Sammendrag
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.
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