Proposals to Policymakers to Transform Land Administration and Secure Tenure for Unregistered Land Rights in South Africa

This policy brief argues that South Africa requires a fundamental transformation of its land administration system to secure tenure for unregistered (off-register) land rights. The author contends that existing empirical research on urban and rural tenure—including the 'family house' custom and household-level customary rights—provides the necessary evidence-based data to move away from opinion-based policymaking and create a system capable of recording and administering diverse forms of tenure.

• South African policymaking has been hindered by a lack of evidence-based decision-making, characterized by policy incoherence, insufficient stakeholder engagement, and a tendency to separate impact assessments from the actual policymaking process.
• In urban areas, informal settlements and occupied buildings often utilize locally managed, unrecognised systems to regulate land access and trading. These systems are coherent, participative, and often maintain lists of occupiers that can serve as secure land records when co-produced with municipalities or used in litigation.
• The 'family house' in South African metropolitan areas is a social form of property where customary norms often conflict with formal title deeds. Disputes frequently arise when a registered owner sells property that family members consider to be held in custodianship for the collective family, a conflict that current common-law remedies and bureaucratic title endorsements fail to resolve.
• In rural former homelands, evidence suggests that land rights are strongest at the household or family level rather than being granted by a chief. Contrary to government tendencies to centralize administration at the traditional council level, local land administration is typically decentralized, involving neighbors, headmen, and committees.
• The Permission to Occupy (PTO) system, once widespread in former homelands, was largely discontinued after the 1990s. Despite a 2021 KwaZulu-Natal High Court order directing the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development to reinstate administrative capacity for PTO regulations on Ingonyama Trust land, no steps had been taken to do so by the end of 2024.
• Hybrid forms of tenure have emerged where customary concepts of family property persist even after the awarding of freehold titles, particularly among African families who acquired title in the nineteenth century.

APA

Wicomb, W. (2025). Proposals to Policymakers to Transform Land Administration and Secure Tenure for Unregistered Land Rights in South Africa. Public Affairs Research Institute. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250127_Land_LRCPolicyBrief3_Wicomb-1.pdf

Chicago

Wicomb, Wilmien. Proposals to Policymakers to Transform Land Administration and Secure Tenure for Unregistered Land Rights in South Africa. Public Affairs Research Institute, 2025. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250127_Land_LRCPolicyBrief3_Wicomb-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Wicomb |first1=Wilmien |title=Proposals to Policymakers to Transform Land Administration and Secure Tenure for Unregistered Land Rights in South Africa |publisher=Public Affairs Research Institute |date=January 2025 |url=https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250127_Land_LRCPolicyBrief3_Wicomb-1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{wicomb2025proposals, author = {Wicomb, Wilmien}, title = {{Proposals to Policymakers to Transform Land Administration and Secure Tenure for Unregistered Land Rights in South Africa}}, institution = {Public Affairs Research Institute}, year = {2025}, month = jan, url = {https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250127_Land_LRCPolicyBrief3_Wicomb-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }