Community development trusts: brokering property rights on ‘communal' land in the Richtersveld

Ntombini, Kolosa

Community development trusts: brokering property rights on ‘communal' land in the Richtersveld

Master Thesis

2022

Abstract

Property is a concept that gained traction by the ways in which it organises human relations and access and ownership resources. Research in legal geography has shown that property is mobilised to justify or resist dispossession. Colonial powers invoked problematic ideas of the property rights of indigenous people to justify land dispossession through trusts. The British empire was particularly well-versed in this, adopting a trusteeship model whereby indigenous land was held in trust. Placing indigenous land in trust enabled the empire to appropriate indigenous land without the moral hazard of violent land dispossession. The empire used trusts under the pretext that it sought to protect indigenous people and their land from increased competition for land triggered by settler influx. However, the trusteeship model fundamentally altered the property rights of indigenous people by redefining historical owners of the land as beneficiaries with no decision-making powers over property. This study shows that the trusteeship model that was instrumental for land dispossession in South Africa re-emerged in the democratic era in the form of community development trusts. These trusts are not community-driven but are instead designed and created by the state to serve as an avenue for the state to exercise control over natural resources and to manage the relations between communities and the state. This study locates these dual roles within the broader political history of South Africa to demonstrate that the democratic state has maintained the symbiotic relationship between trusts and the state and that this enables the state to manage contestations over property.

Keywords

Environmental and Geographical Science

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