South Africa : South Africans' long wait for land

panafrica

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Aug 24, 2002
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It is more than 15 years since Monwabisi Boco and his neighbours were evicted from white-owned farmland under South Africa's old apartheid laws.

But the community of 400 families at Roodekop, on the edge of Greater Johannesburg's urban sprawl, still do not have land to call their own, despite the post-apartheid government's stated commitment to land reform.

They are fighting a court case to prevent their eviction from a piece of unoccupied land that they were allocated only recently by the local council.

The Roodekop community, formerly tenants on a nearby white-owned farm, were evicted from there in the late 1980s, and built tin shacks on a council-owned site next to a river.

When heavy rain destroyed some of the shacks last year, local officials told the affected families they could move their dwellings onto an adjacent piece of land - apparently unaware that the land in question was privately owned.

The landlord went to court to have the families evicted, and the case is still pending.

Mr Boco feels the community is being unfairly targeted after moving onto the land in good faith: "We didn't take it by force, we spoke to the councillor. But the owner didn't open a case against the councillor, he opened it against us."

There are indications that Mr Boco and his neighbours were misled - whether deliberately or accidentally - by a council official who told them that the new piece of land had been purchased by the council on their behalf.

Neville Chainee, head of housing for the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Council, says that moving the shacks onto the privately-owned land was only intended as a temporary solution after people were made homeless by the floods.

Close to the shack settlement, other land that was once vacant is blanketed with the tiny homes known as RDP houses, after the Reconstruction and Development Programme put in place after the 1994 elections.

Some of the people who live there are tending gardens, or have added extensions to the basic starter units built by the government.

The ANC government has identified the housing backlog as a policy priority, and has constructed 1.6 million new homes since it came to power.

The situation of uncertainty has made it impossible to install basic facilities
On several occasions, Mr Boco says, the Roodekop residents have been told by the council that they will be included in these new developments - but each time they have been passed over.

Mr Chainee refutes suggestions that the Roodekop residents are being discriminated against: "We have a development programme that stretches 10 years ahead - people will become impatient, that's understandable, but people are not being passed over."

One option being investigated by the government is draining the swamp area near the river to make it suitable for building.

Mr Chainee sets out the difficulty faced by the government in providing land to those who need it: "We have limited resources, and we've got to comply with legislation. The state is not in possession of all land."

The Landless People's Movement (LPM), which has taken up the case of the Roodekop community, believes that the current legislation around land is preventing South Africa from moving beyond the patterns of land ownership established under apartheid, which left the black majority with access only to 13% of the land.

At this week's summit, the LPM will be calling for an end to the property rights clause in the South African constitution.

The organisation is in favour of a "social obligation" clause similar to the one in the Brazilian constitution, which allows for the expropriation of land that, for example, is not being productively used.

The LPM also wants a change in the government's "willing buyer, willing seller" approach to land redistribution, which obliges the authorities to pay a market price for land acquired from private owners on behalf of a landless community.

There are signs that a change in the law might have helped the Roodekop community out of their current state of limbo.

"There were negotiations between the owner and the municipality over the price issue, but it came to nothing," says Simon Delaney, the lawyer representing the community.

A legal representative for the family that owns the land said he did not want to comment while the case was before the court.

Capacity

But the law is not the only hurdle.

Aloysius Masikane: "If I have land I can do something myself"
"There must also be political willingness and administrative capacity," Mr Delaney says.

"In some places land has been allocated and pots of money are waiting to be used. It's not any fault of the constitution that the government has a backlog."

In the case of the people of Roodekop, legal restrictions and administrative mistakes have combined to leave them in limbo.

Although a farmer on another adjacent property has installed communal taps on their site, their temporary status has prevented the installation of electricity, sewerage and other amenities.

Roodekop resident Aloysius Masikane says land, not housing, is the most urgent priority: "I cannot have a house without land, but if I have land I can do something myself."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4718707.stm
 
South Africa is for the first time forcing a white farmer to sell his land under a redistribution plan. The government served an expropriation order on Hannes Visser.

The move came after failed talks between Mr Visser and the Land Claims Commission, set up to return to black people land they lost under apartheid.

Mr Visser said he would challenge the decision in court. The government says it wants to hand over about a third of white-owned farm land by 2014.

But progress has been slow, as the policy until now, has meant that both the seller and buyer have to agree on the terms, the BBC's Peter Biles in Johannesburg says.

Mr Visser has the 500-hectare (1,250-acre) cattle and crop farm in Lichtenburg in North West province.

South Africa's landless have been calling for swifter land reform

His family bought it in 1968, but a black family has lodged a claim to the property dating back to the 1940s.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, Mr Visser and the Land Claims Commission have been trying to negotiate, but failed to agree on the value of the property.

The government had offered to buy the farm for $275,000 but Mr Visser says it is worth almost twice as much.

Mr Visser now has 21 days to respond to the notice of expropriation.

In the 11 years since the end of apartheid, less than 4% of farmland has been transferred from white to black ownership, he says.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4340396.stm
 
riveting!

:great: :great: :great: :great: :great: :great: :great: :great: :great: :great:
may i ask a question brother pan? i've been a debate with the white scholars in my school and they feel that we, as black people are juat reversing the apartheid era... this text just reminded me of a girl who's family lost their land a while ago as well..

it took them a while to get back on their feet...

they all made pretty good arguments about the subject.. and sometimes it DOES depress me that kids in the first grade are learning more about racial segregation than they are their ABCs...
i think it's great that we're getting back what's rightfully ours but... at what point is it all going to end?
don't think i'm being disrespectful or anything, i just really wanna know.
 
plainrhythm said:
may i ask a question brother pan? i've been a debate with the white scholars in my school and they feel that we, as black people are juat reversing the apartheid era... this text just reminded me of a girl who's family lost their land a while ago as well..it took them a while to get back on their feet...they all made pretty good arguments about the subject.. and sometimes it DOES depress me that kids in the first grade are learning more about racial segregation than they are their ABCs...i think it's great that we're getting back what's rightfully ours but... at what point is it all going to end? don't think i'm being disrespectful or anything, i just really wanna know.

Plainrhythm:

Political power means nothing without economic power. Blacks will continue to occupy the lower economic position in the country as long as they do not possess resources. Whites in South Africa hold over 87% of the land despite being only 7% of the country!! That is insane! It is numerically impossible for such numbers to exist in a country which does not have a legacy of slavery and colonialism. How do you think white gained possession of so much land? The stole it...plain and simple, and I´d like the white scholars at your school to try and argue otherwise! The only "reversing" that blacks in South Africa are doing, is the reversal of the damage to their prosperity and dignity during apartheid! The land needs to be redistributed in South Africa, and the rest of Africa needs to follow. It should have happened years ago.
 

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