It brought together academics, legal practitioners, community leaders, civil society organisations, students, traditional knowledge holders, and communities directly affected by dispossession to interrogate the extent to which the constitutional promise of transformation has translated into substantive justice in relation to land. The Dialogue confronted a fundamental constitutional contradiction: a constitutional order founded upon dignity, equality and freedom cannot be regarded as fully realised while the material, spatial and institutional consequences of historical land dispossession continue to structure the lives and opportunities of those who were dispossessed.

The discussions considered the persistence of restitution delays, tenure insecurity, spatial inequality and the exclusion of women from meaningful participation in land governance. These realities prompted a more searching constitutional inquiry into the distance between the normative promise of transformation and its material realisation. The SAHRC considers sustained public engagements indispensable to its operations.

The Report is accordingly intended not as the conclusion of the conversation, but as a record and point of departure for further engagement among government, Parliament, Chapter Nine institutions, civil society, academia, traditional leaders and communities. The SAHRC calls upon government officials, stakeholders and members of the public to engage with the Report and to continue interrogating the constitutional, institutional and material conditions necessary for land justice and meaningful spatial transformation in South Africa.

There is a greater need for a political will, to not only to talk about the land reform, but to urgently ensure its implementation. In previous reports, the Commission has raised concern over failure to adequately implement land reform and how this severely impact human rights of the previously disadvantaged groups. 

The Report of the Constitutional Dialogue on Land, Human Rights and Spatial Justice link.

ENDS

ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION