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INTERIM PROTECTION OF INFORMAL LAND RIGHTS ACT IN FORCE FOR ANOTHER YEAR
- 07 November 2023
- Agriculture, Land Reform & Rural Development
- SA Legal Academy
The application of provisions of the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act, 1996, has been extended by another year pending its replacement by legislation more adequately dealing with this complex issue. The extension was announced by notice in the Government Gazette.
A draft Communal Land Tenure Bill released in July 2017 for public comment is apparently still a work in progress. This is according to a Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) report on the 18 April 2023 National Assembly Agriculture Land Reform & Rural Development Committee meeting, which focused on the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development’s 2023/24 annual performance plan.
The report refers to a May 2022 communal land tenure summit, the outcome of which is still not clear.
Meanwhile, the University of Cape Town’s Land & Accountability Research Centre web page alludes to the thorniest issue in the 2017 draft Bill. Apparently, its intention was to “transfer title and control over ‘communal’ land in the former homelands not to the 18 million ordinary people who have occupied it over generations, but to traditional leaders and institutions”.
The only other recent piece of legislation focusing on informal land tenure rights has been the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Amendment Act, 2021. Not yet in force, once operationalised it will give effect to a 2018 Constitutional Court ruling on sub-section 2(1) of the principal statute, which deals with the deprivation of informal rights to land. The Constitutional Court found that – ‘based on a position created by apartheid legislation’ – this section discriminates against women in the context of certificates and deeds of grant issued expressly to men as heads of households.
Concerns about the ‘fragmentation’ of legislation dealing with land tenure and the prevailing impasse are reflected in a Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) report of the 20 October 2020 meeting of the National Assembly committee. It was held to finalise what was then the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Amendment Bill.
- Government Gazette notice announcing Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act extension
- Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act
- Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Amendment Act
- Constitutional Court judgment
- PMG report on October 2020 committee meeting
- PMG report on April 2023 committee meeting
- draft Communal Land Tenure Bill
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch