'Traditional Authorities' and Authority over Land in South Africa

Found at: https://hdl.handle.net/10535/1374
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Type:	Conference Paper
Author:	Fay, Derick
Conference:	Governing Shared Resources: Connecting Local Experience to Global Challenges, the Twelfth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Commons
Location:	Cheltenham, England
Conf. Date:	July 14-18, 2008
Date:	2008
URI:	https://hdl.handle.net/10535/1374
Sector:	Land Tenure & Use
Region:	Africa
Subject(s):	authority indigenous institutions land tenure and use
Abstract:	"'Authority' is a term that has two primary meanings, one referring to legitimate power or right, the second referring to a social actor who holds such power. In investigating the relationship between authority and property, it is necessary to pay attention to the potential for conflation of or slippage between these two meanings. Those institutions that are labeled as 'authorities' in the second sense may not be those that hold authority in the first sense. Conversely, actors who claim authority over a piece of property, may not be aspiring to be authorities: as a result, they may fall outside the vision of states, NGOs, and other actors who seek to recognize local authority, but instead recognize 'authorities.' These points are illustrated with ethnographic examples from the Eastern Cape of South Africa and a discussion of current South African tenure reform policy."

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