Topics and Regions
Rick has over 40 years experience working in the land sector in Southern Africa. He is part of the Land Portal knowledge engagement team working to research and develop knowledge resources including data stories, blogs and in-depth country profiles for Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.
Rick is also a Senior Research Associate with Phuhlisani NPC - a South African land sector NGO and the curator of specialist Southern African land news and analysis website https://knowledgebase.land
He tweets on land related issues Twitter account https://twitter.com/KnowledgebaseL
He has a PhD from the University of Cape Town. His research in Langa, Cape Town features as the central case study in a recent book Urban Planning in the Global South (2018), co-authored with the late Vanessa Watson, which examines the on-going contestations over land and housing in the rapidly growing cities of the global South.
Details
Location
The People's Law Journal
The majority of people in South Africa live in its cities. Here, although apartheid spatial planning has formally ended, people are still struggling with its legacy. South African cities remain largely untransformed. Despite the Constitutional Right to housing and equality, poor and working class people still live on the outskirts of the city, far away from work opportunities, subjected to inadequate housing and violent evictions. This crisis calls for radical policy and action from our metros. This edition of the PLJ helps to present a few areas relating to the urban land question
Phuhlisani NPC
Phuhlisani began as a consultancy started by a group of people who wanted to support emerging farmers who obtained access to land through land reform programmes in South Africa. In 2015, after 12 years in operation as a Closed Corporation, the members of the company decided to convert Phuhlisani to a Non-Profit Company which took place in October 2015.
Phuhlisani NPC provides comprehensive services and support for sustainable land reform and rural development including:
Ndifuna Ukwazi
Ndifuna Ukwazi is an activist organisation and law centre that promotes the realisation of Constitutional Rights and Social Justice – through legal, research and organising support to working class people, communities and social movements. The organistion works to advance urban land justice – that is the protection and promotion of access to affordable, well located housing in Cape Town; building inclusive and sustainable mixed use and mixed income communities; and supporting tenant rights and security of tenure in both private and public housing.