Common property natural resource management (NRM) informer 'bantustan' rural areas can provide important pointers for current and future land reform and local government policy. Using Tyefu Location in the Eastern Cape as a case study, this article outlines three of the constraints that currently fashionable ‘community‐based’ NRM models are likely to face in coordinating the use of common property resources in these areas. These three constraints are first, the entrenched socio‐economic differentiation that results in local people having varied, but generally weak incentives for contributing to collective action resource management. Second, are the high levels of institutional contestation that exist in these areas and third, the fact that the 'fuzziness' of existing NRM regimes allows for maximum flexibility in resource use, with the result that most rural (and urban‐based) people are unlikely to support the introduction of more formalised NRM regimes.