Tara Weinberg
University of the Witwatersrand, History, Faculty Member
- I am a Lecturer in the History Department at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). My research focuses on histo... moreI am a Lecturer in the History Department at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). My research focuses on histories of property, land, law, credit, debt and political imagination. I am so interested in ongoing struggles over property law, land and housing justice in South Africa.
I obtained my PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2023. Also in 2023, I worked as a postdoctoral research fellow with the New Archival Visions project at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape.
I have also previously worked as a researcher on land reform at the Land and Accountability Research Centre at the University of Cape Town. I am the author of “A History of Communal Property Associations in South Africa,” published in Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa: Contested Histories and Current Struggles (2021) and the podcast, “Forging Property from Struggle” for Reverb Effect (2023). My PhD thesis, “Property of the People? Imaginaries of Property Ownership in South Africa, 1900-1994,” examined how black land buyers, farmers and intellectuals debated and imagined kinds of property that offered alternatives to the state’s narrow categorizations of property law.
My work as a Lecturer at Wits involves research, writing, teaching and supervision in the areas of legal history, gender history, agrarian and rural history, political economy, intellectual history, histories of social movements and transnational histories of Africa and Asia, and Africa and the Americas.edit
This chapter investigates the origins of the segregation in South Africa and analyzes how a white minority established political and economic hegemony over the country's black majority. It recounts the establishment of the apartheid... more
This chapter investigates the origins of the segregation in South Africa and analyzes how a white minority established political and economic hegemony over the country's black majority. It recounts the establishment of the apartheid government in 1948, which inten sified the processes of exclusion and segregation under colonialism and white rule. It also looks at historical work that highlights important facets of the history of land segregation and keeps sight of the power dynamics and violence that accompanied centuries of segre gation in South Africa. This chapter looks at several streams of scholarship around land segregation, including the intersection of gender and land. It examines debates on South Africa's highly segregated land system and massive landownership inequalities.
Research Interests:
This is a draft of a chapter that was published in Land, Law and Chiefs. Click here to find the book and the final version of the chapter: https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/land-law-and-chiefs-in-rural-south-africa/
Research Interests:
In Ramantele vs. Mmusi and others (2013), Botswana's Court of Appeal decided that the family home in Kanye, Botswana belonged to Edith Mmusi and her sisters instead of Mmusi's nephew, Molefi Ramantele. Through an analysis of the Mmusi... more
In Ramantele vs. Mmusi and others (2013), Botswana's Court of Appeal decided that the family home in Kanye, Botswana belonged to Edith Mmusi and her sisters instead of Mmusi's nephew, Molefi Ramantele. Through an analysis of the Mmusi case, this article speaks to legal scholars’ interest in customary law jurisprudence and gender issues. It reflects on recent attempts by lawyers and activists to use social science evidence and the prism of living law, to tackle gender inequality through litigation. The article proposes that under certain conditions, it is possible to use evidence of nuanced social realities to destabilise the forms of knowledge on which courts usually adjudicate and to challenge the marginalisation of women's voices that tends to accompany these court hearings. In the Mmusi case, the introduction of certain social science evidence and methods opened a space for the Court of Appeal to consider Mmusi's argument about customary law, rather than dismissing it as having no place in debates on custom or glossing over it as a repeat of an argument about “Western” rights. However, the Mmusi case also hints at the limits of incorporating arguments about the living nature of local or customary law into institutional legal settings.
Research Interests:
This paper focuses on communal tenure reform developments (or lack thereof), referring to law, policy and practice in rural areas in South Africa. It shows that communal land tenure is not in a healthy state and discusses the following... more
This paper focuses on communal tenure reform developments (or lack thereof), referring to law, policy and practice in rural areas in South Africa. It shows that communal land tenure is not in a healthy state and discusses the following recent laws and policies that are symptoms of this ill health:
- the Communal Land Rights Act (struck down by the Constitutional Court);
- the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (passed in 2003); and
- the 2014 Communal Land Tenure ‘wagon wheel’ policy (currently in place).
The paper also explores the historical roots of the insecurity of tenure with which millions of South Africans struggle, diagnoses some of the causes of the failures of communal land tenure reform and suggests some alternatives that might provide the remedies needed.
- the Communal Land Rights Act (struck down by the Constitutional Court);
- the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (passed in 2003); and
- the 2014 Communal Land Tenure ‘wagon wheel’ policy (currently in place).
The paper also explores the historical roots of the insecurity of tenure with which millions of South Africans struggle, diagnoses some of the causes of the failures of communal land tenure reform and suggests some alternatives that might provide the remedies needed.
Research Interests:
This piece, first presented at the Africa-Asia international conference in Dar es Salaam in 2018, was inspired by the possibility of encountering transcontinental conversations about law and history at the conference. In consulting this... more
This piece, first presented at the Africa-Asia international conference in Dar es Salaam in 2018, was inspired by the possibility of encountering transcontinental conversations about law and history at the conference. In consulting this work as a doctoral student, a key question emerged for me: what are the possibilities and limits of reconstructing political thought through court cases? While earlier generations of legal historians have debated this issue, new intellectual histories from Africa and economic histories from South Asia suggest the time is right for a reappraisal.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In 2015, the Land and Accountability Research Centre (LARC) (formerly the Rural Women's Action Research Project (RWAR) at the Centre for Law and Society (CLS)) partnered with Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) to develop a special edition of the... more
In 2015, the Land and Accountability Research Centre (LARC) (formerly the Rural Women's Action Research Project (RWAR) at the Centre for Law and Society (CLS)) partnered with Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) to develop a special edition of the People's Law Journal focused on on rural land justice. The People's Law Journal is a plain-language, user-friendly legal publication targeting activists and community-based organisations (CBOs). The edition deals extensively with the current challenges facing rural and peri-urban communities living on communal land in South Africa, including tenure insecurity, problems associated with land restitution and reform, problems related to traditional governance structures and displacements due to extractive industries. The edition also include an overview of important developments in jurisprudence on customary law and the legal protections granted to many rural communities.
Research Interests: Constitutional Law, Property Law, Land tenure, Customary Law, Land reform, and 12 moreLand Rights, Tenure, Land Reform in South Africa, Land Restitution, Communal land ownership, Tenure Security, Mining law, Land rights, Legal Education, Customary land Tenure, Security of Land Tenure, Traditional Forms of Governance In Africa, Challenges Under Customary Land, and Communal Property Associations
In 1911 South Africa, two brothers—Ntshebe and Lunyolo Ngwenya—won a horse race. But their white competitors would not accept their win and responded with violence. The incident was about far more than racing horses. It was also about how... more
In 1911 South Africa, two brothers—Ntshebe and Lunyolo Ngwenya—won a horse race. But their white competitors would not accept their win and responded with violence. The incident was about far more than racing horses. It was also about how to overcome the reality that the security of black people’s property—whether horses, homes, or crops—was subject to the whims of white landowners.
In this episode, Tara Weinberg tells the story of how the Ngwenya brothers joined with lawyer, businessman, and politician, Pixley ka Seme, and black families from around the country in setting up the Native Farmers Association, one of the largest land buying and farming projects set up by black South Africans. Members envisioned a collective form of property ownership, a movement that the South African government considered insurgent. This history offers glimpses into alternate futures of property ownership in South Africa.
In this episode, Tara Weinberg tells the story of how the Ngwenya brothers joined with lawyer, businessman, and politician, Pixley ka Seme, and black families from around the country in setting up the Native Farmers Association, one of the largest land buying and farming projects set up by black South Africans. Members envisioned a collective form of property ownership, a movement that the South African government considered insurgent. This history offers glimpses into alternate futures of property ownership in South Africa.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This is a draft of a chapter that was published in Land, Law and Chiefs. Click here to find the book and the final version of the chapter: https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/land-law-and-chiefs-in-rural-south-africa/
Research Interests:
This paper explores how government interventions to restrict African access to land in the 'Ciskei' in South Africa between 1930-1960 impacted disproportionately on women. It focuses on events in three districts, Fort Beaufort,... more
This paper explores how government interventions to restrict African access to land in the 'Ciskei' in South Africa between 1930-1960 impacted disproportionately on women. It focuses on events in three districts, Fort Beaufort, Keiskammahoek and Peddie, making use of archival research to show how African people, particularly women, responded to government interventions that progressively rendered them landless. The paper interrogates how Africans' contestation of customary law and their relationship to the land was intricately tied up with the gendered nature of their family positions, privileges and responsibilities. Since the arenas in which women could voice their issues were limited, men sometimes articulated these issues (albeit in a mediated form) when the interest of a woman who approached them coincided with their own. Male Bunga Councillors appealed to a 'living' form of customary law in attempts to win greater rights to land inheritance for women and yo...
Research Interests:
The attached position papers were written by researchers based at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, and at the Centre for Law and Society, University of Cape Town. They were... more
The attached position papers were written by researchers based at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, and at the Centre for Law and Society, University of Cape Town. They were distributed to the 2000 people who attended government’s National Land Tenure Summit in early September 2014. Also attached is a newspaper article on aspects of the summit written by Ruth Hall of PLAAS and published in the Daily Dispatch on 10 September 2014, and a newspaper article by Tara Weinberg of CLS, published in the Sunday Independent on 28 September 2014
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Twenty years have passed since the Bantustans were reintegrated into South Africa. Yet for the 17 million people still living in these former homelands, the struggle for full recognition of their land rights persists. The post-1994... more
Twenty years have passed since the Bantustans were reintegrated into South Africa. Yet for the 17 million people still living in these former homelands, the struggle for full recognition of their land rights persists. The post-1994 government refers to the former homelands as ‘communal areas’, where ‘communal tenure’ is at play. This paper focuses on ‘communal tenure’ reform developments (or lack thereof) with reference to law, policy and practice in rural areas in South Africa.While laws to promote tenure security for farm dwellers and labour tenants have been enacted, there is no legislation beyond the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act (IPILRA) to secure the land rights of people living in the former Bantustans. Despite the post-1994 constitutional requirement that the state make secure the land tenure of people in all of South Africa, it has so far failed to do so. This legislative ‘vacuum’ has contributed to the precarious nature of people’s land rights in the forme...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden Mamadou Diouf, Columbia University, USA Guy Martin, Winston-Salem State University, USA Pamela Mbabazi, Mbarara University ... I am grateful to Mike Besten (University of the Free State) and Mohamed... more
... Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden Mamadou Diouf, Columbia University, USA Guy Martin, Winston-Salem State University, USA Pamela Mbabazi, Mbarara University ... I am grateful to Mike Besten (University of the Free State) and Mohamed Adhikari (University of Cape Town) for ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter investigates the origins of the segregation in South Africa and analyzes how a white minority established political and economic hegemony over the country’s black majority. It recounts the establishment of the apartheid... more
This chapter investigates the origins of the segregation in South Africa and analyzes how a white minority established political and economic hegemony over the country’s black majority. It recounts the establishment of the apartheid government in 1948, which intensified the processes of exclusion and segregation under colonialism and white rule. It also looks at historical work that highlights important facets of the history of land segregation and keeps sight of the power dynamics and violence that accompanied centuries of segregation in South Africa. This chapter looks at several streams of scholarship around land segregation, including the intersection of gender and land. It examines debates on South Africa’s highly segregated land system and massive landownership inequalities.
Research Interests:
In Ramantele vs. Mmusi and others (2013), Botswana's Court of Appeal decided that the family home in Kanye, Botswana belonged to Edith Mmusi and her sisters instead of Mmusi's nephew, Molefi Ramantele. Through an analysis... more
In Ramantele vs. Mmusi and others (2013), Botswana's Court of Appeal decided that the family home in Kanye, Botswana belonged to Edith Mmusi and her sisters instead of Mmusi's nephew, Molefi Ramantele. Through an analysis of the Mmusi case, this article speaks to legal scholars’ interest in customary law jurisprudence and gender issues. It reflects on recent attempts by lawyers and activists to use social science evidence and the prism of living law, to tackle gender inequality through litigation. The article proposes that under certain conditions, it is possible to use evidence of nuanced social realities to destabilise the forms of knowledge on which courts usually adjudicate and to challenge the marginalisation of women's voices that tends to accompany these court hearings. In the Mmusi case, the introduction of certain social science evidence and methods opened a space for the Court of Appeal to consider Mmusi's argument about customary law, rather than dismissing it as having no place in debates on custom or glossing over it as a repeat of an argument about “Western” rights. However, the Mmusi case also hints at the limits of incorporating arguments about the living nature of local or customary law into institutional legal settings.