Women’s land struggles in post-apartheid SA: a fight with no end

After 30 years in a democratic country, South African women, like many women around the world, are still asking for tangible change in their lives. One of the biggest sectors where we see the clear disparity between women’s and men’s experiences is access to land and housing.

Over 40% of homes in South Africa are run by women, and this number is higher in rural areas (47,7%). What do the effects of Apartheid’s legacy and the last three decades of talk by government mean for these women and the people who rely on them? (https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=15473)

The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape held a webinar on 29 August 2024 on Women Land Struggles in the Post- Apartheid South Africa. Hosted by the Dean of Faculty for Economic, Management Science, Professor Essau and chaired by PLAAS researcher Nkanyiso Gumede, the webinar held a vital conversation with three formidable women in the areas of rural and urban land reform. Gumede’s work focuses on inclusive urban land reform in South Africa. (https://plaas.org.za/inclusive-urban-land-reform-in-south-africa/) Tshepo Fokane is the Acting Director for Alliance for Rural Democracy, an organisation working closely with communities engaged in land struggles mainly in communal areas.

Fokane lamented that tenure security remains elusive for many women, precisely because of the state’s failure to engage in meaningful action to secure their tenure as the Constitution dictates. The only legislation available to protect women’s land rights is the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act, which has to be renewed every year. This, she argued, shows that the state doesn’t believe that would can and should manage land on their own.

The state infantilises black rural people. They say they are worried that if they give rural women land, they will borrow on it and lose it. Yet everyone else in the country is allowed to borrow on their properties.

The contradictions and politics that exists with families in urban areas are also present in rural families. Women in customary marriages need their rights protected as much as those in civil marriages. Land-based investments such as mining continue to cause women and their communities to lose their land rights. This is further enabled by the lack of clarity in law on the role of traditional leaders in land administration, which they have manipulated to their favour for own accumulation at the expense of the communities. Court judgments ruling in favour of protecting these have been important, but “they are living documents

that social movements must bring to people so they can interact with it and understand their weight,” said Fokane.The Nkuzi Development Association works closely with land restitution programme beneficiaries and claimants, as well as communities in the former homelands. Its director, Motlanalo Lebepe, highlighted that patriarchal practices favour men in restitution claims processes. Men were signatories on initial land claim forms, and continuously elect one another in the leadership committees responsible for administering land restitution land or on taking decisions.

Women are not primary beneficiaries in practice. Financial compensation is at times presented as the only available option to women, thus depriving them an opportunity to
own land.
“We are telling women who are poor that they don’t deserve to own land by giving themfinancial compensation for it instead of assistance for restitution and reclamation,
said Lebepe.

At the same time, budgets for restitution programmes have been in decline over the years. Farm workers and dwellers still face evictions and their land claims are not prioritised.According to Lebepe, redistribution is a viable alternative for restitution – but it must be applied in a way that the state expropriates for restitution. She highlighted that this is done for shopping malls and mining. Expropriation should include women and must also be applicable to farms where there are human rights violations such as violence against farm workers and dwellers.

Nozibele Sigwela from spatial justice organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi says problems accessing land and housing is just as prevalent in urban areas – especially for working class women – adding that this was a direct indicator of state apathy towards the issue.

Housing is a major crisis in South Africa, which means the government has not done enough. What have we done for so many years if we still have spatial inequality, displacement and gentrification?

Sigwela says that the women who do have access to land and housing lose it to patriarchal practices of male heir inheritance. Widows lose out to the family of their husband’s, and divorcees lose to their husbands. One webinar attendee asked if housing could truthfully be seen as a gendered issue.

The politics of any occupation is the failure of state to deliver housing. It affects all genders.But the statistics for occupations show that the majority of people living in occupied buildings are women. It is a crisis.

PLAAS’s on-going research on urban land reform also shows that women make up the majority of people in land occupation sites. The development planning process in urban areas is exclusively defined by less representation and involvement of women. The administration of the housing list is in crises, with some names of those who applied before being missing and there are allegations of corruption and illegal removal of names from the list.

The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is that women have responded to these injustices by organising. They formed structures or joined existing to resist and fight injustice, while also creating platforms of solidarity and skills sharing to help each other claim their Constitutional entitlements. Women have occupied land and buildings together with their communities for survival and to have what they can call home. Women-led organisations such as the Amadiba Crisis Committee in the Eastern Cape, Rural Women Assembly on the continent and, Reclaim the City in Cape Town have successfully supported women while they fight in rural and urban areas. The People’s Land Map created by Ndifuna Ukwazi has helped identify pieces of land that could be used to address spatial and land injustice in Cape Town. They have also engaged in campaigns for the state to release state-owned land to address unequal access currently defined by race, class and economic status. (https://peopleslandmap.nu.org.za/)

Proposed interventions moving forward

All three participants demonstrated that a lack of state interventions means women remain vulnerable in rural and urban contexts. Proposals for moving forward include:

Legislation and policy reforms that will genuinely consider women views and ensure that the right to equitable access is guaranteed. These could include clarifying the right to equitable access in law and developing land redistribution law as proposed in the High Level Panel report (2017) and the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform report (2019).
A call for policy processes to be truly inclusive and deliberate in empowering women by enabling their access to land and securing their rights to land.
The state must release land and take all measures to ensure women’s access to land.
Land struggles and campaigns must continue to push the state to implement Section 25 of the Constitution, which states .
Collaboration between communities, civil society organisations, academics, and others are crucial for success in land justice, especially to rework laws and policies in favour of women and their communities.