Johannesburg — THE North Gauteng High Court has declared large portions of a important land-reform law unconstitutional, rendering it unworkable in its present form.

The ruling, handed down on Friday, is likely to have a profound effect on government efforts to reform land tenure for an estimated 21-million people living on 16-million hectares of communal land, mostly in the former homelands.

It could also severely hamper plans to implement President Jacob Zuma 's Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP), launched in August.

The CRDP framework document lists implementation of the Communal Land Rights Act as a vital stimulus for economic growth in communal areas by converting communally held land into freehold tenure.

This means it can be used as surety so people can "participate effectively in the markets for production (and) distribution of products and the consumption of goods and services", the document says. Regulations of the act published last year were to be implemented at the CRDP's pilot sites, including Muyexe village in Limpopo, KwaNgema in Mpumalanga and Msinga in KwaZulu-Natal.

If confirmed by the Constitutional Court, the ruling will force officials to return to the drawing board.

The court challenge to the act was launched by public interest law firm the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and Webber Wentzel on behalf of four communities: Kalkfontein, Makuleke, Makgobiestad and Dixie in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West province.

The LRC's Henk Smith, who was involved in the case since 2003, said the ruling would finally force the government to rethink its approach to rural development.

"Now the state can't just go ahead with the massive privatisation of communal land in the manner proposed in the act, involving extensive new powers for the minister and traditional councils unheard of anywhere in the area of land administration," he said.

In his ruling, Judge Aubrey Ledwaba declared 14 sections of the act to be unconstitutional in that it gave unelected traditional leaders and the minister of land reform and rural development powers to impose decisions that undermined existing property and tenure rights "instead of protecting them, as required by the constitution".