The Past in the Present: Struggles Over Land and Community in Relation to the Dukuduku Claim for Land Restitution, South Africa

Abstract

Land restitution has become an important means to rectify South Africa's skewed property relations after decades of racially discriminatory laws and practices. The Dukuduku forest in KwaZulu-Natal is subject to one such claim to land restitution, which remains unsettled more than a decade after it was lodged. While being planned for incorporation into the adjacent wetland park and World Heritage Site, the forest has over the last decades become home to an increasing number of predominantly subsistence farmers, some of whom form part of the group of land claimants. This study of the Dukuduku forest attempts to explore the interplay of community and authority in a setting where claims for historical redress materialises both in processes of land restitution and in the acquisition of land through ‘illegal squatting’. Land restitution at Dukuduku involves the restoration of lost rights to land and resources and the formalisation of these rights. Overlapping and differently founded claims, however, drawing differently on the past and the present, form a complexity that defies such straightforward processes. The struggle over the Dukuduku forest is one over different interpretations of what constitutes authority and community. The land claim process feeds into existing struggles and creates new ones, and in this way, the larger cause of the land claimants – to obtain recognition of property claims and land belonging – is infused by conflicts external and internal to the community of claimants.

Keywords:

• Land restitution
• community
• authority
• KwaZulu-Natal
• South Africa

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Corrigenda

Notes

This version has been corrected. Please see Corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2012.751185)

¹This research has been carried out with financial support from the Nordic Africa Institute, Nansenfondet of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the Norwegian Research Council's project no. 178798, for which the author is grateful.

²Files ‘1954–1962 48–66 Correspondence on squatters G21–22’ accessed at the archives of Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, Queen Elisabeth Park, Pietermaritzburg.

³The park was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1999 and was until 2007 known as the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park.

⁴At times referred to as tribal or chiefly authority.

⁵Group discussion with forest dwellers, 30 October 2008, Nyamasana/Dukuduku.

⁶Group discussions with forest dwellers, September–October 2008, Dukuduku.

⁷Also confirmed in various interviews with forest dwellers, e.g. Chairman of the Dukuduku Land Claims Committee, 26 June 2011, Emaplangweni/Dukuduku.

⁸As laid out by the Zululand Lands Delimitation Committee in 1905 (ZLDC, 1905).

⁹Interview with forest dweller, 14 November 2008, Khula Village/Dukuduku.

¹⁰Correspondence of the RLCC, accessed in the archives of the AFRA, Pietermaritzburg; files on the Bhangazi land restitution claim, Regional Land Claims Commission, Pietermaritzburg.

¹¹The Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994, Section 11 (7b) ‘Once a notice has been published in respect of any land […] no claimant who was resident on the land in question at the date of commencement of this Act may be evicted from the said land without the written authority of the Chief Land Claims Commissioner’ (RSA, 1994). See also Commissioner Shange's justification for disregarding the claim in NW (2003).

¹²Interview with M. Dlamini, KwaZulu-Natal Land Claims Commission, 19 June 2009; RLCC (undated).

¹³This was also confirmed in interviews: 14 November 2008, Khula Village/Dukuduku, and 18 December 2008, St Lucia/Dukuduku.

¹⁴Interview with forest dweller, 14 November 2008, Khula Village/Dukuduku.

¹⁵Group discussions with forest dwellers, September–October 2008, Dukuduku.

¹⁶Files on the Bhangazi land restitution claim, Regional Land Claims Commission, Pietermaritzburg.

¹⁷Group discussion with forest dwellers, 7 September 2008, Dukuduku.

¹⁸General notice in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act, 22 of 1994, Notice no. 1570 of 2001, T. Shange, Regional Land Claims Commissioner: KwaZulu-Natal; This claim is also known as the Western Shores Land claim, Fannies Community Land Claim or the Mfeka Land Claim.

¹⁹Interview with M. Dlamini, KwaZulu-Natal Land Claims Commission, 19 June 2009, Pietermaritzburg.

²⁰Pers. com. N. Ziqubu and M. Zakwe, AFRA, 24 October 2008.

²³Interview Chairman of the Dukuduku Land Claims Committee, 26 June 2011, Emaplangweni/Dukuduku.

²¹Group discussion with forest dwellers, 9 September 2008, Khayelisha/Dukuduku.

²²Interview with forest dweller, 14 November 2008, Khula Village/Dukuduku.

²⁴Group discussion forest dwellers, 9 September 2008, Khayelisha/Dukuduku.

²⁵Interview with M. Dlamini, KwaZulu-Natal Land Claims Commission, 19 June 2009, Pietermaritzburg.