The fact that women are still considered minors and non-starters in the allocation of land in rural communities is a powerful saga of aspirations. Gender dominance can still be found in the villages, aided by a conceited, miscalculated and oppressive system: patriarchy.
This was brought to the fore by a report released on Thursday by the Commission for Gender Equality titled “Exploring Barriers to Women’s Access to Communal Land in Selected Provinces of South Africa”. It focused on the North West, Limpopo and Eastern Cape.
In the report it is asserted that the conversation on access to land in the South African context is often held solely in terms of race, overshadowing the gender land-disparity aspect. When it comes to land ownership and property rights women are still at the bottom of the food chain.
“That the insecurity of land tenure for women in rural areas can be attributed to discriminatory land distribution laws that were created in favour of traditional leaders and men, as well as for social practices and patriarchal norms that promote the exclusion of women,” read the report.
While it is important to note the significance of culture, social history and the respect for indigenous community norms, we must equally accept that life as we know it has evolved beyond the basis that informed our traditions and by extension “traditional laws”.
In 2024, with an ever-growing population and demand for land tenure, combined with increased single-parent headed households (mostly female led), one can already foresee how trying to fit the square peg of tradition into the round hole of access to land for all becomes problematic.
In a country where inequality is rife, women-headed households, unemployment rages and gender-based violence and femicide is a crisis, women’s property rights and the individualisation of access to land should be prioritised.
Studies done on gender-based violence often conclude that some women elect to stay in abusive relationships motivated by the fear of losing their livelihoods and the security of a home. If more women were able to access land, they might be able to establish a place of safety for themselves and their children and regain their independence.
What’s more, if their tenure is insecure, they may not have the privilege of access to credit from financial institutions as they lack a means of collateral — further compounding the lack of a promised “better life for all”.
A women in her 30s from Ncera, East London, said when she applied for a portion of land from the local traditional authorities, her father was required to represent her as her proxy for the land she required as she was an unmarried woman with no children. However, she did not trust her father and thus could not access the land. The participant said her brother was not struggling to access land in the same way that she did, even though he was unmarried.
Another respondent said in order to launch her farming project she needed land, but was required by the local traditional authority to register her livestock under her father’s name or a male next of kin’s name to qualify for land. Something that led to her father making decisions about her livestock without her knowledge or consent, severely impacting her fledgling start-up negatively.
“By default, the livestock belongs to the man of the house […] he once sold my goat without telling me and I had to call the police to fetch it from where he sold it as it was still in a breeding process,” she was quoted saying.
In order for women in rural areas to flourish and be in charge of their aspirations, the government needs to put its weight behind their interests beyond using them as a vehicle for votes.
Women are still treated like minors who have no agency or any sense of ambition. The neglect of these nuances at a national level perpetuate a profound culture of injustice, especially for black and illiterate women in rural areas. Because traditional leaders are custodians of rural land where patriarchal posture still prevails, strategies like the ANC’s 1992 Policy on the Restitution of Land Rights which emphasised non-discrimination especially on the basis of gender are rendered useless. Such practices — though not a blanket outlook — feminise poverty and compromise children alike.
Let’s entertain, for a moment, one of the tenets of patriarchy that purport that women belong in the kitchen. How can they discharge this short-sighted expectation when they are not given land to grow food and tend to the nourishment of their loved ones? What must they cook when they are statistically poorer and far from meaningful resources of survival and opportunity?
An encouraging example of what tenure security ideally looks like, is the social media content by Onezwa Mbola, who has cemented herself in the hearts of many through showcasing her life in the village of Willowvale, Eastern Cape. She happily cooks food grown and foraged from her garden, tends to her family and animals. Though an educated woman, she’s afforded an option to enjoy life in the rural areas without the impediment of land. She further demonstrates that the soil is a primary source of sustenance in the villages.
For women in rural areas to flourish and be in charge of their aspirations, the government needs to put its weight behind their interests beyond using them as a vehicle for votes. There needs to be a versatile approach to implementing and monitoring the non-discrimination vision of its own policies in relation to the matter.
The report recommends that the department of land reform and rural development must develop national, provincial and local level indicators with gender-disaggregated data to measure progress towards equity for women regarding their land rights. That these systems should provide opportunities to ensure that laws and policies promoting equality in land rights are enforced and that informal land rights agreements are formalised to enhance land tenure security.
This issue deserves a national attention and traditional leaders need to be engaged and guided on how we can reform traditional customs that work against the spirit of our constitution and our nation.
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