Margot Pienaar
The Wild Coast spatial development initiative (SDI) is about more than just employment creation. It is also about creating the opportunity for local communities to become partners and co-owners of viable, multi-million-rand income-producing projects.
Objectively, the Wild Coast SDI implies a reversal for the subsistence farmers and migrant labourers who take their labour to capital in far-away cities. Capital is coming to them, and wants to team up with them in bringing their asset to the table: the land.
This possibility exists because the department’s land reform programme recognises the underlying land rights of local people. Were it not for apartheid, they would have been the registered owners of that land.
In terms of the Bill of Rights, a person or community whose tenure of land is legally insecure because of past discriminatory practices is entitled either to tenure which is legally secure, or to redress.
Derek Hanekom, as the minister of land affairs, is the nominal owner of the land on behalf of the government. He intends to transfer it to them in an orderly and transparent manner.
In the meantime, Parliament has passed the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act. In terms of this Act, occupants of land in the former homelands may not be evicted against their will. Neither may the land be sold without their consent.
By the same token, their permission will be required for the grant-ing of secure tenure rights, such as registered leases, to investors on the land.
The SDI supports this approach 100% and has accepted the implication – that for the purposes of negotiations and selecting projects, local communities should be dealt with as if they were private land owners.
Concerns have been expressed that provisions for land tenure security are merely a paper right on the one hand, and that they impede delivery on the other hand. Neither is correct.
Redressing apartheid’s legacy of insecure land rights often involves sorting out overlapping rights within communities. The process leading up to the transfer of community land can be time-consuming, because it involves the unravelling of years of apartheid intervention in local structures. This does not mean delivery or investment will be impeded.
Pending the finalisation of land transfer to communities, investors can obtain legal security of tenure through long-term leases which will be registered in their favour by the minister of land affairs as the nominal owner of the land.
Once the land is transferred to communities, they will “step into the shoes” of the minister, inheriting all his legal rights and obligations in the land. For this reason, communities will be intimately involved in the negotiations process to ensure that they are satisfied with all the agreements.
Margot Pienaar is an official in the Department of Land Affairs