Nolundi Luwaya examines how the laws affecting rural citizens in South Africa fit together. She examines the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act and highlights key sections of the Act including the requirements for establishment of Traditional Councils, the status and role of traditional leaders. She reviews contested legislation including the Communal Land Rights Act, struck down by the Constitutional Court and the Traditional Courts Bill which threatened to turn rural citizens in the former bantustans into chiefly subjects.

The Government of Zambia is embarking on an ambitious program of legal and administrative reforms in land policy. Although the need to liberalize the land market is universally shared, the ideas on how to accomplish this transformation are not. Two decades of underinvestment in field research have resulted in the present situation of micro-level data on land tenure and farm-level production, consumption, and resource management inadequate to guide policy decisions.

All land in Zambia is vested in the president, in trust for the people of Zambia, under the Land (Conversion of Titles) Act, 1975 (see p.16), SECTION4.The president has delegated landadministration to the Commissioner of Lands under Statutory Instrument No. 7 of 1964 and GazetteNotice No. 1345 of 1975, as amended. Land in Zambia is divided into State (formerly crown),Reserve, and Trust Lands, as well as park reserves.

In the name of development, governments in southern Africa are reformulating land policies to facilitate privatisation of customary land rights. It is argued that this can stimulate land markets, (foreign) private investment, access to formal credit, and enhance security of tenure (by way of holding title), thereby leading to economic growth and poverty alleviation.

The paper shows that most women in Zambia and especially in the study area suffer from insecurity in land since they do not have secure title to land under customary tenure. The results from the research which was carried out using semi structured interviews with 34 female farmers show that the majority of women farmers (62%) were not allocated land directly by headmen but got land through a male contact.

This event, hosted at ODI in London, was convened to discuss the use of new technologies to map and document land rights, and their impact on land registration and administration, and provide updates on recent activities of Forum membe

The promulgation of the Kenyan Constitution 2010 brought into place concerns about the urgency for land reform. Land reforms hold the key to solving some of Kenya’s greatest challenges such as landlessness, community cohesion, food security and sustainable development. Land reforms lie at the heart of the work of the National Land Commission (NLC) and Kituo cha Sheria and they are also at the heart of many Kenyan communities who live, work and rely on land. Information contained in the book goes a long way in educating these communities about their land rights.

Conventional notions of the ‘land parcel’ have been extended: previously unrecognized tenures including customary, nomadic, or communal interests are now incorporated into the concept. Technical tools including the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) enable these new understandings to be operationalized in land administration systems. The nomadic pastoralists of Kenya’s dry land regions illustrate where these new approaches can be applied.

In the recent past, high profile cases involving land governance problems have been thrust into the public domain. These include the case involving the grabbing of a playground belonging to Lang’ata Road Primary School in Nairobi and the tussle over a 134 acre piece of land in Karen. Land ownership and use have been a great source of conflict among communities and even families in Kenya, a situation exacerbated by corruption.

In Kenya, insecure land tenure and inequitable access to land, forest and water resources have contributed to conflict and violence, which has in turn exacerbated food insecurity. To address these interlinked problems, a new set of laws and policies on food security and land governance are currently being introduced or designed by the Government of Kenya. The new Food Security Bill explicitly recognizes the link between food security and land access, and the 2012 land laws target the corrupt system of land administration that made much of Kenya’s land grabbing possible.

THE MINING ACT No. 12 of 2016

Date of Assent: 6th May, 2016

Date of Commencement: 27th May, 2016

THE FOREST CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT ACT, 2016 No. 34 of 2016

Date of Assent: 31st August, 2016

Date of Commencement: By Notice