The Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation of Namibia is responsible for all land issues. The resettlement of landless farmers, of the previous disadvantaged groups, is one of the issues. The Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act (Act 6 of 1995) applies to the commercial land parts of the country. Under this act the government of Namibia has the first option on the purchase of commercial farms when these are offered for sale. These purchased farms will then be used to resettle the landless farmers from the communal areas. These applicants may obtain a long-term lease over the purchased commercial farms. Long-term leases are legally required to be registered in the Deeds Office. A cadastral lease diagram is required for registration. The government, through the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, has bought approximately 130 farms for resettlement purposes. On June 2003 approximately 13 of these resettlement farms were surveyed and cadastral lease diagrams prepared for registration in the Deeds Office. The author argues that many factors have affected the slow progress of the resettlement in Namibia including the time required for the preparation of the cadastral lease diagram. The current field survey techniques, Total Stations or/and GPS, are very reliable, but are slow. The use of digital orthophotos has been shown to shorten the time to prepare the cadastral lease diagrams. The Author further argues that because digital orthophotos are available at the Surveyor-General's Office means, there are no cost implications. The cost of the cadastral lease diagrams by using digital orthophotos is only a third of the cost of using the current field survey techniques. Replacing current survey techniques with digital orthophotos or including the use of digital orthophotos, as a surveying technique would require the revision of the Land Survey Act (Act 33 of 1993) and the Survey Regulations, under section 5 of the said Land Survey Act - Government Notice No. 58 of 2002. / Thesis (M.Env.Dev.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

This research focuses on KwaZulu-Natal case studies of land reform projects that serve as contributors to local economic development (LED). Key stakeholders and role players on LED matters within the KwaZulu-Natal province serve as respondents. The study seeks to answer critical questions regarding the success and viability of land reform projects. “Rural development is one of the the signature projects that swept the African National Congress (ANC) to power. It is supposed to distinguish the new administration from all that has gone before by having a dedicated ministry specifically to look after the forgotten countryside”, (Mabanga 2010, p. 36). For communities operating registered companies, some of the major challenges, amongst others, include a lack of farm management skills, business skills, financial skills and governance skills (including corporate governance). Leadership challenges are experienced between community members that ultimately may lead to the collapse of projects. There are also concerns regarding state support for post settlement. This affects the operation and capitalization of the projects and is required to kick-start projects after land transfers. Other challenges include skills shortage amongst managers and post settlement support for specific industries to ease transfer of skills to beneficiaries. The majority of the post-settlement support from the National Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has no, or limited, skills in specific industries like forestry, sugarcane, crop farming and animal farming. Consequently there is a shortage of proper advice to the community managers from inception and the incumbent official then still has to learn the industry operating systems. Ultimately all the parties rely heavily on consultants to provide assistance to newly emerging farmers or business entrepreneurs within the communities. The transfer of developmental grants is a major headache currently facing the majority of land beneficiaries. The department of rural development still owes communities post-settlement grants or development grants back-dated to the 2008/09 financial period. The objective of this study was to arrive at some guidelines and recommendations that will contribute to the success of land reform projects and thereby contribute to LED within KwaZulu-Natal province. / Thesis (M.Com)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

This study aims at exploring the policy advocacy role of civil society organizations in land reforms policy using the Association for Rural Advancement in KwaZulu-Natal as a case study, and focusing specifically on the aspect of land redistribution programme. The specific objectives of the study are to identify the advocacy strategies used, to assess their strengths and weaknesses, to examine the extent to which land redistribution programme is being influenced by the advocacy action of AFRA, to identify the limitations in policy advocacy for land redistribution, and to assess the effectiveness of AFRA‘s policy advocacy work in the lens of the factors for effective policy advocacy delineated by Bratton (1994: 48-55). Thus, this study provides an understanding of the magnitude and challenges of policy advocacy functions of CSOs in such a sensitive issue as the land ownership in South Africa. This study has been informed by qualitative research methodology in both data gathering and analysis. Data were collected using a triangulation of data collection techniques, and analyzed using thematic analysis, which is a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It has emerged from this study that civil society organisations provide avenues for voices and issues that may not have been prioritised by policy makers to be placed on the public agenda. A wide range of strategies to engage with the state are employed by civil society organisations, and those strategies are strategically employed in a complementary manner so that they could be more effective depending on the issue at hand and the context within which advocacy is being made. Furthermore, it comes out the study that there are many challenges faced by the CSOs involved in land issues, among others are the antagonistic climate portraying the relationships with the state, the issue of funding, the low literacy level of rural landless people, etc. For more impact to be perceived in policy influence, the study suggests that CSOs in the land sector and AFRA in particular should establish an effective networking framework in order to pool resources, and share expertise and experience; they should increase their clients‘ involvement in policy process by making opening their membership to rural people living in the communities they work with; examine the possibility to gain domestic financial base. For government agencies, more particularly the Department of Land Affairs, it is suggested to reassess their relationships with the civil society so that the two sectors work collaboratively for the best of the poor people they all have to serve. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

This thesis is a work of theory; it is also historical. It attempts to provide a critique of the categories through which the phenomena of agricultural development and land reform are habitually grasped. It is divided into three parts. In the first part three main theoretical orientations to the study of capitalist agrarian development are discussed, both abstractly and with reference to their accounts of Latin American rural society in the 1960's. It is argued that all three are unable to explain adequately the process of social and agrarian change. This inability is traced to the fact that all three reduce social totalities to two or more distinct sub-entities or sub-totalities. The author calls this general position the social problematic of dualism. Its inability. to account for social change is, he argues, traceable to the fact that the existence of the sub-entities into which social totalities are divided, is posited as theoretically prior to the relations which connect them. These points are pursued in the second and third parts of the thesis. In the second part an alternative to dualism' with particular reference to its variants of the separation of a realm of industry from a realm of agriculture, and of the separation of a realm of the economic from a realm of the social, is provided through a detailed theorisation of capitalist social relations. It is argued that the existence of distinct realms of agriculture, industry, economy and society is a real effect of the essential relations of capitalist society, and that these divisions must be transcended through an elucidation of the character of such relations. This is done by distinguishing three forms of capitalist development which are produced by these essential relations. Further examples of a dualist analysis in contemporary theorisations of petty commodity production, the world economy and the articulation of modes of production are discussed. In the third part the author returns to an examination of the Latin American context through a discussion of the case of Chile. The theoretical insights developed in the earlier parts are systematically applied to various aspects of Chilean history from the conquest of Latin America to the 1960's, and to the processes of land reform which covered the decade 1962-1973. It is suggested that the agrarian social transformations which this country experienced are only explicable in terms of a position which systematically transcends all dualist assumptions.

During the last two decades two major government policies aimed at bringing structural changes in the system of land tenure in Iran have been implemented. The first was the Land Reform of 1962-66, which transferred the ownership of the land from the large landlords to the peasant and tribal producers. But during the late-sixties and the seventies a second major structural change in the system of land tenure was proposed by the government, this time aimed at the destruction of the already existing peasant, tribal and capitalist producers and the creation of very large-scale agricultural corporations. As the main objective of this policy was to bring about substantial increases in agricultural production and productivities, it is the purpose of this dissertation to examine whether these very large-scale corporations are more productive systems than the already existing autonomous producers. As the proponents of the very large-scale farms argue in terms of gains from economies of scale in very large units and of the superiority of the trained and skilled corporate managers to the family managed peasant farmers, in this dissertation an attempt has been made to examine the effect on productivity of (a) farm size and (b) management system. The following procedure has been adopted to examine the subject. [continued in text ...]

In 1982 the governments of Honduras and the United States signed a contract that established the Proyecto de Titulación de Tierras, or land titling project. This project was initiated primarily to provide titles to small coffee farmers on State-owned land. Among the expected consequences of the project were increased access to resources, especially credit, for small farmers and increased on-farm investment due to this access to credit and increased security. It was hoped that a greater use of credit and investment would increase farm production and therefore the income and well-being of the farmers involved. In this dissertation, the land titling project is placed within the context of the history of agrarian reform in Honduras. The titling project called for a baseline study and final evaluation. These were carried out in 1983 and 1988, respectively. The author was able to obtain these data and re-interview the same farmers in 1993. These farmers are from two regions, one of which was titled and another which was not. The interviews gathered data on production, credit, use of inputs, investments, income and general socio-economic indicators. These data are used to determine the extent to which the goals of the tiding project have been met. A stochastic frontier production function is used to estimate farm-level technical efficiency. Following this, these technical efficiency scores are regressed on various factors such as education, credit and technical assistance to estimate their possible effects on technical efficiency. Finally, simultaneous equations are used to estimate the relationships among these variables. In general, ten years after the start of the project, the original goals have not been achieved. This analysis found that titling does not affect technical efficiency, access to credit, or the use of inputs. Education and technical assistance are the two factors that are consistently the most significant in meeting the project's stated goals. This analysis suggests that basic education and technical assistance, rather than expensive land titling projects, should be promoted to enhance access to credit, the use of inputs and increased technical efficiency.

No description available.

Population growth and internal migration in parts of the developing world have led to increased conflict over land rights carried out in the context of competing tenure paradigms. In Kenya, violent conflict between 'indigenous' and 'outsider' communities occurring in the midst of a program of democratic liberalization and political change has been variously explained as primarily driven by material or political interests. This thesis examines land rights conflict in the wake of a violent clash at Enoosupukia in 1993, which led to the displacement of up to 30,000 people, and analyzes how changing tenure paradigms, shifting socio-spatial boundaries, ethno-political polarization, and pressure on land resources all contribute to the perpetuation of conflict and tenure uncertainty. I argue that, despite challenging civil precepts of liberal governance, assertion of exclusive ethnic rights to traditional territories may nevertheless lead to political justice and alleviate the marginalization of indigenous and minority groups.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Alnarp : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2005. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2005.