Resource information
Land governance and administration are critical for achieving economic growth and development in any country. It is within this context that the World Bank introduced the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) for identifying specific areas for land reform while also providing a means for monitoring.
This report serves as the country report for South Africa. It provides an outline of the process, background information on the country, an assessment of land governance and the concomitant policy analysis, recommendations and conclusions. The report is intended to be a resource document for government and other land practitioners within the non-governmental and private sectors to guide policy development and interventions within the land sector.
In South Africa, the application of the LGAF has been challenging due to its economy (including a formal land market) and informal systems in communal land areas. However, the application of the LGAF within the South African context was useful in providing a “snap shot” of the state of land governance in the country. It managed to expose the obvious successes and failures and the sophistication and the lack thereof within the current system. The duality of land governance that is the formal in juxtaposition to the informal was demonstrated through the use of the methodology, which assessed land governance in the following themes:
land tenure
urban land use planning and development
rural land use and land policy
land valuation and taxation
public land management
public provision of land information
dispute resolution
large scale land acquisition
The report recommends further examination of the following areas:
time based on large scale land acquisition within the African sub region
the preparation of a methodology and tools for supporting municipalities in the implementation of an incremental tenure approach
the determination of a possible legal framework for supporting the implementation of an incremental tenure approach
support with the drafting of suitable legislation for enforcing communal land rights
