Multi-Level Governance and Contested Authority in Thaba Phatswa: An Institutional Mechanisms Approach under TRANCRAA

The Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act (TRANCRAA) represents a pivotal legislative intervention in South Africa’s post-apartheid land reform trajectory, designed to devolve land administration powers from national to municipalities and communities. Unlike restitution or redistribution, TRANCRAA focuses on governance transformation rather than ownership transfer, aiming to embed participatory decision making and tenure security. Its national ambition, however, has produced uneven local outcomes. This paper examines TRANCRAA’s implementation in Thaba Phatswa, a rural settlement in the Free State where the absence of traditional leadership placed community leaders/members at the centre of negotiations with municipal authorities. The case highlights how national legislation interacts with local institutional dynamics, producing contested authority and hybrid governance arrangements. By narrowing the focus to institutional theory, the study analyses how four mechanisms of ambiguity, layering, silence, and bricolage shaped the trajectory of transformation. Ambiguity reflected unclear mandates, layering added new procedures without retiring old ones, silence manifested in non decisions, and bricolage captured adaptive blending of formal rules with local practices. Methodologically, the paper employs a qualitative case study with mechanism tracing, drawing on archival records, interviews, and procedural timelines. Findings show that contested authority is not simply a failure of policy design but an emergent property of institutional processes. Outcomes included partial tenure recognition, governance vacuums, and uneven empowerment of community leaders. The contribution is twofold: empirically, it provides a grounded account of TRANCRAA’s local implementation; theoretically, it advances institutional scholarship by demonstrating how transformation can be studied through mechanisms rather than broad policy outcomes. Policy implications include the need for mandate clarity and procedural retirement to reduce ambiguity and layering, while recognising bricolage as a constructive adaptive practice.