Denying Ownership and Equal Citizenship: Continuities in the State's Use of Law and ‘Custom’, 1913–2013

Aninka Claassens

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2014, vol. 40, issue 4, 761-779

Abstract: This article discusses traditional leadership laws that entrench the ‘tribal’ boundaries which make up the former homelands, and recent policies that foreclose landownership for the majority of rural people. I argue that these laws and policies reinforce, rather than address, the legacy of the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts. Distorted constructs of unilateral chiefly power are mobilised in attempts to create a separate legal zone of customary authority that undermines the citizenship rights of those living within the boundaries of the former bantustans. The article points to tensions between the new policies and the Constitution's promise of land rights to remedy past discrimination, discussing restitution as a case in point. The example of platinum mining on communal land in North West Province is used to illustrate the significant resources at stake.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2014.931061 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:40:y:2014:i:4:p:761-779

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjss20

DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2014.931061

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Southern African Studies is currently edited by Ralph Smith

More articles in Journal of Southern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().