Overcoming Land Injustices: An Experimental Investigation Into the Justice and Injustice of Land Squatting in South Africa.

The issue of land reform in South Africa is compelling not just as a crucial threat to democratic consolidation, but also as a challenging case for the psychology of justice. In land controversies in transitional regimes around the globe, the unfairness of the past confronts the fairness of the present as alternative principles of justice collide and conflict. For instance, to what degree should land rights secured under a prior illicit regime be recognized and honored by the newly formed democratic system? Land reconciliation presents prototypical problems of transitional justice. Based on a survey of a large national sample of South Africans conducted in 2004, this paper investigates the means by which ordinary people adjudicate conflicts between alternatives principles of justice. The survey included a formal experiment, based on a vignette in which the dependent variable is perceptions of fairness in a land dispute in which a squatter is evicted from private property. Judgments of the fairness of squatter evictions are hypothesized to be related to the perceived need and deservingness of the squatter (distributive justice), the due process of the eviction (procedural justice), and the nature of the current use of the land (individual land rights, rule of law). The findings indicate that the race of the respondent determines almost all aspects of justice judgments. The exception is important: South Africans of all races judge the eviction of the squatter as more fair when the squatter is extended procedural justice. In addition, the social identities of black South Africans significantly influence the nature of their justice judgments. Thus, this analysis yields important insights into the role of justice considerations in contemporary land controversies, especially under the condition of conflict among these important principles of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]