Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Post-apartheid administrations in South Africa are currently faced with readdressing the legacy of multifaceted poverty and social inequalities created by the apartheid politics. Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act (No. 22 of 1994) was passed to offer a solution to people who had lost their land as a result of racially discriminatory practices such as forced removals. Between 2014 and 2016 conflicting matters emerged regarding the Land Restitution Amendment Act (No. 15 of 2014) in terms of prioritisation of finalisation and processing of land claims. On the contrary, unlimited challenges still affect settlements of land claims in South Africa, with the traditional leaders continuing with corrupt activities on this subject. This paper revisits the existing legislative frameworks and to enhance transparency on land claims processes as administered by traditional leaders through application of ‘Criminological and Legal theories’ (Differential Association Theory, Legal Justice Theory and Routine Activities Theory). Through the use of non-empirical research design - systematic review. This research found and recommends that outstanding backlogs of land claims are enormous and constraints in the government expenditure, persistence of landlessness and rural communities poverty and ambiguity of the land-reform policies were also observed by the researchers and it could not be established whether the selected Acts and criminological and legal theories play a significant role in determining rightful allocations of land effectively in South African rural communities, with the traditional leaders presently acting as colonial agents of land restitution process. This should be addressed urgently.