As part of the process of land reform in post-apartheid South Africa, the new government introduced a new form of collective property through the 1996 Community Property Associations Act. This chapter evaluates the emancipatory potential of this new institutional form in the context of South Africa's political and legal transition. In linking the goal of emancipation to the problem of structural poverty and suggesting that tenure security plays an important part in furthering this goal, I argue that the CPA's formed since 1996 present examples of institutional spaces in which the goal of emancipation from structural poverty is brought face-to-face with struggles over authority, gender equality and the place of tradition. In the process, the very institution as well as comparable legislation aimed at introducing democratic decision-making and gender equality as well as the very goal of achieving security of tenure in the formerly "black" communal areas, have become politically contentious. However, as the South African government prepares to once again address the question of tenure reform, these institutional and legal options provide some of the most promising options.