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The problem of defining 'community': Challenges for the land reform programme in rural South Africa

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  • Thembela Kepe

Abstract

This article argues that the use of the term 'community' in South Africa's land reform programme has both positive and negative effects on the beneficiaries. Effects are positive when they help focus policy on the needs of poor people, but negative when they force conflicting groups together in a manner which results in the rights of a weaker group being trampled on by the actions of a more powerful group. The article briefly reviews different ways of looking at the concept 'community', and then analyses in detail a case from the Wild Coast, where a Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) has raised questions about who should benefit from land reform and economic development. It is concluded that a detailed understanding of local reality, even if it takes time to develop, should be seen as essential to both land restitution and the rights enquiry processes which government policy proposes to employ for resolving conflicting and overlapping claims to tenure rights

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  • Thembela Kepe, 1999. "The problem of defining 'community': Challenges for the land reform programme in rural South Africa," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 415-433.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:16:y:1999:i:3:p:415-433
    DOI: 10.1080/03768359908440089
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    Cited by:

    1. Owen Gohori & Peet van der Merwe, 2020. "Towards a Tourism and Community-Development Framework: An African Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-35, June.
    2. Catherine Boone, 2017. "Legal empowerment of the poor through property rights reform: Tensions and trade-offs of land registration and titling in sub-Saharan Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 037, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Catherine Boone, 2017. "Legal empowerment of the poor through property rights reform: Tensions and trade-offs of land registration and titling in sub-Saharan Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-37, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Brück, Tilman & Schindler, Kati, 2009. "Smallholder Land Access in Post-War Northern Mozambique," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1379-1389, August.

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