In the evolving landscape of Renewable Energy project development on government-owned and communal land in South Africa, the Land Matters Practice Development process is testing a different approach to project development and implementation, one that places learning, reflection, and collaboration at the centre.
Since May 2025, INSPIRE and a commercial renewable energy developer, Forethought Capital, have met regularly to make better sense of and share lessons about the complexities of land governance, community engagement, and commercial project development. These encounters have sought to be open, honest, and grounded in practice, and have generated interesting insights.
This blogpost – Unlocking Value on Communal Land: Strategies for Navigating Complexity – is the second in a series of offerings on practice development, made for the wider renewable energy sector.
The journey towards unlocking value on communal land is not straightforward, demanding qualities, commitments and approaches not necessarily mandatory for commercial initiatives on privately owned land.
In the experience of Forethought Capital, and after several years of committed engagement, it has achieved a significant milestone that has unleashed significant value, potential future value, and impact for both itself and the community.
What has it taken to unlock value, potential value and impact?
Three elements guide Forethought’s work: Firstly, it is bound by sound commercial considerations of seeking to generate value through creating a bankable project that meets all the requirements of good commercial practice. As noted above, a significant milestone towards achieving this has now been accomplished.
Secondly, and in keeping with this, it pursues its project development process through full consideration of and engagement with government process, policies and structure. When seeking to develop a project and/or to acquire rights on communal land, this involves working within a complex policy environment and engaging multiple authorities in overlapping and simultaneous processes. These processes, both mandatory and relational, are significantly more complex and time consuming than, for example, those involving private landowners.
Finally, there is Forethought’s own approach to doing business. This includes working with clarity of purpose and high levels of flexibility and situational responsivity, the combination of which has enabled a remarkable staying power on this journey. It has also enabled improvement in Forethought’s land acquisition model and project development process, as well as development of company culture and coherence of a team approach.
ELABORATING ON AN APPROACH – developing trust, practising flexibility
Navigating Multiple Processes and Stakeholders
There are multiple processes and stakeholders when seeking to undertake commercial development on communally owned land. Engagement in these processes, including working through the authorities of national government, local government, traditional leadership and community participation, is in large part required by government policy. This seeks to pursue constitutional protection of the rights of people on communally owned land through legislation like the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act of 1996 (Act No. 31 of 1996) (IPLRA).
“One has to have comfort, if not comfort, then appreciation that one is dealing with multiple levels of processes at the same time.”
While constitutional and legislative provisions have long been in place, and communities have had experience of commercial development from sectors such as mining, the prospect of commercial development for renewable projects on communally owned is relatively new and limited, and there is a significant untapped opportunity to bring value to community.
For Forethought, it was important for the process that the traditional authorities or community representatives understood the process and were clear about their own roles. This empowered them to make their own decisions and to negotiate on their own terms (and not feel that decisions were forced or that there was coercion). This capacitation was not something that could necessarily be expected to be done or supported through external means (for example, from government). However, if neglected, it would not win the confidence and trust of the traditional authorities and/or community leaders on the project partnership.
Developing trust, relationship and confidence
Working with trust and deepening relationship and confidence is a central requirement for unlocking value on communally owned land. But achieving this is no simple task. Building trust requires that South Africa’s deep and enduring history of land dispossession is understood and recognised as a living part of any engagement. It requires that the identities and positionalities of role-players be acknowledged, and that connection and resonance amongst all role-players be actively sought. It requires respectful conduct from developers.
And while this is true for all efforts to work on communally owned land, it is especially so for those communities that have had difficult experiences with other industries and also for those that have struggled to find affinity with companies that are not South African.
For Forethought, it is important that their work acknowledges and respects the existing leadership structures in community, even when this practice is not readily aligned with conventional corporate approaches or minimum project requirements. It helps that Forethought is black-owned and South African, that their representatives can speak the language of community and that they are adaptive to norms and culture. However, real trust has been built through the demeanour and practice of those representing the company:
“… we demonstrate in other ways that we mean what we mean because they’ve had people that come in and make promises but never come back. Our ability to come back and give them updates on where the project is, and on the delays, made them comfortable that we are still coming back.”
Other features of the company’s approach also helps maintain and deepen trust, for example, their position of equal participation and equal partnership.
“It is always important and fair that when you come into that conversation, notwithstanding that you are bringing in something, you recognize that the other parties have an equal power, and you demonstrate to them that you respect the fact that they do.”
Practising flexibility
Finally, Forethought’s approach is characterised by an intentional flexibility and responsiveness. There hasn’t been a one-size-fits-all approach across all communities and government stakeholders, and each team member is encouraged to read each situation, take account of the circumstances of each stakeholder and adjust communication style and medium accordingly.
“The perspective of having discernment and awareness, and being alive to the fact that the other parties are equal partners in the process.”
This also involves flexibility in negotiations, including where stakeholders want things done their way, even if it isn’t necessarily the most direct way of going about things.
“If we come with the understanding that this is how things should work … we’ve been bumped back … [to] a level of negotiation and appreciation that this hasn’t been done before. This is new to a lot of stakeholders. We’ve had to sit in discussions and negotiations to say this is what you are trying to achieve, can we find each other there? The key takeaway has been there must be a level of flexibility in how we engaged or how we are engaged with the process that is already defined.”
Last of all, as part of practising flexibility, Forethought team members have deepened their own humility and discernment through engaging in the process. While things have taken significantly longer than originally anticipated,
“…there are more things that have come into the process than we had anticipated.
What it boils down to is that you are dealing with people who are having a different perspective to your perspective, and that’s not the only applicable perspective. The answer is not either/or. It’s discernment to say, to what extent can we be moved around, or where do we have to dig our heels in and say, this is a process that has to work. The second part is accepting that nothing is perfect and we have to harmonize and negotiate with the process.”
Concluding lessons
Considering the significance of the value already unlocked for both community and commercial practice, and more so, what could follow for both, it is worth remarking that a great deal of this progress has rested on simple respect, recognition of equal partnership, and practices of awareness and adaptation.
Crucially, this has involved Forethought working with and within the terms and practices of mandatory, traditional and community process. Accepting that all these processes are full realities that generate both opportunities and constraints is not always easy. However, with clarity of a purpose that extends beyond commercial value towards transformation of people’s lives, willingness to work responsively, and a self-reflective approach that emphasises learning and adaptation, these realities can be worked with, and full value unlocked.
