TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED LAND ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM

This report, produced by a partnership between the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), and the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI), proposes a framework for an 'integrated land administration' system in South Africa. It argues that current land governance is fragmented, dualistic, and hindered by a legacy of racial segregation, which undermines land reform and social cohesion. The document defines land administration as the operational component of land governance and outlines the Integrated Land Administration Project (ILAP) to address these systemic failures through stakeholder engagement and institutional reform.

• Land administration is defined as the operational part of land governance, encompassing the process of "determining, recording and disseminating information about ownership, value and use of land and its associated resources." It serves as a coordinating mechanism for various sectors to ensure spatial, social, and environmental cohesion, and it includes functions such as the determination of land rights, surveying, and the provision of information for land markets.
• The effectiveness of land administration in South Africa is severely limited by a "legacy challenge" of racial segregation and historical dispossession. This has resulted in a fragmented system where state institutions maintain a binary distinction between "formal and informal" domains, often treating traditional authorities and other non-formal systems as "low grade" add-ons rather than integrated components.
• A significant barrier to asserting land rights is the requirement for formal survey to be registerable in the cadastral system. Because many statutory rights are associated with unsurveyed land, they remain "illegible" to formal administration, meaning laws like the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act (LTA) 3 of 1996 and the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) 62 of 1997 often only serve to defend rights in court rather than positively assert them.
• The Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act (IPILRA) 31 of 1996 is frequently misinterpreted by the state as applying only to "communal" or "titled" land, despite its application to any beneficially occupied urban or rural land. The report notes that IPILRA has never been made permanent and lacks official regulations, leading it to be ignored by investors and the state.
• The proposed land administration reform aims to integrate dualistic systems (customary/private, informal/formal) and restructure land information systems to be "integrated and interoperable." Key goals include reducing the burden on the judiciary by adjudicating rights through administrative means and introducing methods to record rights that are currently unsurveyed or not readily surveyable.
• The Integrated Land Administration Project (ILAP) is implementing three specific Consultative Engagements (CEs): CE 1 focuses on titling documentation in Khayelitsha; CE 2 explores a South African Geomatics Institute (SAGI) proposal to record off-register rights via certificates in the Surveyor General’s Office; and CE 3 examines land-use planning and information systems regarding the informal economy.

APA

Public Affairs Research Institute (n.d.). TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED LAND ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Land-admin31-08-21.pdf

Chicago

Public Affairs Research Institute. TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED LAND ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM. n.d. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Land-admin31-08-21.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Public Affairs Research Institute |title=TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED LAND ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM |url=https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Land-admin31-08-21.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{publicaffairsresearchinstitutendtowards, author = {{Public Affairs Research Institute}}, title = {{TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED LAND ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM}}, institution = {Public Affairs Research Institute}, url = {https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Land-admin31-08-21.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }