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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | More than a football field!: access to land among South African rural women |
Author: | Andrew, Nancy |
Year: | 1998 |
Periodical: | L'Afrique politique |
Pages: | 87-106 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | land reform land law women |
Abstract: | Based in part on interviews conducted in rural areas in South Africa in 1996-1997, this article examines the legal and structural obstacles inherited from colonial and apartheid society to women accessing and holding land. The hunger for land is strong because women are the primary subsistence food producers in the South African countryside and land is central to social reproduction while representing access to property and social status that they have been excluded from both by the white minority and traditional rules. Finally the article looks at the dilemma of the post-1994 government land reform programme in trying to address the land needs of African women today. The limitations of the land reform programme and its inherently contradictory policies based on a refusal-cum-inability to challenge the existing property system, which excludes the black majority, present serious structural barriers to addressing land demand. The most significant measures which the land reform programme proposes particularly for women include removing legal barriers which prevent women from participating in land reform. But given the major structural constraints its manoeuvring room is limited. Notes, ref., sum. in English and French (p. 10). |