Home | About | Contact | Glossary | Links

Leap’s Conceptual framework

Land rights administration processes

You can't see tenure. What you can see and what people can easily talk about is the activities involving land. We call these land rights administration processes and suggest that the key ones are:

Application: A formal request to get or to give land, to change land use, or to get help in resolving a land dispute.

Recording: Creating evidence about the extent of a right (demarcation), the owner of the right (registration in formal system or membership list), and the nature of a right (e.g. ownership, lease, use, servitude or access) as the basis for adjudication.

Adjudication: Resolving doubts about the rights held, which can involve dispute resolution.

Transfer: The moment when rights or the physical occupation of land move from one land holder to another.

Land use regulation: The rules /practices about how members/individuals can use different portions of land and the mechanisms for enforcing this.

Distribution of financial benefits derived from ownership and rights to the property.

Note: The common sense meaning of the terms 'transfer' and 'registration' are used rather than their technical legal definitions, which in South Africa refer specifically to ownership and registration in the Deeds Office.

These key processes occur in both formal and informal systems. By applying the indicators to these processes, one can see whether tenure security is increasing or decreasing.