The South African government on Wednesday confirmed it was considering classifying land owners in South Africa in terms of their race and nationality, but said this was being done purely to help it gauge the pace of land reform.
Earlier in the day, Beeld newspaper published a report claiming existing land legislation is to be amended to allow information on race and nationality to be shown on owners’ title deeds.
Speaking to Sapa, Land Affairs Department chief registrar of deeds, Sam Lefafa, said a meeting of Parliament’s land affairs portfolio committee on Tuesday had declared the issue to be ”fairly urgent”.
However, such information would ”not necessarily appear on title deeds”.
Referring to the Beeld report, Lefafa said ”I never said [at the committee meeting] it would appear on title deeds”.
He said a ”big review process” was currently under way within the department, and the issue of establishing who owned what land was one of the briefs.
On completion, the results would put government in a position to answer two frequently-asked questions.
”The first is the extent of foreign land ownership in South Africa; and second is the extent to which blacks have acquired land.
”It is important to know how many black people have acquired land since 1994; it is necessary to know the extent of the impact of land-reform policies.”
Lefafa said this was a ”very innocent exercise” and a ”purely government issue”, aimed at providing it with such information.
However, he also conceded it was contentious and of a ”sensitive nature”.
”We will have to find ways to mitigate this”.
On how information on race and nationality was to be obtained from existing title deed holders, he said: ”We will have to be creative in that sense and interrogate our database.”
According to the Beeld report, the amended legislation could be in place before the end of the year. – Sapa