Pretoria High Court declared sections of the Communal Land Rights Act unconstitutional.

In a ruling with implications for millions of people in rural areas, a Pretoria High Court judge has ruled sections of a key land rights law unconstitutional.

The decision was handed down this morning by Judge Aubrey Ledwaba.

He declared that 14 sections of the Communal Land Rights Act (CLRA) were wholly or partly unconstitutional, a decision which one of the lawyers connected with the case said "takes the heart out of the act".

He also awarded the four rural communities that brought the application the costs of five counsel.The applicants were the Kalkfontein, Makuleke, Makgobistad and Dixie communities from Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West.

Respondents were the agriculture and land affairs minister, all nine provincial premiers and the Speaker of the National Assembly.The ruling has implications for an estimated 21 million people living under traditional leadership.

The communities had argued that the CLRA undermined the rights of people using communal land under customary law, and created a "traditional" tier of government not recognised by the Constitution.

Ledwaba rejected the last argument. "Most of the communities who occupy communal land administer customary law and their traditional leaders still play some important part in the administration of the land they occupy," he said.

However he said the law conferred powers on traditional councils that could undermine communities' security of tenure. "In my view, some of the existing traditional council[s] have not been democratically elected and the interest of women, children, elderly and youth may not be represented in such council," he said.

The communities had argued that the CLRA did not protect the land rights of people using communal land under customary law. They said under the CLRA traditional leaders would get "extraordinary centralised powers" that disregarded key features of customary law and undermined indigenous accountability mechanisms.

The CLRA would allow title deeds held by communal property associations and trusts to be endorsed to reflect the "community" as the owner of the land.

There was a real danger that such a "community" would coincide with the traditional council boundaries inherited from apartheid.

SAPA