This chapter focuses on the gendered nature of land tenure in the Namaqualand region of the Northern Cape. It discusses the ways in which women are beginning to assert their right to land, and shows how a few women manage to secure such rights, despite the fact that the land reform programme does not support their efforts. The chapter is derived from a study carried out between October 2003 and March 2005. In-depth interviews were conducted with some 65 women from the municipal areas of Steinkopf, Concordia, Leliefontein (including Kharkams, Rooifontein and Spoegrivier), Komaggas and the Richtersveld (Lekkersing, Kuboes, Eksteenfontein). The women were interviewed individually and in groups. A distinction was made between married, single and widowed women. Some of the women had access to land and some did not. The age of the women ranged from 18 to 65 years.

The setting

Namaqualand is situated in the north-western region of the Northern Cape province of South Africa. This vast, arid and semi-arid region borders the Atlantic seaboard and Namibia (Wisborg and Rohde 2004). Khoisan groups such as the Nama are native to the sparsely populated area. These groups were mainly pastoralagriculturalists or hunter-gatherers. The gradual expansion of the colonial frontier and settler farming pushed the native inhabitants into small pockets of land, which were administered by mission stations by the early nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century a total of 23 mission settlements in the Cape became known as the rural coloured reserves. They were proclaimed in terms of the Mission Stations and Communal Reserves Act (No. 29 of 1909).

Until 1994, land in the reserves (27 per cent of the total land area of Namaqualand) was formally owned by the state, but allocated to specific communities. The land in the reserves has always been held and managed communally, albeit with varying degrees of involvement by institutions of the church and state (Archer 1993). Individual titles have been issued for some residential sites since 1995, but the great majority of the arable plots and communal grazing lands continue to be administered by local municipalities, which are now democratically elected.