Socio-historical research and land tenure in South Africa

The aim of the research was to clarify the
land tenure relations of an impoverished farming community
on a farm called Melkkraal. The farm is co-owned but it is
also home to twenty six households of which three are
co-owners. The remaining households have occupied the land
through a haphazard process of acquiring oral permission
from some of the co-owners and non-owning residents. This
has led to a tenure conundrum because the way in which the
farm is registered means that neither the households nor
the co-owners can access the necessary government
assistance or assert their authority to make development
decisions. As a result, the Surplus Peoples Project
undertook to investigate the nature and content of the
rights of the households in relation to the rights of the
co-owners. The findings revealed that very little
difference exists between the non-owning residents and the
co- owners in terms of how land is used and transacted.
This was attributed to the evolution of a social land ethic
such that one can speak of the Melkkraal farm as a commom
property regime.This means that there is just cause to
upgrade informal rights in land into real rights in
property.