The Past in the Present: Struggles Over Land and Community in Relation to the Dukuduku Claim for Land Restitution, South Africa

Land restitution has become an important means to rectify South Africa’s skewed property relations after decades of racially discriminatory laws and practices. The Dukuduku forest in KwaZulu-Natal is subject to one such claim to land restitution, which remains unsettled more than a decade after it was lodged. While being planned for incorporation into the adjacent wetland park and World Heritage Site, the forest has over the last decades become home to an increasing number of predominantly subsistence farmers, some of whom form part of the group of land claimants. This study of the Dukuduku forest attempts to explore the interplay of community and authority in a setting where claims for historical redress materialises both in processes of land restitution and in the acquisition of land through ‘illegal squatting’. Land restitution at Dukuduku involves the restoration of lost rights to land and resources and the formalisation of these rights. Overlapping and differently founded claims, however, drawing differently on the past and the present, form a complexity that defies such straightforward processes. The struggle over the Dukuduku forest is one over different interpretations of what constitutes authority and community. The land claim process feeds into existing struggles and creates new ones, and in this way, the larger cause of the land claimants – to obtain recognition of property claims and land belonging – is infused by conflicts external and internal to the community of claimants.