Torrens Imperatives for SADC Fast-track Land Reform Programmes

Abstract

The most successful economies are underpinned and characterised by very clear governance of acquisition, disposal, and transferability of land or, as it is properly called in law – real property. This article examines the evolving post-apartheid land governance practices under the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) fast-track land reform programmes for their potential to enhance land’s utility in framing economic development in concerned states. It shows a worrying potential diminution of land’s utility as real property as a direct consequence of insufficient consideration to ensure that agricultural land contributes optimally to the national treasury. The article recommends the integration into the SADC’s fast-track land reform programmes of the Torrens system for protecting land’s utility as the foundation and cornerstone of powerful and successful economies. The benefits for SADC states would be endless. They include the nurturing of an in-built resilience of SADC economies to withstand the ruthless vagaries of World Trade Organization- (WTO) sponsored trade liberalisation practices in the increasingly deeply integrated world economy. Failure to adopt and implement the Torrens principles on the recognition and protection of land titles would be suicidal for the agrarian economies of the SADC because it would either lower significantly or, in some cases, wipe out altogether land’s potential to make a meaningful and consistent contribution to the national treasury. Consequently, land’s potential to contribute optimally to the nurturing and development of national economies of affected SADC states would be severely curtailed and, in some cases, hindered from generation to generation.