''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 ru ...

2001 The year's most prominent event was 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. The United States led a Participan ...

, 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 syst ...

, 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 prop ...

and the use of

customary law A legal custom is the established pattern of behavior 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, consuetudinary or unofficial law) exists wher ...

. 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 cragg ...

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 law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wil ...

mechanism giving effect to the government's constitutionally-mandated

land reform Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution. Lan ...

and restitution programme. The appellant in this case was the

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

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 j ...

, 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. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...

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) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

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 Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prec ...

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 substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2011): Mi ...

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 Compensation may refer to: *Financial compensation *Compensation (chess), various advantages a player has in exchange for a disadvantage *Compensation (essay), ''Compensation'' (essay), by Ralph Waldo Emerson *Compensation (film), ''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 case law Constitutional Court of South Africa cases South African property case law South African customary case law Aboriginal title {{SouthAfrica-case-law-stub

See also

References

Notes