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Date
: 12/02/2004
Source: Democratic Alliance
Title: Maluleke: Debate on the Communal Land Rights Bill
DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE'S DAN MALULEKE ON THE COMMUNAL LAND RIGHTS
BILL
Madam Speaker
According to Section 25(5) and (6) of the Constitution of the
Republic of South Africa the Bill seeks to:-
1. Recognise and formalise the African Traditional System of
Communally held Land within the frame work provided by the
Constitution
2. Legally secure land tenure rights of communities and people
(including women, the disabled and the youth) within the tenure
system of their choice.
Therefore, the DA supports the Bill.
This Bill is long over due
Madam Speaker, I would like to focus a little on a matter raised by
the Director General in our Portfolio meeting which is a matter of
concern. Can the Minister tell this House if her Department is
about to include racial classifications on title deeds, if so, it
raises the question, will the department reinstate the notorious
pencil test to establish peoples race? Dr Gilinqwe Mayende,
Director General of Land Affairs on the 4th of April 2003 told the
Portfolio Committee that racial classification which was removed
from title deeds in 1996, would be included again. Clearly somebody
is going bananas in the department.
This is another example of the Governments insistence on the use of
racial quotas to inform everything from employment practises to the
composition of sports teams and now private land ownership.
The ANCs obsession with race is disconcertingly similar to
apartheid thinking.
The reason given that the information would be used to assist in
land reform is vague and could in truth imply anything.
Dr Verwoerd and the Former NP Government also used a myriad of
"reasonable" justification to rationalize racial
classification.
Determining race is a murky issue at best, and becoming more so as
South African Society becomes increasingly integrated. One also
wonders what government plans to do with this information. Will it
in the long run be used to influence National Policy, or will it
impact on individual land deals by private citizens?
Is Big Brother watching? While acknowledging that a great deal
still has to be done to correct past injustices, employing
mechanisms used by the Former Oppressor is not the way to go. Ga se
tsona Can the Minister account for Chief Land Claims Commissioner
Tozi Gwanyas statement of the 5th February 2003 that said the
Government is considering opening a six-month window for Eastern
Cape. Such a move would be nothing more than an election manoeuvre
to try and appease people in the Transkei and Ciskei.
An extension cannot be granted because the Land Restitution
Legislation stipulates that the window has closed. It would be
highly problematic, Madam Speaker, to single out one province for
special treatment. People in other provinces who had missed out on
the deadline would definitely have grounds to challenge the
Constitutionality of such a move. If two million people in the
Eastern Cape lost out because of bureaucratic bungling on the part
of the Government, then the Government has a case to answer and
those people should be encouraged to claim against the state for
its maladministration.
Madam Speaker, we are told that Land Restitution is to be completed
by the year 2005. Can the Minister inform this House how possible
that can be? When it is known to the DA that numerous claims remain
unresolved in Limpopo and Eastern Cape which, through no fault of
the claimants, were not finalised due to bureaucratic bungling by
the DLA, resulting in the affected communities missing the window
period deadline.
In the case of Limpopo Province, which has six municipal districts
and has +-5000 claims, 40% of those claims are only at the research
stage to verify legitimacy. This is mainly because of the
commissions ad hoc staffing and losses to greener pastures due to
the insecure status of the Land Rights Commission.
At best, they process and complete 3 claims minimum per annum. How
on earth are they expected to complete 5000 claims in 18 months?
Where are those resources going to come from? One example is a
claim in Tzaneen - Mamatlola. It cost the Department 47 million
Rand. What if, out of the +- 5000 remaining claims, 100 of them are
valued at a similar price of R47 million? Can the Minister explain
where those resources are going to come from and where such
capacity to deal with business of that magnitude will come from? So
the notion that Land Restitution will be complete in the year 2005
is nothing but an electioneering ploy.
In the case of the Eastern Cape, Members of the Keiskamerhoek
Community were promised payment of R55 000 per household as a
result of their forced removal from Terressa Farm. However, through
some convincing cohesion, they were pressurised to sign a 50/50
option of which only half was paid and the balance would come in
the way of job creation projects. To this day this has not
transpired and attempts to get officials from the Department to
come and talk to them has fallen on deaf ears.
Madam Speaker, Land Restitution must be finalized and more
resources made available. It has already taken much longer than
initially anticipated, with negative effects on Capital investment
on farms with outstanding claims, which in turn could impact on
productivity. While the people of the Eastern Cape and other
similar Provinces have a case for financial compensation from the
state, the uncertainty created by the land claim process cannot be
dragged out any further.
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