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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.
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Spotlight on language
Simplification is a process in which all the essential provisions of an existing Legalese constitution are captured in plain language. Simplifying a constitution is more complex than simplifying the language within it. It involves digging out and putting in order the meaning of a document, as well as writing it in plain language.
Scoping report on Communal Property Institutions in Land Reform
This report was prepared for the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) in South Africa. In 2001 DLA set up the Communal Property Institutions (CPI) Task Team to review land reform legal entities. The purpose of the review and this report is to improve the situation and functioning of CPIs in order to move towards, rather than away from, achieving the objectives of land reform. To do this, the report covers:
• Methods of assessing and analysing cpi performance
• CPI assessment and analysis
• Offering explanations for causes of CPI problems
Scoping report on Communal property Institutions in Land Reform
This report was prepared for the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) in South Africa. In 2001 DLA set up the Communal Property Institutions (CPI) Task Team to review land reform legal entities. The purpose of the review and this report is to improve the situation and functioning of CPIs in order to move towards, rather than away from, achieving the objectives of land reform. To do this, the report covers:
• Methods of assessing and analysing cpi performance
• CPI assessment and analysis
• Offering explanations for causes of CPI problems
Leaping the fissures
This archival paper takes a hard look at the claim that Communal Property Institutions established as part of South Africa's land reform programme are failing. It argues that there are no meaningful indicators against which assessments of success or failure can be made. It asserts that the tenure security of the group and its members should be the primary purpose of land reform CPIs because secure tenure is the primary mechanism for reducing risk for vulnerable people and is the universal need of the group.
Legal Entity Assessment Project
LEAP came into existence in 1988 when a group of KwaZulu-Natal land practitioners from NGOs, government and the private sector began to focus on why the communal property institutions (CPIs) set up under land reform appeared to be failing. The Legal Entity Assessment Project, as it was initially known, questioned the widely held view that the land reform communal property associations (CPAs) and trusts needed capacity building.
Decentralised Land Governance
This reviews the literature on decentralised land governance in Southern Africa, highlighting key issues and challenges of ‘land governance from below’.
A scan of rural civil society in South Africa
This research report examines the changing role and function of civil society in South Africa pre and post-1994, and its changing relations with the state through successive presidencies. It presents a four quadrant typology of civil society organisations
People's Law Journal
The first volume of the People's Law Journal was written by the Land and Accountability Research Centre (LARC) in the Faculty of Law at the Universityof Cape Town and edited and published by Ndifuna Ukwazi. The journal explores a wide range of relevant issues including land restitution, elite capture, traditional leadership, mining and the erosion of communal land rights in the post-apartheid era
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.