The suggestion in this article is that there should be some certain approaches the South African government should comprehend in order to look at the issue of women in land reform processes. There should be a monitoring of women to the access of land and human rights by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) into the state structures. There is a mutual feeling that women’s rights should be protected as international community created standards set in different legal foundations.
These include the Universal Declaration of Rights (1948) (the preamble stating to improve equal rights among men and women), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966. The approach to combat the lack of sufficient access to land by women on a communal base should be looked at by government on a human-right base approach. This means that the South African government and African countries in general should focus on securitising women and making their access to land as a human right approach. As women are the labours on the land that their husband has left them with and are inclined to produce food for their families and through that tackle poverty and there is economic growth as land they plough on, they can produce fruits and vegetables to sell in an open market. It is likely for their basic reliable resources such as food to be deprived.
A human right approach requires the analysis of why women are still experiencing discrimination within the society land rights and those land rights of women specifically should be protected by the government and there should be steps taken to ensure their securitization. The government should respect the rights of women in the procedures in redistribution and tenure reform. The opposition to this is that land is not essentially linked to human dignity and land is an only means as an asset not freedom. What is key by this is that and should be raised by the South African government in their assessment of the land reform policies is for securing land tenure for women individually of communally. As long as gender rights and the question of land inheritance is not fully addressed thoroughly in policy and legislation, the oppressive customary rights to succession may continue to sabotage the access rights of women. Thus it could not be viewed as a deliberate attempt by the South African government not to focus on strategies that could help to uplift women and access of land tenure security. The South African government is trying to track its obligation to rectify and redistribute firstly land to those previously disadvantaged communities and trying to be neutral in addressing women’s ownership to land and the land reform agenda (Economic Commission for Africa, 2004).
