What we do not want to happen…

A transformative process, such as the certification of undocumented customary land holdings, always has the potential to either be misused by some people to gain an unfair advantage, or to have some unintended impacts because of the way in which it is implemented.

The methodology is therefore based on an explicit recognition of a number of outcomes which must be avoided. The certification is not intended to lead to any of the following:

• individuals and/or families being deprived of access to land that they had been legitimately occupying or using before certification;
• codification of existing locally-accepted rules and/or unilateral changes to the locally-accepted rules for use/occupation of land that prejudice the more vulnerable individuals or families within villages;
• access to dispute resolution mechanisms, on the part of villagers, becoming more difficult (costs) or remote (distance);
• individuals being deprived of legitimate expectations in regard to inheritance of land rights, or rights to be consulted in respect to the disposal or use of family land holdings.

The guiding principles of certification

With these undesired outcomes in mind, the certification process is designed with a set of core principles to guide its implementation:

• That the systematic certification undertaken is carried out at no cost to the land holders/claimants;
• That adjudication of the claims process is conducted at the local level in first instance, and through the Village Land Committees (VLCs);
• That certification should be carried out in a transparent manner, with clearly defined opportunities to lodge objections to claims that are made;
• That any inhabitant of the village, of legal age, may make a claim, as may members of the community that may not be currently resident in the village;
• That dispute resolution should take place at the local level in the first instance, using the existing customary institutions but also involving the VLCs; and
• That there should be no discrimination in respect to gender, religion, health status, origin, etc.

The operating principles

To make these guiding principles make sense in a more practical way, the methodology adopts a series of operating principles.

Transparency

It is important that individuals participating in the process are able to make informed choices. To this end, information will be made available to people in a timely fashion and in appropriate ways.

There will be three types of information dissemination:

• Firstly, the dissemination of information, advice, and instructions to the targeted villages through the chiefs and the indunas;
• Secondly, through open public meetings and personal consultation at village level, conducted by the VLCs; and,
• Thirdly, written and audio visual materials, as well as theatrical and interactive events.

Dissemination of information will be based on the following:

• Objectivity: the information will include all the opportunities, rights, and responsibilities provided by the process to each occupant or user of land; and
• Effectiveness: the information will be disseminated in such a way that everyone has equal access to all information, fully understands it and what actions they must take.

Consistency and replicability

It is important for the certification to comprise a routine set of administrative and participatory procedures, involving an identical series of actions in all the villages. The purpose of this manual is to capture these routines.

The Chiefs of the four Chiefdoms have agreed that there will be a common format and content of Certificates amongst the chiefdoms, save for the inclusion of their respective Chiefdom stamps/logos.

Security

The certification will lead to the establishment of a single, chiefdom-level register containing the list of certified customary rights within the target villages. A digitised system will be installed in each of the Chiefdoms. This system will contain the records of the certificates, the index maps for the chiefdom and will protected for further use only by those people authorised by the Chief.

Village level Registers, in the form of a hard copy ledger, will also be established through the process and these will remain in the villages under the care of the VLCs. In the long term, as part of the on-going maintenance of the system for administering the issuance of new certificates, etc., there will be mechanisms for ensuring the harmonisation of the village registers with the Chiefdom Register.

The inclusion of a certified customary right within the register should be understood by all as providing a strong level of protection to the continued occupation and use of the particular land parcel by the certified holder, including the unfettered ability to pass on these land rights through customary inheritance norms and practices.

Simplicity

The certification process is designed to be as simple as possible, without compromising any of the fundamental principles identified above. Whilst there is an unavoidable need for some technical assistance to be provided by the CDLA during the establishment and implementation of the systematic certification throughout the selected villages of the TGCC project, the process is designed to provide the Chiefdoms with all the tools and skills necessary to conduct similar exercises throughout the Chiefdom area. It does this by concentrating on the involvement and training of local institutions (VLCs) and community members (community surveyors).

Sustainability

The final register of the certified rights needs to be maintained and updated where necessary. It must therefore be capable of being managed by the Chief and/or his/her senior advisors or authorised personnel. There will be simple and objective procedures developed for the maintenance of the system. A separate Operational Manual will be produced that deals with the rules and processes to be followed for the maintenance and updating of the village and Chiefdom registers.

Completeness

Registration and certification will be systematic throughout all the land within any particular village boundary and will attempt to document all currently allocated land in each village, including allocated land that is not currently cultivated (whether never cleared or in fallow).

Voluntary process

Finally, but importantly, the process explicitly recognises that no-one can be forced to certify their land holdings, should they decline to do so for whatever reason.

It is also explicitly recognised, and required by the Chiefs, that the certification process must be driven by the claims made by landholders themselves and that there should not be any ‘administrative/customary’ registration made by the VLCs. The basic principle is that the claims process must be driven by the claimant or a member of their family. People that are absent from the village at the time of certification may be able to delegate someone to act on their behalf, or they may have to request a certificate at later time.