After restitution: Community, litigation and governance in South African land reform

This article considers the fracturing of “community” and the turn to litigation in the wake of nominally settled land restitution claims in South Africa. We describe emergent incongruence between groups of claimants, the projects of restitution, and the new legal entities that represent the claimants. As a result, discontented South African land claimants are challenging the new legal entities created in the restitution process, rather than the state and private sector actors upon which development-oriented Settlement Agreements depend. We focus on two of the earliest and largest land claims involving urban land and protected areas, District Six and Dwesa-Cwebe, but our argument extends beyond these cases. We then consider the implications of increased claimant litigation for the governance of relations between claimants and the state, and the management of dissent in the context of neo-liberalization. In concluding, we argue that struggles among claimants undermine the potential for more concerted action to address the shortcomings of restitution.