force
Belinda Beresford
The furore surrounding a Hartebeespoort landowner who gave some of his land away has spurred on the local council, farmers and developers to undertake to provide 1 000 black families in the area with their own houses by the new millennium.
Already 14 developers have promised to donate land for housing – apparently after one developer threw down the gauntlet by publicly pledging a hectare, estimated to be worth about R10 000.
The team behind the Hartebeespoort project is also spearheading a nationwide push to see one million people living in their own houses by the end of the year.
A key figure behind the scheme is Hartebeespoort landowner Roger Roman, who has handed over about half of his farm to 11 black families, some of whom have been living on the land for generations. Last year he went on a fast to protest against the resistance his plan ran into from the local council and some of his neighbours.
The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry has given R250 000 to the Po Land community living on Roman’s land, to fund 30 full-time jobs. The community has pledged half the money to the local council to use in creating other jobs elsewhere in the area.
Roman said this week the community had also decided to give Minister of Land Affairs Derek Hanekom back the R176 000 he had pledged in support. The sum is equal to 11 times the R16 000 housing grant being given by the state.
Roman said the community wants Hanekom to use the money to fund 11 other houses, to be built on freely donated land. Ideally they would like to see two houses built at each of the four corners of the country, “so it should be easy to fill in the middle”.
In Hartebeespoort, the housing task team aims to persuade landowners to freely hand over parcels of land to people living on it. This would enable the team to use a full R16-million in government housing subsidies to build houses.
Roman contends regulations giving people security of tenure on farms where they are already living means that land is in fact inaccessable to the farmer. He says it is a moral and pragmatic response to give the land to its inhabitants, who are then able to get government subsidies to turn their shacks into solid housing, and have the incentive and the means to upgrade their property.
Hartebeespoort mayor Pieter Rautenbach, who heads the housing task team, says it hopes to be a role model for South Africa in demonstrating how private and public bodies can work together to solve the issue of land redistribution.