The role of land tenure and governance in reproducing and transforming spatial inequality

This review critically examines the evolution of laws, policies and practices across colonial, apartheid and contemporary eras to identify the associated processes and patterns of uneven development and their contribution to the structural poverty and systemic inequality and the ways in which these are manifested in space and place. The primary focus is on the effectiveness of policies and laws shaping land tenure and governance in the democratic era and the extent to which they have been able to engage with these spatially differentiated legacies in order to promote spatial justice. The review explores the potential of policy and law to contribute to spatial justice and makes recommendations for legislative, tenure and land governance review. The review locates structural poverty and systemic social inequality within the legacies of the profoundly uneven spatial development at the heart of South African rural and urban geographies.