Homeless communities in KwaZulu-Natal have been locked into land agreements which they don’t understand and can’t possibly afford, reports Ann Eveleth
ALPHEUS MNCUBE believes he is a lucky man. Smiling proudly from the corrugated-iron roof of his freshly packed wattle-and-daub house, the railway worker boasts about the fruits of his labour: “This house wasn’t here last week,” he says.
Mncube is still smiling because he does not know that the land could be yanked from under him. His plight is that of countless numbers of rural peasants caught in a debt trap created by the apartheid-era law under which they bought land.
Putting down roots on the grassy slopes of a Louwsburg farm purchased by the KwaKhombi community in northern KwaZulu-Natal was the culmination of years of landless anticipation for the Mncube family. Evicted from a white farm in nearby Ngotshe last year, the Mncubes joined the growing army of farm evictees dotting the countryside around Vryheid desperately searching for land rights.
The Mncubes’ search ended with their acceptance into the KwaKhombi community of Chief Bhekumuzi Zulu. Or so they thought. Mncube and his neighbours could lose their land in terms of a 1993 agreement which their leaders signed with the white farmers, who still hold the title deeds, and the farmers’ estate agents.
As far as Mncube is concerned, the R1 600 settlement fee he scraped together from his meagre earnings as a Spoornet worker and the sale of a prized ox have secured his rights to this land. If he can raise another R600 he can buy an adjoining sliver, he says.
Mncube and his neighbours know little of the complex history behind this land purchase, which began with the 1987 Ngotshe Accord in which white farmers agreed to sell land to five landless chiefs in a bid to promote the consolidation of the fragmented KwaZulu homeland.
Back then, Mncube paid his first R100 deposit towards a different piece of land. The controversial accord faltered, but then the apartheid government provided the mechanism for land transfer to black communities under Act 126 of 1993. The farmers charged KwaKhombi R2-million for three farms they said would accommodate 200 families on 100m by 100m plots.
Under the old land redistribution formula, the government paid 80% of this cost and lent the community R300 000 for their payments. The community was to cough up R100 000 for the initial 5% deposit.
Chief Zulu’s councillor Enoch Khumalo says the community borrowed the R100 000 from a commercial bank in Vryheid two years ago, but was told they could not move on to the farm until the debt was repaid and the planning was completed.
“Finally the community started to complain that they have been paying money and they wanted to move on to their land and build houses,” Khumalo says. They were allowed to do so.
Niether Khumalo nor Zulu can explain exactly how much money has been collected or how much is still owed or to whom. But Durban land rights attorney Peter Rutsch says his investigation into the KwaKhombi land quagmire suggests the community has been thrown into a debt trap they are unlikely to escape.
`The first problem is that the R2-million price was ridiculous, the second is how you can have a rural community saddled with a debt of R400 000 plus an impossible R56 000 in interest every six months and the third is the arrangement through which the farm owners are sitting with nearly R2-million and the community still doesn’t have the right to occupy the land.”
Although they are on the land they are not legally entitled to be there and could face eviction or repossession.
Rutsch says he is seeking an agreement from the Department of Land Affairs to convert the KwaKhombi land purchase into the new system instituted early this year whereby communities receive a R15 000 grant per household for land and planning costs. This would give the community roughly R3-million.
But neither Mncube nor Khumalo has heard of this system: “If we had R15 000 we would build a house with cement blocks, instead of this structure which might collapse in three years. We would bring water to the house and install a bathtub,” says Mncube’s wife Thabila.
Durban Legal Resources Centre attorney Thulani Nkosi says this problem is common to many communities which purchased land before the government changed the system this year. He points to the KwaGumbi community from the same area – also an Ngotshe Accord applicant – which has recently applied for grants. “Now the Department of Land Affairs insists they wait for planning to be done. They have been waiting three years. These are landless and homeless people who are locked into old agreements and transactions they don’t understand and can’t possibly afford. The Department of Land Affairs needs to understand the need for immediate occupation and come up with contingency plans for these communities that are always on the run,” he says.
Land Affairs officials working in Vryheid’s facilitation office say the problems are complicated in this white farming haven where, in addition to landless chiefs and traditional communities, at least 20 communities face eviction every month. “Vryheid accounts for one-third of all labour tenant land rights claims before the Land Claims Court nationally and we only hear about the cases that come to our office,” says labour tenant rights facilitator Busani Ngubane.