“Much ado about nothing": a review of communal land laws in South Africa.

Abstract

Even though Eurocentric intellectuals tend to theorise the worldview through the lens of "Western evolutionary progress rather than de-evolutionary retrogression", this article begs to take an Afrocentric perspective. Coerced to abandon their deeply entrenched indigenous knowledge systems (customary tenure), some indigenous people of South Africa consciously and inadvertently increasingly devolved their land heritage to the suzerain that benefited through oppressive land laws. The point raised at this juncture is that Africans were and/or are forced to 'transition', to 'change' and to 'transform' away from 'owning' and 'controlling' their communal lands. Because the suzerain systems of transition ushered African institutions and lands to the guillotine, we contend that this kind of transition is arrogant and dehumanising – a miscarriage of justice. Almost 25 years since the dawn of independence, the thorny issue raised in this article is whether the government of South Africa is still impotent when it comes to redressing the colonial and apartheid oppres-sive land system of government. The article is underpinned by the Sankofa theory and adopts a doctrinal approach. Consequently, the article strives to examine if post-apartheid laws regulating communal land have been successful in bringing about legally secure communal tenure and/or comparable redress that had been severely undermined by the colonial and apartheid systems. Despite the numerous laws that have been promulgated since the dawn of democracy to redress the historical wrongs, communal land tenure rights remain insecure to date. The article recommends that there is a need to review, repeal and enact new laws that comprehen-sively ensure security of tenure.