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

In the first policy brief in this series, we outlined the problem of off-register rights in South Africa and the challenge of finding appropriate ways of bridging the gap between the recordal and administration of typically common law property rights on the one hand and customary and other informal land rights on the other. In the second policy brief, we discussed the concept of land administration and why a well-functioning and coherent land administration system is a necessary conduit for secure tenure. We also looked at the two most important international approaches to addressing the problem. In this policy brief, we consider existing and ongoing research into the problem in South Africa that, we argue, provides the empirical data and context-specific analysis that South African policy makers need to transform land administration and tenure in South Africa.