South Africa: Strengthening the Developmental Capacity of the Blouberg Municipality and its Communities - ZAF010
Land grabbing by the apartheid state, congested living in communal areas and a low (productive) asset base in general were the reasons for the ANC to make land restitution and land redistribution one of their strategies in 1994, the year of government change in South Africa. A high number of land claims (50% of the land in Blouberg is under claims) were filed. However, the state was slow to respond and long administrative processes and a market-led approach to land reform have resulted in slow decision making on the land claims.
The market-led approach aims at ensuring the economically reasonable use of the land, which is an important base for South Africa’s economic prosperity. Often, the type of management in resettled land is the shared land ownership and community management of land. The land is mostly given back to land claiming communities (and not to individuals) without sufficient technical assistance and this leads to under-performance of the resettled land.
The project is targeted to a) Blouberg Local Municipality, b) the land claiming communities and c) the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs):
- Local municipalities are the main service delivery points for the government. Enhanced skills’ capacity of Blouberg Municipality will facilitate efficient and effective service delivery and this will eventually impact on the quality of lives of the Blouberg communities. Project activities will target elected officials and functionaries of the municipality, particularly the section of the municipality that is mandated with managing the implementation of the IDP. The ultimate aim is that when the project has ended, the municipality will continue and expand on project activities, and lessons learnt and disseminated to different stakeholders within the Capricorn District Municipality and the Limpopo Provincial Government.
- The second groups are land claimants themselves. The focus is on ensuring that land claimants develop strategies and put in place systems that will ensure that land acquired does not go to waist. This will involve developing strategies focusing on productive activities and usage of the land in sustainable ways. Systems that will be put in place are governance systems that reduce conflict, and that will facilitate participation of all affected communities, particularly the marginalised members of the local communities, especially women and youth within the Blouberg Municipality.
- The third targeted group is Civil Society Organisations. Communities are often organised by CSOs, and CSOs are often facilitators of community’s access to government services. Locally based CSOs often have access to the most vulnerable members of the community. To facilitate community participation, CSO will also be used as a point of entry. These CSOs often have limited skills and lack resources to expand their activities. CARE through its partnership model will strengthen the institutional capacity of local CSOs and provide resources for programme roll out.
The project will be rolled out in three phases (see 3.2 “Project Implementer’s Approach”). These phases are:
- The inception phase (3 months) that will clarify interventions details and will facilitate proper targeting for the project. In this phase a project start up workshop will be facilitated in which all key project implementing partners will participate. ADA input is seen as critical in this process. Secondly a gap and needs analyses process will be implemented. The analysis will be done through instituting a baseline assessment process. The baseline assessment will target different organs of the municipality, traditional areas where the land resettlement has been finalised, land claimants (groups that have instituted land claims), various stakeholders within the community (for example, CSO, private sector, traditional leaders, landless communities etc), and the Capricorn District Municipality. Selection of priority areas for assessment will be based on the priority areas of the municipality for poverty reduction and land redistribution. The assessment will also evaluate selected relevant previous interventions with a view of strengthening proper targeting and ensuring that the earlier mistakes are avoided in the roll out of this project.
- The core project implementation phase will focus on capacity building of the municipality and of the land claimant communities (including landless communities). This will be done in a combination of training of skills, presentation and adoption of tools, exchange of experience and foremost by a learning-by-doing approach and on-the-job training. The end result will be to impact on local development plans, strategies and budgets, selected during the inception phase (such as Local Economic Development plan or providing inputs for the IDP). Due to these approaches, the anticipation is that there will be a strong participation of local communities in planning processes, integration of land issues in Blouberg development strategies, productive and sustainable usage of the land, and contribution to the poverty strategies that will impact the local community (see 3.2 “Project Implementer’s Approach”).
- The third phase is designed as a test phase, where pilot activities identified in phase 2 are implemented with the support from other project participants such as government and donor programmes or from the municipal budget and where the target groups can test their newly acquired skills and tools. This process is accompanied and followed-up by the project implementer, CARE South Africa, and its experts. In this phase, an evaluation will be done to establish the impact of the project. Dissemination of the project results and lessons learnt will be done to promote replication of the model and to achieve a long term impact of the project activities. It is expected that the model can be used in other municipalities where there are land reform processes.
Duration
01.12.2006 - 30.06.2009
Donors
Austrian Development Agency (ADA)/Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC), the operational arm of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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