Sunday’s awarding of a R102-million land claim settlement to 1 704 people who were dispossessed by apartment’s betterment scheme signalled an irreversible shift in land reform policy that would have major implications for the former Transkei and Ciskei.
The Eastern Cape Provincial Council of Churches (ECPCC) and the Border Rural Committee (BRC) plan to embark on a mobilisation and advocacy process that argues that all South African communities who lost land through betterment should be given at least six months to lodge restitution claims.
Four million South Africans were dispossessed through betterment, mainly in the former homelands, but were denied access to the land restitution programme as the policy was not considered a violation of land rights in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act.
The deadline for the submission of claims was 1998.
Betterment forcibly removed more people than any other apartheid and colonial scheme, including group areas and black-spot removals, by dividing areas into demarcated residential zones mainly in communal areas in the former homelands.
However the 1997 White Paper on Land Reform stated that such claims should be addressed through tenure security, land administration reform and land redistribution support programmes.
This, the ECPCC and BRC, said was a ”flawed policy position”.
BRC director Ashley Westaway said Sunday’s settlement, which followed the Chatha betterment settlement in 2000, proved that betterment dispossession met the criteria of the Restitution Act.
”It’s no longer going to be possible for government to say that betterment does not fall under restitution.”
Westaway said Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza had revised the betterment policy she had inherited in 1999 and that the Keiskammahoek settlement had proved that her new approach was ”irreversible”.
The Reverend Lulama Ntshingwa of the ECPCC said betterment had the same rights issues as restitution.
”Many communities fell outside the deadline – the whole of the Transkei has not been touched – so it could really have a major impact.”
Policy should be informed by the needs of the people, he added.
Eastern Cape Land Claims Commissioner Tozi Gwanya commented that some people were denied their rights as claims had not been lodged because people were told that betterment was not a violation of land rights in terms of the Restitution Act, he said.
The Transkei and Ciskei were particularly affected, he said.
”Government would be worried about the financial implications but it could happen. If there is consistency and fairness, then these people need to be considered because they had losses just as the people here at Keiskammahoek did.” – Sapa