Actors, procedures, and institutions behind de facto land administration the case of Kya Sands informal settlement

Abstract

This study is premised on the idea that the formal land administration system in South Africa is failing to acknowledge the plurality of land tenure systems and the wide range of practices that have evolved under non-formal tenure arrangements, leading to many holdings in land being left out of formal land administration processes. For decades formal land administration in South Africa has been reserved for those who hold what are referred to as real rights to immovable property; where immovable property includes land and everything that is permanently attached to it, which are registrable only in terms of the Deeds Registries Act 47 of 1937. This has produced ideas that have informed property rights and land law, that the formal land administration system is there to serve registered right holders only. The result of this has been that government does not provide adequate administrative infrastructure, planning and information systems support to off-register tenures as it does to statutory forms of tenure which are elevated to the apex of the land and property hierarchy. Because of these shortcomings, actors in the informal sector have established a body of practices that have evolved to undermine, accommodate, complement and reinforce formal systems of land administration but these often go unrecognised and undocumented. With the above shortcomings of land administration in mind, this study brings to the fore the established land administration practices of the community of Kya Sands informal settlement to elaborate on what grassroots land administration under an informal system of tenure looks like. The study is informed by studies and literature that have proven over the years that informal land delivery systems play an important role in urban residential supply in South African cities and so should be recognised and accommodated. Their strengths must be recognized, and their shortcomings be identified and resolved in ways which are not harmful to what communities already have established on the ground. The study uses the four functions of land administration i.e., land tenure, land value, land use and land development as a framework to document these practices and their associated institutional arrangements.