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In February this year, I submitted a Private Member’s Bill to address the legislative void with regard to communal land rights. Yesterday, I presented this bill to the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform. The presentation was greeted with unwarranted scepticism as to the impact my bill would have on the rural poor.

Committee members suggested that rural communities may loose economic livelihoods by making bad decisions regarding the sale or use of land. The truth is that government is keeping the rural poor in perpetual dependence by failing to create clear legislation on ‘communal’ land ownership. It is remarkably patronising to suggest that rural communities are not equipped to manage private property rights.

My bill proposes legislation to fill the lacuna left by the now defunct Communal Land Rights Act (CLaRA), initially enacted in 2004. CLaRA attempted to reform the currently insecure land tenure system by transferring communal land, including the Ingonyama Trust land, to communities, and to provide for the democratic administration of communal land by communities.

Most tellingly, though, communities themselves do not want legislation that undermines their security of tenure further.

In March 2010, four communities occupying communal land in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and the North West Province approached the Constitutional Court in an effort to have CLaRA declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it undermined the security of tenure of those living on communal land and that it had been enacted in a procedurally incorrect manner. These communities also challenged CLaRA on the basis that it would undermine gender equity and grant authority to traditional leaders who have not been elected and whose interests do not necessarily reflect those of the communities.

CLaRA was declared procedurally unconstitutional in May 2010. The DA has argued that it should also have been declared substantively unconstitutional. Either way, the Minister informed the court that CLaRA was inconsistent with government policy and would be repealed. Two years later, however, we have yet to see new legislation in its place.

The Chief Justice at the time, Sandile Ngcobo, emphasised that the Constitution obliges the state to see that “people and communities that whose tenure of land is legally insecure as a result of racially discriminatory colonial and apartheid laws [must] be provided with legally secure tenure or comparable redress”.

I therefore submitted the Private Members Bill to aid parliament in its task of adhering to its constitutional mandate in the important respect of land restoration.

Our stated purpose is to see legislation drafted which will vest ownership directly with the people currently living on communally owned land. To speed up the process of transferring land historically owned by the former homelands to individuals, we want legislation that will address the challenge of collective land tenure. In other words, we want to see collective land rights converted into other forms of land ownership which will place more power in the hands of the people of South Africa. This will empower the poor with financial assets which they can employ as collateral – a fundamental building block for wealth accumulation and becoming a master of one’s own destiny.

The idea that the poor will simply sell their assets and use the wealth for unproductive purposes is not borne out by history. Individual property rights are an almost universal cornerstone of meaningful economic development. Trying to legislate against the risk of irresponsibility is patronising in the extreme.

CS Lewis once wrote that: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely expressed for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive”. The DA’s proposal is designed to free the rural poor from the very tyranny here warned against.

I will continue with every mechanism available to me to canvas for the National Assembly's acceptance of this Private Members Bill in order to achieve reform of the current precarious and feudal tenure status quo.