A lack of resources, ongoing disputes, corruption and mismanagement of money are just some of the reasons behind a national backlog in land claims that dates back as far as 1994. According to deputy president David Mabuza an amount of R65 billion will be needed to settle all outstanding land claims within five years.
Mabuza recently met with members of the National Council of Provinces and said that KwaZulu-Natal was the furthest behind with 2 234 unresolved claims, followed by Mpumalanga with 1 596, Limpopo with 1 406 and the Eastern Cape with 662 pending cases.
“Notwithstanding progress made in fast-tracking the resolution of outstanding claims, the reality is that the current fiscal constraints are posing limitations to our ability to move with the necessary speed,” he said.
Mabuza admitted that South Africa’s Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights, which is responsible for facilitating land claims, was under pressure and facing several challenges.
“Government is prioritising the resolution of administrative hurdles and challenges that are contributing to the slow pace of our land reform progress, such as making provision for additional human resource capacity to deal with backlogs, and dealing decisively with incidents of fraud and corruption whenever detected.”
Many claimants have died
According to African Farmers’ Association of South Africa’s (Afasa’s) national chairperson, Neo Masithela, it is unfortunate that addressing backlogs is happening at a snail’s pace. He cautioned that this should not be blamed on the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Government is just moving too slowly on land tenure issues. We, however, acknowledge the work that has been done to give land to black people, albeit slowly. We are… asking the government to move faster.
“Government must foot the bill to ensure that they speed up the process and also ensure that black farmers who have claimed land do get their land back.”
Masithela added that if government could bail out state-owned enterprises in financial distress, it should be able to rescue land reform too.
“In real terms… I do not think that government had a plan. [They had no] time frames and no plans; they just go with the flow, saying people will get the land.”
Masithela suggested that, perhaps, a special court was needed to process land claims in the same way that government dealt with illegalities around the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
“How many people have applied for land and died after a very long period? The reality is that the state is not sensitive enough to the applicant. If they were, they would have handled the matter differently.”
Under-resourced and dysfunctional
Annelize Crosby, head of legal intelligence at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz), said that the country’s land claims commission needed a resource boost.
“The number of claims is huge and the rural claims, particularly, are very complex. [The commission has] been trying, but progress is slow. I am sure they can do with more resources,” she said.
In a statement of its own, the commission said that any backlog reductions would require an “additional financial allocation to drastically increase the pace” of settling outstanding claims.
Finding the money to speed up the process will not be simple, however, said Saamtrek Saamwerk Northern Cape coordinator Sehularo Sehularo. He believed that government’s competing needs would make it difficult for the money to be dedicated to land claims.
“[The] land claims court is dysfunctional [and the] land claims commission is under-resourced. Before government pours money, such issues need to be addressed,” he said, adding that the root causes of the slow progress need to be identified and rectified first.
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