight chapters (including introduction and reflection) on issues such as the influence of values of thinking; sound planning: wealth and poverty; confronting power to stop corruption; mercantilism and colonialism that have a grip on state capture; lessons from Afrikaners’ urbanisation and acquisition of political power, and different values to alternative approaches to the land debate in South Africa.

Agrarian Law Enforcement In Land Dispute Settlement

Land ownership that is unfair to the community will offer opportunities for some parties to act undemocratically by taking land from the community. Conflict is a phenomenon that often occurs in human life, and arises from the conditions of the diversity of social systems. Conflict, no matter how it is seen, is inextricably linked with social existence. Property rights according to Article 20 paragraph (1) of the UUPA, namely hereditary, strongest, and fulfilled rights that people can own over land by considering that all land rights have a social function. The review utilizes a standardizing juridical methodology and the kind of legitimate survey is an extensive investigation of essential lawful materials, optional legitimate materials, and tertiary legitimate materials. The consequences of this exploration are the goal of land debate cases as specified in Regulation Number 51 of 1960, in Article 2 and Article 6 passage (1) letter a, that the utilization of land without consent from the legitimate individual or their lawful intermediary is a disallowed act and undermined with criminal punishments. Nonetheless, in tending to clashes and land debates that emerge, one should take a gander at it according to a few points of view while as yet focusing on equity and not hurting the two players, so it isn't just seen from the side of the inhabitant's activities yet additionally as far as the endlessly utilization of the land by the proprietor if, as far as usage, the land isn't used ideally and even appears to have been dismissed by the proprietor for roughly 15 years. Settlement of questions through consultation through intervention is followed as the way to taking care of land issues, remembering that the fundamental objective of intervention is to determine issues, apply standards or make request, yet in its execution, it should likewise be founded on broad standards

‘The real history of the country’? Expropriation without Compensation and Competing Master Narratives about Land (Dis)Possession in South Africa

In 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his government’s intention to pursue land expropriation without compensation. In a country where wealth and poverty still run largely along apartheid-era racial lines, this policy is widely associated with transferring white-owned agricultural property to landless and impoverished blacks. As with preceding land reform policy, expropriation without compensation is informed by a ‘master narrative’ of 20th-century black dispossession through rural land loss, urban forced removals and impoverishment. This article highlights how the recent revitalisation of the land debate has stimulated the more assertive articulation of competing historical narratives of land (dis)possession. We scrutinise such alternative master narratives emanating from two groups claiming to represent marginalised minorities whose identity and experience differ from that of black South Africans: Khoisan activists who mobilise discourses of indigeneity and prior occupancy, and the Afrikaner interest group AfriForum, which deploys discourses of expertise, rationality and impartiality to legitimise their representations of the past. Despite vast differences in the nature of these movements as well as the historical narratives they advance, they have shown instances of mutual support and apparent co-operation. We trace these to key intersections in their historical narratives and the opportunities these offer in the context of the ANC’s flagging electoral support. Understanding how master narratives compete is not only necessary to appraise South Africa’s current political juncture – it equally reveals how citizens who feel excluded and marginalised turn to history to carve out space, legitimacy and support for their agendas in this fraught environment.

Struggle for Land: Tribal Land Issue and Debate

The reader does not need to have copious concepts to grasp the tribal problems. It is about the land issue and the debate over how it arose and persisted; it exposes the problems in tribal societies.The central and state governments have the actual power to ensure tribal development. Furthermore, the land rights and protection problems are under the government's commitment to provide legal safeguards. However, neither the federal government nor state or local governments have exhibited much interest in the land troubles that tribal communities face. The paper focuses on tribal land issues and debates in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam. In the region, 97.88 per cent of the tribal people live in rural households and face uncertainty. The findings show that tribal people consider the government process insecure and intended to safeguard tribal members while ensuring the secure use of land in the region.

Frames and Marginalisation of Counter-hegemonic Voices: Media Representation of the Land Debate in South Africa

ABSTRACT The South African commercial press marginalises alternative and counter-hegemonic voices partly due to its location in the capitalist power structures. Notwithstanding its transformation post-apartheid, the ethos of this media remains rooted in apartheid-like economic and ideological rationalities. This media still functions within Western news values and a neoliberal paradigm; hence, the reporting of ideological discourses delegitimises the concerns of the dispossessed. This paper uses the critical political economy of the media in conversation with decolonial theories to analyse the media’s representation of the land debate by assessing economic and political interrelations that shape its structures and practice. Stories in the South African English-language print media in 2018 are analysed using thematic and framing approaches. It emerges that the land debate is framed negatively. The media employed a narrow neoliberal frame in the stories and thus failed to support a legitimate discourse. Instead, the media gave voice to individuals located in capitalist production structures who defended the status quo.

LAND DISPOSSESSION AS “ORIGINAL SIN”. CAN CHRISTIAN ORIGINAL SIN TALK BE USED AS DIAGNOSTIC TOOL WITHIN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN?

This contribution considers the descriptive value of original sin talk within the public domain against the background of the South African land reform debate. The first section analyses the employment of “original sin” language within this debate by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the light of the rise of “white privilege” discourse in South Africa. The subsequent section addresses the theological content and logical consistency of Augustine’s version of original sin. It pays particular attention to Paul Ricoeur’s analysis of the historical development of Augustine’s thought on sin in response to Manicheanism and Pelagianism and concludes by identifying possible risks involved in transposing the Augustinian version of original sin talk to the public domain. The third section probes the question: Does Christian sin talk belong in the public domain at all? It examines the disconnections that exist between Christian sin talk and popular public notions of “wrongdoing”. The article then considers the possible strengths of a non-literalist, non-biological version of original sin doctrine when applied to the public domain, while the last section illustrates the diagnostic benefits of the proposed version of original sin with reference to the South African land debate.

Different values lead to alternative approaches to the land debate in South Africa

In South Africa, two traditional cultures, namely the African and the European cultures, meet, each with its own historical view on what land is and how to govern it. This situation is complicated by modernist ideological thinking represented by capitalism and communism. Goudappel’s urbanistic concept is used to show how ideological thinking influences theory and practice when contemplating the land issue. This answer is not a single approach, but a multiple view on land which allows for different regions, each with its own solution coupled with its cultural background, in order for all the different peoples in this country to have a place in the sun. Therefore, this article gives a theoretical explanation that there are different value systems that influence the approach to possible solutions of the land issue in South Africa.

The ancestral land debate prior to and during Namibia’s Second National Land Conference: the redistribution-recognition dilemma

With the 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, the notion of ancestral land rights has gained greater global currency. However, this international legal instrument falls short of proffering an unambiguous definition of an indigenous person/community, for fear that no definition can capture the diversity of the world’s indigenous communities. Given this lack of a concise definition, this paper examines why there seems to be such apprehension towards ancestral land rights claims and restitution. In the Namibian context, it became particularly evident in the period leading up to and during the Second National Land Conference held in October 2018 that the concept of ancestral land remains not only highly contested but is also misunderstood; it is, therefore, easily politically abused. Drawing on these experiences, the paper identifies and examines a number of challenges and constraints that the conceptualisation and practical operationalisation of ancestral land claims and restitution has commonly encountered.

Scheffler’s autopsy of poverty in the biblical text: Critiquing land expropriation as an elitist project

The theme of poverty has recently dominated various scholarly platforms, including academic presentations and public debates. Nevertheless, it has emerged that the rhetoric about poverty reduction seems to be the project of the elite who apparently write and speak on behalf of the poor. The plight of the majority of the poor is problematised so that transformation is superficially democratised with the ultimate aim of benefitting the elite. The present study reflects on Eben Scheffler’s contributions on poverty and the poor in the Old Testament books of the Pentateuch, the Psalms and the Proverbs. Although this study refers to Scheffler’s other works on poverty from time to time, particular attention is paid to four of them, namely, (1) ‘The poor in the Psalms: A variety of views’; (2) ‘Of poverty prevention in the Pentateuch as a continuing contemporary challenge’; (3) ‘Poverty in the Book of Proverbs: Looking from above’; (4) ‘Pleading poverty (or identifying with the poor for selfish reasons): On the ideology of Psalm 109’. Scheffler points out that it was the ancient Israelite elite who played the role of writing and speaking on behalf of the poor. It is essential to note that Scheffler’s thrust is not an appropriation exercise, although in some places he makes reference to the ‘contemporary world’. Thus, the present study attempts to explore the land debate in our contemporary world, with a special focus on South Africa’s (SA) land expropriation without compensation (LEWIC) debate and the foiled fast-track land reform programme in Zimbabwe, as elitist projects. The Zimbabwean Fast-Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) was a prototype of LEWIC in SA. It is argued that the poor rural communities in Zimbabwe continue to languish in poverty in a country endowed with abundant natural resources, including land. The study argues that land allocation in Zimbabwe benefitted the elite.

Room at the margins for energy-crops? A qualitative analysis of stakeholder views on the use of marginal land for biomass production in Denmark

Greater production of agricultural biomass for energy generation means a greater overlap between the energy and agricultural value chains. The production of biofuels from food crops was previously criticised as conflicting with food production. Use of so-called ‘marginal land’ is proposed to overcome previous controversies.Using interviews and document analysis, this paper explores the meaning of ‘marginal land’ for non-food energy crop production in Denmark and conflicts that arose over its proposed use. In Denmark there was a different conception of marginal land – environmentally sensitive land where intensive cultivation causes impacts. Policies were put in place to promote the use of this ‘environmentally marginal land’. However, competing environmental objectives for this land – for different types of biodiversity, ecosystems services and aesthetic preferences meant these policies were repealed.The paper shows how discussions of biomass production on agricultural land, and particularly marginal land, reflect the nuances of competing land uses in agriculturally intensive countries like Denmark. It is not only a matter of trade-offs between different types of agricultural production, such as food and fuel, or between environmental benefits and production, but over the optimal environmental use of the land to achieve multifunctional benefits. As well as questions of equity, access and practicality, the marginal land debate in agriculturally intensive countries needs to include questions of appropriate and desired environmental outcomes and means of stakeholder engagement to establish these.

Land, group identities and competing justice values in South Africa: Reformed perspectives on embracive justice and permeable identity formation

This contribution argues that competing justice values are hindering progress in the land debate in South Africa. Two factors contribute to this state of affairs: Firstly, social justice is a multifaceted concept undergirded by a range of values. These values often stand in tension with each other, especially when it comes to intergenerational conflicts and transitional social contexts. Secondly, South African approaches to justice seem to be closely related to group identities, particular historical experiences and political interests. To address the impasse on land, we need to recalibrate our disposition to the hierarchy of justice values and the priority we assign to each value. Moreover, we need to address the relationship between justice dispositions and identities. The question posed is the following: Can reformed-theological resources add an extra ingredient to our understanding of social justice? What would be the implications of such a recalibration for our understanding of human identity? This article proposes the concept of embracing justice as orienting principle in resolving the land issue. Furthermore, it draws on reformed notions of self-denial and cross-bearing to advocate a permeable notion of identity that internalises and enacts the demands of embracive justice.

Citizen response to a video experiment on values, interests and beliefs related to land. A “Stop and start over!” time for saving Romanian rural heritage

Disparate elements of cosmopolitan lifestyle, rustic primitivism, inter-war nostalgia, communist ideological reminiscences, and post-communist transformations make difficult to find a community-based solution to land issues in Romania that is able to cover economic, social, and environmental interests. This paper outlines a scenario on future land governance, emphasizing that the land debate has moved beyond dialectics about the abundance or lack of production to a broader context about what is deemed to be land apart its material ground. Survey data was obtained from 184 structured interviews on citizens from the North-West and Center Development Regions of Romania and the overarching purpose of this research was to fill in the knowledge gaps on beliefs about land and its vulnerabilities mediated by a communication technology: video materials. Two research objectives were set as it follows: (i) to identify current frames related to land and to its selected vulnerabilities − foreign land grabbing, high natural value farmland (HNVF) reduction, and scarcity of farmers − and (ii) to move forward along the line of land frames to determine the influence of information in video format on citizens’ beliefs about studied variables. Thus, the study employs the concept of framing to analyze a collection of beliefs about land and its functions, assuming the basic underlying premise that frames, in general, permit individuals to locate, perceive, identify, and label facts and things. The influence of video information on citizens’ beliefs on land functions and vulnerabilities was discovered and the main findings prove that land frames are context dependent and flexible. The results highlight the role of land in the Romanian collective mind and they may represent a starting point for land governance in Romania that incorporates the real interests of citizens. By heeding concerns about land functions, HNVF reduction, scarcity of young farmers and foreign land grabbing under the conceptual approach of frames, this contribution transforms itself in a call for a “Stop and start over!” time for saving the national rural heritage.

LAND, FARMING AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN YEHUD: A QUEST FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS POVERTY REDUCTION IN ZIMBABWE

The Hebrew Bible portrays the view that the Jewish lifestyle was predominantly agrarian. The ideology that Jewish socio-economic survival depended largely on subsistence farming is a depiction that the biblical text presents in terms of ‘themes’ pertaining to agriculture, such as: land tax, temple-tax, sheep, goats, cattle, and slaughtering and sacrificing animals. Significant archaeological discoveries to date have illumined the claim that agricultural production was critical in the sustenance of socio-economic life for both household consumption and national demand in the ancient Near East (hereafter, ANE). First, although issues surrounding land and socio-economic development (hereafter, SED) during the pre-monarchic, monar-chic, and exilic periods as depicted in the biblical text will be considered, the main focus of the present discourse is the Judean postexilic period. In this essay, postexilic literature (e.g. Trito-Isaiah, Ezra-Nehemiah, Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi, etc.) will be explored. Second, this study employs an approach called ‘hermeneutics of appropriation’ in which significant ‘themes’ which fondled issues of land and farming in ancient Israel are investigated in view of the dynamics surrounding the land debate in post-independence Zimbabwe. Third, it is argued that in spite of the turbulence that has plagued the Zimbabwean economy in recent years, agriculture continues to play a pivotal role in averting starvation in the country. Fourth, this article concludes with a ‘theology of reconstruction’ in which strategies towards maximum utilisation of land, sustainable development and poverty reduction are explored.

The urban land debate in the global South: New avenues for research

The global ‘land grab’ debate is going urban and needs a specific conceptual framework to analyze the diverse modalities through which land commodification and speculation are transforming cities across the globe. This article identifies new avenues for research on urban land issues by drawing on an extensive body of academic literature and concrete cases of urban land transformations in Asia, Latin America and Africa. These transformations are analyzed by focusing on three types of urban investments – investments in property, investments in public space and public services, and investments in speculation, image building and ‘worlding’ – and the way these investments are intermingled with and enhanced by processes of gentrification and speculative urbanism. Addressing real estate and infrastructure investments, speculation and gentrification through a land-based lens allows us to deepen the discussion on urban land governance in the global South. We argue that urban land acquisition cannot be thoroughly understood in isolation from the workings of urban real estate markets, public policies, and displacement processes. The urban land grab debate needs to consider the dialectic interplay between land use change and general socio-spatial transformations both in central – or recentralized – and peripheral areas. This is why we plea for a kaleidoscopic perspective on urban land governance by uncovering the complex patchwork of urban land acquisitions and their diverse temporalities and spatialities, their hybrid character in terms of actors involved, and the multiple and often unpredicted ways in which urban dwellers try to gain control over and access to urban land.

The great land debate and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003

This article seeks to give a flavour of the contemporary land debate in Scotland; a debate which emphatically concerns land and landscape, law and justice. It considers the historical background to that debate, including the tragedy of the Highland Clearances, and follows the progress through the recently re-established Scottish Parliament of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. This ground-breaking and controversial Act falls into three parts: the first provides for a general public right of access to land throughout Scotland; the second gives communities a right of pre-emption over land coming on the market; and the third empowers crofting communities to acquire land.

‘Pig‐Sticking Princes’: Royal Hunting, Moral Outrage, and the Republican Opposition to Animal Abuse in Nineteenth‐and Early Twentieth‐Century Britain

AbstractThis article locates monarchy in the debates arising out of the anti‐animal abuse campaigns of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a close examination of urban republican criticisms of monarchy, it seeks to question the role of royalty as the custodian of shared national values concerning animal welfare. It demonstrates that hostility to monarchy based on its role in encouraging and patronizing hunting belongs to a long tradition. Much hostility to royalty crystallized around the royal patronage of fox‐hunting and of pheasant‐shooting. The nineteenth‐century precedents for recent concerns about the visible presence of royal figures on the hunting‐field articulated many of the component elements of a republican position. For many urban radicals the connection of reigning monarchs with the hunt demonstrated the dysfunctional nature of royal existence, the limitations of royalty's attainments, and the perceived need by monarchs to satisfy the baser, more carnal urges arising from a life devoted to indolence and pleasure. This article shows that hunting, as a marker of a robust masculinity and of the opulence of royalty, brought the reform community into collision with supporters of the monarchy, and provided an example of royal ritual that failed to work in the interests of the throne. The article concludes by revealing the connections between the land debate, criticisms of the royal house, and animal welfare politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Land Crisis in Zimbabwe Viewed from South of the Limpopo

Farm invasions in Zimbabwe have highlighted the pressing need for land reform throughout the southern African region. In South Africa, where the racial disparities in land holding are most severe, the events in Zimbabwe have raised the temperature of the land debate and led to calls for land invasions by some rural groups. The ANC‐led government, facing criticism from both right and left for the slow pace of reform, has veered between strident defence of private property rights and threats to expropriate white farms. White farming interests have reacted differentially, with some progressive voices joining the calls for an accelerated reform programme. Current land reform policy in South Africa seems set to advance the interests of emerging black commercial farmers and tribal chiefs at the expense of the rural poor and landless.

'Zone Fever', the Arable Land Debate, and Real Estate Speculation: China's evolving land use regime and its geographical contradictions

State promotion of export-oriented development in China through a system of special development zones contributed to both rapid economic growth and indiscriminate reproduction of special zones. Land use transformations have resulted in significant losses of arable land, and new state policies to conserve land and control land use through the revised Land Administration Law. Critical comparison of industrial development in the special zone phenomenon and the evolving land use disposition system demonstrates contradictory domestic political and economic policies of land development, land management, and land conservation. This analysis assesses land development trends in the south China coastal zone and adopts a geographical approach to examine the spatialities of the land use regime, across the administrative hierarchy, in the nature of the distinct rural and urban land use markets, and in land monitoring problems. Problems revealed in the land disposition system demonstrate how the state's land use regime has promoted land development. New controls over land use coincided with the need to restrict service sector development in real estate and related industries at the onset of the regional economic downturn in 1997.

Building landscapes: village development in Zimbabwe

AbstractThis paper argues that there is a need to fill a specific empirical and conceptual gap in land policy analysis in Zimbabwe. This ‘gap’ has arisen from the predominantly macro level economic theoretical perspectives on the land question, and from an inadequate conceptualization of the local level character of the land debate in Zimbabwe. The purpose of this paper is to stress the importance of focusing on the land question from the standpoint of the peasant householders in the Communal Areas (CAs). These issues are raised through the examination of land use and land‐use history in Mhezi Ward in Makoni District, Zimbabwe. This paper does not comment on the recent political moves to redistribute 1471 Large Scale Commercial Farms (LSCF) as this process must be discussed in another debate. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.