A land claimants organisation says its members are tired of waiting for their claims to be addressed
Barry Streek
An organisation representing 3E000 households, which claim they were stripped of their land during apartheid, have warned President Thabo Mbeki that they are considering embarking on land invasions because of the government’s delays in dealing with their claims.
The group, the Restitution Forum of the South Cape and Karoo, says it has written directly to Mbeki ”as a last resort” because it has ”exhausted all official channels with no response”.
In its letter, which is accompanied with a record of extensive correspondence with the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Thoko Didiza, and other officials, the group warns: ”Communities in our region are considering mass action and we want to avoid at all cost the same situation as currently in Zimbabwe. However, in the light of the above, it seems [to be] our only recourse.”
The forum represents 18 different community organisations and about 3E000 claims. Its chair, Henry Rhode, says in the letter: ”People are tired of waiting and in the process, claimants are dying.”
Presidential representative Parks Mankahlana said this week the presidency was regarding the issue as ”serious” but it was convinced that if there were any delays this was because the question restitution ”very complicated” and had to be handled sensitively.
Mankahlana said both the previous minister of agriculture and land affairs, Derek Hanekom, and Didiza had been ”very quick” with their decisions.
He added that the president’s office would take the matter up with Didiza to find out the reason for any delays.
Rhode, who has asked Mbeki for a reply before the forum’s next meeting in May, says in the letter: ”It is in this context that we appeal to you to intervene to speed up the process.”
He adds: ”To date we are still no clearer as to what the minister’s position is with regard to the restitution process. As we have not received answers to the questions posed, we can only assume that the minister is not in a position to do so.
”Of the approximately 3E000 claims in our area, none have been resolved and only three have been prioritised.”
The communities represented by the forum are from Beaufort West, Leeu-Gamka, Prince Albert, De Rust, Dysselsdorp, Oudtshoorn, Zoar, Ladismith, Lawaai and Themblethu in George, Groot Brak, Helderberg, Cogvie, Plettenberg, two Knysna communities, Kraaibosch and The Lakes.
Meanwhile, Didiza has said in an interview published in the latest issue of Afra News, the journal produced by the Association for Rural Advancement in Pietermaritzburg, that there was general agreement that ”the [land reform] process has been very slow.
”That has been due to a number of reasons, some of which related to the procedures that have to be followed and the way in which the whole process tended to follow the legal route too much.”
Didiza said the government wanted to build ”a core of successful black farmers in this country. ”We want to move away from a perception that only white farmers in this country can make it commercially, and that subsistence farming is only for Africans.”
Between May 1995 and May 1998, 63E455 claims, involving 12E401 households, came before the Land Claims Commission, but only 231 or 0,4%, had been settled by June last year, according to the South African Survey by the South African Institute of Race Relations.
However, 13E437 households had received 264E615 hectares of land, worth R53- million and R10,3-million had been paid in compensation to 215 households.
A further 47,1-million hectares had been redistributed to 40E367 households, the survey stated.
The Democratic Party’s Dan Maluleke said in a recent statement that if the government was serious about settling a significant number of able and competent but landless farmers, it had to redistribute 25-million hectares of unutilised state land as a matter of priority. The DP noted with concern the 15,6% decline in estimated expenditure for the 2000/2001 financial year in respect of land reform.
”We need to look no further than the land invasions taking place in Zimbabwe to realise that South African could be faced with a similar situation if the government continues to ignore the poverty trap many of our people are caught in. Rather than leaving millions of hectares of state land lying idle, let’s put it to good use,” Maluleke said.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, the resettlement of one of the most notorious Group Areas Act evictions – on the West Bank at East London – will be celebrated at a function to be addressed by Didiza, chief land claims commissioner Wallace Ngoqi and East London mayor Lulamile Nazo.
About 1E800 claimants, known as the Nongqongqo Land Claimants, submitted claims for the West Bank land, which is currently occupied by DaimlerChrysler South Africa.
The former location was founded on the West Bank of the Buffalo River in 1849 and was maintained by the local authority as a separate black township until the inhabitants were forcibly removed in 1965 in terms of Section 3 of the Bantu (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act of 1945 to Mdantsane, in the case of blacks, and to the Buffalo Flats, in the case of coloureds.
At the time of their eviction, most of the white residents of the West Bank area supported the National Party.
A memorandum of agreement was signed in March by the affected stakeholders – the regional land claims commission, the Department of Land Affairs, the Nongqongqo claimants committee, Mercedes Benz South Africa, and the East London transitional local council – to wrap up the resettlement.