''Alexkor v Richtersveld Community'', decided by the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ...

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

, is an important case in

South African law South Africa has a 'hybrid' or 'mixed' legal system, formed by the interweaving of a number of distinct legal traditions: a civil law system inherited from the Dutch, a common law system inherited from the British, and a customary law syste ...

, with a particular bearing on the

law of property Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land) and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual pr ...

and the use of

customary law A legal custom is the established pattern of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting. A claim can be carried out in defense of "what has always been done and accepted by law". Customary law (also, consuetudina ...

. The

Richtersveld The Richtersveld is a desert landscape characterised by rugged kloofs and high mountains, situated in the north-western corner of South Africa’s Northern Cape province. It is full of changing scenery from flat, sandy, coastal plains, to crag ...

community brought a claim for the restoration of its ancestral land in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act, a

statutory A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by le ...

mechanism giving effect to the government's constitutionally-mandated

land reform Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...

and restitution programme. The appellant in this case was the

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

corporation

Alexkor Alexkor is a South African unincorporated joint venture diamond mining company that falls under the Department of Public Enterprises. It was previously a state-owned enterprise, when in 2007 it entered a government-funded pooling and sharing ...

, which had an interest in the

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...

iferous parts of the Richtersveld area. An important aspect of the case was the community's assertion that it used the land according to its

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...

customs, an assertion upheld in both the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and the

, and on the basis whereof the land was returned to the community. In defining and determining what is entailed by customary-law ownership of land, the SCA equated it with

common-law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...

ownership, while the Constitutional Court found that its content should be ascertained by studying the customs and uses of the community. It was thus decided that the Richtersveld community's claim to the land incorporated a claim to the

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. ( ...

s in the land, and that the community's entitlement to both the land and the minerals should be acknowledged and restored. Incorporated in this was the right of the community to claim compensation for past exploitation of the land by Alexkor and the state. The court's reasoning shows "how the redefinition of the sources of South African property law affects the protection offered to relationships with land."Mostert & Pope 16.

References

* H Mostert and A Pope (eds) ''The Principles of The Law of Property in South Africa'' 1 ed (2010). * Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994. * ''Richtersveld Community and Others v Alexkor Ltd and Another'' 2003 (6) SA 104 (SCA), 2003 Case 488/200
SAFLII
* ''Alexkor Ltd and Another v Richtersveld Community and Others'' 2004 (5) SA 460 (CC), 2003 CCT 19/0

Notes

2001 in South African law Constitutional Court of South Africa cases 2001 in case law South African property case law South African customary case law Aboriginal title {{SouthAfrica-case-law-stub

See also

References

Notes