Barry Streek
Controversy-dogged land tenure legislation is to be tabled in Parliament next year, after a week-long national conference on land rights at which the government hopes to forge consensus among conflicting actors in the land field.
The legislation is intended to give tenants, living under chiefs’ tenure, rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Seen as crucial to attracting investment to rural areas, it has been resisted by traditional leaders.
Originally drafted by the former land affairs minister, Derek Hanekom, it was shelved before the 1999 election as the African National Congress feared an electoral backlash from chiefs. It is still under wraps.
Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza said in Parliament this week she plans to introduce the Bill to Parliament next year after consensus has been forged at a national conference.
To be held in November in Durban, under the banner of Finding Solutions, Securing Rights, the meeting will be addressed by President Thabo Mbeki.
One of the conference themes will be a focus on securing rights on communal land, including the transfer of ownership to communities, individuals and groups; options for tenure forms including freehold, commonhold, community property associations and trusts; and the registration of rights in communal land.
Didiza said she wants everyone involved in land issues, including political parties, parliamentarians, NGOs, traditional leaders, government departments and rural communities, to attend the conference.
Didiza, who was briefing the National Council of Provinces land committee, also defended the controversial moratorium she imposed on land redistribution projects when she took office in 1999. Critics complain that the moratorium has led to a two-year stagnation in the redistribution programme.
Didiza said that when she took office there was already a backlog of projects under review. Hanekom had started to review the programme when it became clear that some of the larger projects were unsustainable and had been hit by infighting.
“There was no point in continuously accepting projects when you don’t know what you have to do,” she said. “The programme was easily abused. That’s where you had a rent-a-crowd.”
The moratorium has helped her department establish the real needs and “tighten the screws”.
“It is important to understand [the moratorium] in its context because none of the projects were thrown out of the window,” Didiza said. “We never said the projects in the pipeline are not going to resolved. Some of those processes were finished last year.”
Didiza said the government has to build living communities and that reform is not about settling claims and walking away. “It mustn’t haunt us years afterwards where we can say we have settled so many claims but the communities are struggling to survive.”
The policy review is continuing because “in the land reform mix you do need assistance for land settlement, agricultural development, commonage needs, subsistence farming and share equity. All of them have a space within the land reform programme.”
On land expropriation for reform, Didiza emphasised that restitution has to be legal. As far as possible, negotiation has to be used in the transfer of property to people dispossessed under apartheid. However, expropriation will be used when all alternatives fail.
Didiza told the committee that 63 000 land restitution claims had been lodged by the 1998 cut-off date and 12 150 had been settled by the end of March this year.
Chief land claims commissioner Wallace Mgoqi said at least 9 500 claims will be settled during the current financial year.
Didiza said 80% of all claims lodged are urban, and these will benefit about 300 000 people. Four million people stand to benefit from rural claims.