JEREMY LOVELL, Cape Town | Thursday
A ROW over land ownership between the South African government and tribal leaders is threatening to derail local elections due next month.
”We do not want to force a postponement, but we are now at a crisis,” said Nkosi Mzimela, chairman of the National House of Traditional Leaders. ”Until this impasse is resolved there is no point in holding the elections.”
The more than 800 traditional leaders in South Africa, whose powerful rights include allocating land in their areas, say that after six years of democracy they have been pushed aside and had their roles reduced to largely ceremonial duties.
Government plans call for their powers to be reduced still further, leaving them with a purely consultative role, after the elections set for December 5.
The leaders are fighting back, insisting that they be given power of veto over the newly elected representatives in the 284 municipalities that have been created out of the previous 843.
The issue has come to a head because the reduced number of municipalities encroach on lands that are the fiefdoms of the traditional leaders.
”Under the government’s proposal, after the elections the powers and functions of the traditional leaders will have been obliterated,” Mzimela said. ”We have moved three steps backwards instead of forwards.”
The traditional leaders would retain their powers on issues such as marriage and the collection of firewood, but would lose their right to allocate land to people and would be refused access to development funds for their areas. These would pass to the newly elected local administrations where the chiefs would sit but would be powerless.
The central issue is that of land distribution rights – a strongly emotive concept in Africa, where possession of even the scrubbiest piece of dirt is a status symbol.
”Under the new system only the rich will be able to have land. There will be homeless people and we don’t want that,” Mzimela added.
”Even the government is divided on this. We are getting calls all the time from ANC (African National Congress) members forced to follow the government line but privately telling us to continue our fight,” he said. – Reuters