Why South Africa’s Returned Forests Are Failing the Communities Who Reclaimed Them

When South Africa’s first democratic government opened the door for communities dispossessed by colonial and apartheid-era laws to reclaim their land, few symbols carried more promise than the country’s vast commercial forest plantations. These estates, stretching across the misty slopes of Mpumalanga province, were more than timber factories. They were multifunctional landscapes that supported biodiversity, supplied firewood, grazing land, building materials and food, and generated income in some of the country’s poorest rural areas. Under the land restitution programme, administered by the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, claimants who successfully proved their case received their ancestral land back. Yet the return of the land, a new study shows, has not guaranteed the return of its benefits.

Researchers from the University of Mpumalanga and the University of Pretoria examined two communities in Mpumalanga’s Gert-Sibande District, Jabulani and Thuthukani, both of which received forest plantations through settled restitution claims. Jabulani’s claim covered 325 hectares and was tied to an agri-village development that resettled 500 beneficiaries in 110 Reconstruction and Development Programme houses. Thuthukani’s beneficiaries reclaimed 230.6 hectares and entered a management partnership with the plantation’s previous owner. In both cases, the law required beneficiaries to establish a Communal Property Association, a legal entity created under the Communal Property Associations Act of 1996, to represent them during negotiations and to manage the land collectively after handover. It is precisely this institutional machinery, the researchers found, that has begun to break down.

The study, published in Frontiers in Sustainable Resource Management, combined a household survey with focus group discussions in what the authors describe as a mixed-methods design. Using a standard sample size formula, the team randomly selected 105 households in Jabulani and 75 in Thuthukani from beneficiary lists supplied by the community property associations. Semi-structured questionnaires captured demographic details, engagement with government institutions, access to ecosystem services, fire frequency and firefighting resources. Focus groups of 39 participants in Jabulani and 36 in Thuthukani, drawn from committee members, adult beneficiaries and youth, provided the qualitative depth. Household survey data were analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics, including the non-parametric Friedman’s test to rank challenges, while the discussion transcripts were processed through content analysis.

The demographic profile of the two communities immediately revealed the stakes. Female-headed households made up the majority in both, exceeding half of all respondents, and young heads of household aged 18 to 35 formed the largest age group. Educational attainment was strikingly low: fewer than three percent of respondents in either community had tertiary education, and in Jabulani a third of household heads were illiterate. Unemployment ranged from roughly 26 percent in Jabulani to 40 percent in Thuthukani, and pensioners constituted between a quarter and 38 percent of household heads. Monthly incomes sat far below the national minimum wage, with more than half of Thuthukani households earning under 1,000 rand per month. These figures matter for land management because, as the authors note, low literacy can limit a community’s ability to navigate the complex institutional and technical demands of running a commercial plantation.

Perhaps the most telling finding concerns engagement with the state. Since their land claims were settled, neither community had held a single meeting with the Regional Land Claims Commission. Contact with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, local municipalities and the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment was nearly nonexistent, reported by no more than two percent of respondents in either community. In the absence of sustained post-settlement support, the researchers argue, beneficiaries lacked the expertise needed to manage commercial forests, plantation productivity declined, and the conditions of the land deteriorated. The partnerships with private companies that initially provided infrastructure investment and technical support had not consistently delivered equitable benefits either, and in Thuthukani the loss of the private sector partner removed a critical source of firefighting assistance.

Fire emerged as the most visceral threat. Commercial plantations are inherently flammable assets, and South Africa’s statutory fire season, running from the first of June to the end of October, concentrates the danger into a few dry months. Between 89 and 97 percent of respondents in the two communities reported that fires occur only during this season, yet focus group participants emphasised that blazes remain a relentless management problem. Thuthukani participants described how the absence of firefighting resources had turned previously well-managed plantations into poorly maintained areas choked with high fuel loads, raising the risk further. The survey quantified the desperation: 46.7 percent of Jabulani respondents said obtaining firefighting resources was fairly difficult, while 40 percent of Thuthukani respondents called it very difficult. Without collateral, the community associations cannot access credit, cannot hire or equip firefighting teams, and cannot finance the revitalisation of burned or degraded stands.

Access to the ecosystem services that motivated the claims in the first place has become starkly uneven. Every single Jabulani respondent reported access to commercial timber, yet not one Thuthukani respondent could say the same, a reversal of fortunes between two communities that began with similar expectations. Grazing access was nearly universal in Jabulani at 97.1 percent but only 32 percent in Thuthukani, while firewood access showed the opposite pattern, exceeding 97 percent in Thuthukani against under half in Jabulani. More than 80 percent of respondents in both communities reported no access to medicinal plants, and in Thuthukani 98.7 percent lacked crafting materials. The authors link this patchy availability to declining plantation productivity under poor governance, warning that communities already burdened by poverty, unemployment and inequality are losing the natural resource safety nets that functional forests provide.

When respondents were asked to rank the obstacles facing their associations, the results upended the conventional assumption that money and skills are the binding constraints. Lack of benefit sharing scored the highest mean rank at 5.82, followed almost identically by elitism at 5.81, then lack of transparency at 5.59 and infighting at 5.34. Funding, expertise, monitoring and mentorship ranked lowest. The differences were statistically significant, with a Friedman test statistic of 501.141 across seven degrees of freedom and a p-value of 0.001. In other words, beneficiaries perceive governance failures, not technical gaps, as the central problem. This aligns with a broader literature on elite capture in land restitution, in which well-connected committee members monopolise benefits, beneficiary lists are manipulated, and decision-making happens behind closed doors, eroding the trust that collective forest management depends on.

The researchers conclude that revitalising these forests will require communities to organise themselves, agree on clear strategies and establish mutually beneficial benefit-sharing mechanisms, backed by strengthened committee governance, equitable distribution of gains and sustained institutional support from government. Technical capacity building and collaborative partnerships involving public institutions, private partners and local communities are, they argue, essential to restoring plantation productivity and the ecosystem services that flow from it. The lesson extends beyond Mpumalanga. Around the world, returning land to dispossessed communities is increasingly recognised as a matter of environmental justice, but this study is a sobering reminder that restitution without post-settlement investment can leave forests to burn and communities waiting. Land back, the findings suggest, is only the first step in a far longer restoration.

Subject of Research: Challenges to revitalizing and sustaining forest plantations returned to communities through South Africa's land restitution programme

Article Title: Challenges affecting revitalization and sustainability in forest-based land reform projects: lessons from the Thuthukani and Jabulani communities, South Africa

Article References: Tshidzumba, R. P., Ntshingila, F. B., & Chirwa, P. W. (2026). Challenges affecting revitalization and sustainability in forest-based land reform projects: lessons from the Thuthukani and Jabulani communities, South Africa. Frontiers in Sustainable Resource Management, 5, Article 1815402. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsrma.2026.1815402

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fsrma.2026.1815402

Keywords: land restitution, forest plantations, South Africa, communal property associations, ecosystem services, governance, elite capture, benefit sharing, wildfire management, rural livelihoods, Mpumalanga, community forestry