Towards an Integrated Land Administration System

Gaynor Paradza, Lead of the Land Governance programme at PARI, has collaborated with PLAAS and SALGA to produce this diagnostic document, which lays a foundation for creating cohesion in South African land administration. A PARI—PLAAS—SALGA PROJECT A functional land administration system is fundamental to land reform, economic growth and equitable change and pursues widely accepted national land policy goals, plans and strategies. In South Africa, however, these objectives are often discordant or contested. This framework outlines an initiative of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS); South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) that argues for a greater focus on ‘integrated land administration’ as a means to reconceptualise the institutional domain of land governance and help to overcome the fragmentation that undermines land administration. There is wide divergence about how to address this – a variance that reflects different interpretations of the problem, the scope of land administration, the priorities and the solutions. This lack of agreement across the board, from policy to implementation, is what this initiative aims to address.