Women’s Link Worldwide on Jun 18, 2013 gave a Bronze Gender Justice Uncovered Award to the High Court of Botswana for its decision in the case Mmusi v Ramantele in recognition of its significant contribution to promoting gender equality. However, the High Court’s decision was appealed, so the battle for women’s customary inheritance rights in Botswana has not yet been won.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.customcontested.co.za/botswana-womens-inheritance-case-gets-gender-justice-award-but-legal-battle-unresolved/
Jun 13 2013
Voices that matter: Law-making and the Bantustans, 100 years on
In the same chamber that the 1913 Natives Land Act was passed, Parliament marked its centenary with a workshop on “Redressing the legacy of the 1913 Land Act” on June 7-8. Present were parliamentarians, traditional leaders, civil society and rural delegates, all of who were invited to contribute their views on land reform. The make-up of the room could not have looked more different than it did 100 years ago. And yet, even with the gains and advancements that have come with democracy, echoes of apartheid’s disenfranchisement could still be felt.
Disenfranchisement in South Africa was perpetrated using more than Casspirs and teargas. A more subtle form of violence did the work: the violence of exclusion. The process of categorisation into “tribes”; the related assignment to the artificial boundaries of “homelands”; the instalment of chiefs; and the imposition of official “customary law” – all these were achieved through the suppression of contrary and diverse voices.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.customcontested.co.za/voices-that-matter-law-making-and-the-bantustans-100-years-on-2/
Jun 11 2013
“New” land tenure model brings back unconstitutional CLaRA
The government is proposing a communal land tenure model that is a crude version of the model contained in the Communal Land Rights Act (CLaRA) of 2004, struck down by the Constitutional Court in 2010.
This emerged at a workshop on “Redressing the legacy of the 1913 Land Act”, hosted by parliamentary portfolio committees at Parliament, Cape Town, on June 7-8. As part of a presentation titled “Communal land tenure reform – proposed policies”, Director General of Rural Development and Land Reform Mduduzi Shabane presented a diagram on a “communal land tenure model”.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.customcontested.co.za/new-land-tenure-model-brings-back-unconstitutional-clara/
Jun 04 2013
New Restitution Bill could open floodgates for chiefs’ land claims
The Western Cape leg of the public consultation about the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill started in Cape Town on June 4th. This is only 10 days after the bill was introduced. People are scrambling to make sense of the implications of the bill, and the reasons for its sudden introduction. At face value, the bill seems a generous proposal. It will re-open the window for land claims, allowing people dispossessed of their land to put in claims until 2018. Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.customcontested.co.za/new-restitution-bill-could-open-floodgates-for-chiefs-land-claims/
May 27 2013
Apartheid distortions of customary law rob women of land rights – and livelihoods
Mobilisation against the Traditional Courts Bill brought together women living in often remote rural areas around the country. In sharing their experiences with one another in meetings and workshops, what repeatedly emerged was how precarious their rights to land are. Here we tell the stories of Dudu Xaba and Cazile Hadebe, two women whose land tenure insecurity threatens their very existence. Their stories, two among many, show what is at stake when Parliament fails to meet its constitutional mandate to redress the land crisis created by the Bantustan system, and at the same time passes laws that bolster chiefly power.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.customcontested.co.za/apartheid-distortions-of-customary-law-rob-women-of-land-rights-and-livelihoods/
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