The Regional Land Claims Commission in Limpopo has been accused of accepting land claims at least five years after the December 1998 deadline.
And the local farmers’ association says a farmer’s wife suffered a stroke on being told on May 29 that such a claim had been lodged to her family’s land.
In 2005, the commission had assured her husband, Jack Rall, who owns Rietfontein farm near Mokopane (formerly Potgietersrus), in writing that no claims to the land had been lodged.
”He has Parkinson’s disease and his wife, Mary, suffered a stroke after she was told their farm was under claim,” said a spokesperson for the Transvaal Agricultural Union’s (TAU) northern region, Dries Joubert. ”This kind of unjust administrative action by the commission is not unique.”
Joubert accused the commission of continuing to register and publish land claims in the province long after the cut-off date of December 1998. ”It’s time that white commercial farmers state clearly that they retain the right to reclaim their land if it was lost due to unjust administration action,” he said.
He urged farmers whose land had been claimed to demand to see the original claim forms to ensure the claims were lodged before the deadline. ”It seems very clear that many claims were registered after the cut-off date and land owners are becoming more and more restless,” he said.
Joubert said the TAU is not opposed to valid land claims.
Dimakatso Kekana, executive assistant to regional land-claims commissioner Mashile Mokono, confirmed that any land claims lodged after the cut-off date of December 31 1998 are invalid. She said commissioner Mokono knows exactly which properties are under claim in the province. ”They’re all registered on our database.”
Kekana said the commissioner’s office should have known by 2005 whether Rietfontein farm was under claim.
Asked if the commission would investigate the Rietfontein farm claim, Kekana said: ”I would not know what is done in such a case, but we can pass it on to our legal department to try to find a solution.” — African Eye News Service