ISS Seminar, Cape Town BY INVITATION ONLY: Conduits for Illicit Self-enrichment? Debating the Politics of South Africa‚s Land Governing Structures

Date: 2010-03-31

Venue: Institute for Security Studies, Cape Town , 2nd Floor, The Armoury , Buchanan Square , 160 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock

RSVP: Andile Sokomani, email <[email protected]>

South Africa’s land reform experience in the last sixteen years of democracy indicates that the success of the country’s land reform programme is contingent upon a complex range of issues, encompassing such factors as the existence of an adequate budget to implement the programme’s goals, and building the technical capacity of land reform beneficiaries to ensure that restituted and redistributed land remains productive. What is also increasingly apparent is that as long as the financial resources devoted to addressing these issues are wasted through corruption, not much progress can be made.

A better understanding of how this leakage occurs is pivotal to the design of credible sustainable reform measures. Part of improving this understanding is examining and debating the extent to which the structures and institutions governing the land reform process in South Africa facilitate this wastage. This includes important institutions such as the Land Bank, the Deeds Registry, and property ownership regimes such as community trusts, community property associations (CPAs), as well as the practise of vesting ownership of restituted and redistributed land in tribal chiefs who hold it in trust on behalf of their tribes or ‘subjects’.

The roundtable will discuss and debate the preliminary findings of a draft research paper by the Institute for Security Studies on the role of these land governing structures in encouraging illicit self-enrichment. Both the preliminary research and the roundtable are made possible by generous funding from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO). See next page for the draft agenda.

AGENDA

9:00 – Introduction and welcome: Hennie van Vuuren – Office Director, ISS/Andile Sokomani, Senior Researcher, Corruption & Governance, ISS

9:15 – Presentation of ISS preliminary findings: Andile Sokomani

10:00 – Tea break

10:30 – Discussion and feedback on the preliminary findings: Lead discussant and all participants

12:50 – Closing Remarks: Andile Sokomani, ISS

13:00 – Lunch and Departure