Transforming labour tenants: A critique of the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act of 1996
Date
1996-09-30
Authors
Williams, Gavin
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Abstract
In 1996, Parliament approved the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act of 1996
despite vocal opposition to some of its key provisions from the Natal and South
African white agricultural unions (1). The objectives of the Act are twofold:
To provide for security of tenure of labour tenants and those persons
occupying or using land as a result of their association with labour tenants;
and
to provide for the acquisition of land and rights in land by labour tenants;...
It sought to protect the rights of labour tenants to existing rural livelihoods and to
create new ways for them to acquire land for smallholder farming.
Labour tenancy contracts embody a range of obligations and expectations,
implicit as well as explicit, on the part of the owner of the land, their tenants and
the members of the tenants' families on whom the burden of providing labour has
often fallen. Contracts vary in their terms from farm to farm, and from district to
district, and have changed significantly over time. Labour tenancy arrangements
have different meanings for the parties involved. What for the farmer is a way to
secure a supply of labour is for the tenant a means of acquiring land and keeping
cattle.
Attempts to transform labour tenants into wage workers, or to restrict their access
to grazing or the number of cattle they may keep, have been a repeated source of
bitter contention. The rights of landowners to use their property as they choose
and to decide who may have access to it, and on what terms, conflict with the
claims of workers, tenants, and their families to a place to live and to land to grow
crops and graze animals.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 30 September 1996
Keywords
Land reform. Law and legislation. South Africa.