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| Title: | Land Claims in Namaqualand: The Komaggas Reserve |
| Author: | Sharp, John |
| Year: | 1994 |
| Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
| Volume: | 21 |
| Issue: | 61 |
| Pages: | 403-414 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | land reform Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Law, Human Rights and Violence |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056249408704068 |
| Abstract: | The recent transition to democracy in South Africa has raised expectations about land distribution. This article examines one instance of a claim for the return of lost land. It looks at the land claims advanced by people in Komaggas, one of six communal reserves inhabited by coloured people in the Namaqualand district of the Northern Cape province. The author shows that people in Komaggas have a long-standing, and entirely reasonable, claim to land beyond the current boundary of their reserve. He illustrates how, and why, people in Komaggas have struggled, and struggle still, to present their claim in a form to which there can readily be a positive response. He concludes that to deny them any prospect of access to vast tracts of land that are currently owned by a multinational corporation and the State simply because the guidelines for the national programme of land redistribution have a cutoff date of 1913, and therefore do not make provision for aboriginal rights claims, would be unfair. Bibliogr., sum. |