The research explored the causal relationship between the communal land tenure and the stagnant agricultural productivity in rural villages. It is assumed that there is covariance between the communal land tenure and the stagnant agricultural productivity. The communal land tenure deprived the villagers of the land ownership rights to mortgage their landholdings to secure agricultural credit from financial institutions, or to advance them as own contributions to obtain Government-provided grants under the ILRAD. Under such circumstances, the villagers could not raise the level of agricultural productivity. The Permit to Occupy (PTO) certificates, issued to the landholders, provided for usufruct rights only i.e. right to occupy and use an allotment. The related research was conducted at Nonkcampa village. The metatheory, “Positivism” and the quantitative paradigm were applied to collate and analyse the data. The research findings confirmed the correlation between the land tenure and the agricultural productivity, as the respondents claimed not to have had any access to agricultural inputs. Hence, the agricultural productivity on the arable land had stagnated.

This study investigated the planning, implementation and monitoring of sustainability principles in Buffalo City Municipality (BCM), in the Eastern Cape Province. It also analysed how reporting on sustainability principles was done at this municipality. The research was conducted as a qualitative case study that used analyses of documents, questionnaires and interviews to gather data. All respondents were involved with BCM, some as municipal officials in key positions in the different directorates and others as councillors. The study was contextualised within the area of sustainable development at local government level. The focus was on how the mandate of sustainable local development at local government level was met in BCM. The focus was on the planning, implementation and monitoring of stipulations of Local Agenda 21 and sustainability principles. The study focused on the provision of basic services; inter-generational equity; integration of economic, social and environmental aspects; community involvement; institutional capacity building; partnerships, and global links. The study established that Buffalo City Municipality incorporated sustainability in its vision. There was a lack of common understanding of the meaning of sustainability. Sustainability principles featured prominently at the integrated development planning phase but were less explicitly mentioned in the implementation, monitoring and reporting phases. Sustainability principles were subsumed in the developmental goals of the municipality. The study also highlighted the need for a strategy to have an institution-wide implementation of sustainability principles which would incorporate raising awareness about sustainability and its value.