The problem of defining ‘community’: Challenges for the land reform programme in rural South Africa

This article argues that the use of the term ‘community’ in South Africa's land reform programme has both positive and negative effects on the beneficiaries. Effects are positive when they help focus policy on the needs of poor people, but negative when they force conflicting groups together in a manner which results in the rights of a weaker group being trampled on by the actions of a more powerful group. The article briefly reviews different ways of looking at the concept ‘community’, and then analyses in detail a case from the Wild Coast, where a Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) has raised questions about who should benefit from land reform and economic development. It is concluded that a detailed understanding of local reality, even if it takes time to develop, should be seen as essential to both land restitution and the rights enquiry processes which government policy proposes to employ for resolving conflicting and overlapping claims to tenure rights

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Research Fellow, Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), School of Government, University of the Western Cape.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on ‘Land tenure in the developing world’, held at the University of Cape Town on 27–9 January 1998. The article has benefited from comments made by Ben Cousins on earlier drafts and the author takes responsibility for what remains. The author also gratefully acknowledges financial support from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada, and useful comments from anonymous referees.