PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1996. A study of ancestral, biblical and women's hermeneutics in local struggles for ancestral land during the political transition in South Africa. Primary research was done with communities that had been forcibly removed from their land under apartheid, focussing on Sotho-, Tswana- and Pedi- speaking communities that were part of the Back to the Land Campaign. The author subsequently worked as a researcher with the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights in 1996-98.