Many tenants still lack the security of title deeds

The ANC is keeping beneficiaries to hostage for its own failures

This week the people of the Eastern Cape have their chance to be heard at the Constitutional Review Committee’s public hearings.

However, it is important to note that people have been talking for decades but their cries for land ownership have not been heard.

The Gwatyu community in the Eastern Cape is emblematic of millions of people who have been denied land ownership by an uncaring ANC government.

Despite their concerted efforts over the past years, over 1 500 members of the Gwatyu Communal Property Association (CPA) remain in the same position they were in during apartheid – tenants of the land they live on, and at the mercy of government. They have endured decades of empty promises and are not any closer to owning their land now than twenty

years ago. The Gwatyu CPA reached out to the DA looking for assistance in their fight to gain ownership of the land they live on. They heard that the DA is the party that stands firmly on the side of giving real ownership to black farmers. Not just making them permanent tenants of the state, which is the ANC’s current model, but real owners. The DA has been assisting the Gwatyu community by pressuring the department of rural development and land reform to register the CPA and finally clear the path for title transfer.

The government however seems reluctant as ever to cede ownership.

While the EFF dreams of wholesale state custodianship of all land, the ANC is already practising it. The minister of rural development and land reform has confirmed yet again that they have no intention of handing over land to beneficiaries. This was revealed in a DA parliamentary question reply that under the current land reform programme, the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS), land reform beneficiaries can only lease land from the state and not own land. The minister then states that it will only be reconsidered whether to cede ownership pending “the outcomes of the review of the White Paper and the parliamentary review process of the Constitution on land expropriation without compensation”.

The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies found that in the Eastern Cape some beneficiaries didn’t even have leases on land allocated under PLAS, let alone the utter lack of post-settlement support. Farmworkers face increased tenure insecurity and livelihood uncertainty and in some cases, have lost their jobs when farms changed hands.

Financing farming operations becomes more difficult if there is no direct ownership through formal title and the ANC’s insistence on the notion of “use-it-or-lose-it” puts this land at risk.

The ANC has blamed all the ills of the slow pace of land reform on the Constitution, and yet it is the very ANC that is denying rightful beneficiaries ownership of land. Among the 20.7 million hectares owned and administered by the department, are more than 4 300 farms that are yet to be transferred to their rightful owners.

The ANC is also not protecting those with existing land rights. In communal areas the government has failed to protect people with insecure land rights. While the ANC and EFF claim communal land will not be expropriated they do nothing to ensure that the current land rights of residents are protected. That is why the DA has approached the South African Human Rights Commission to launch an investigation into the lack of protection for South Africans with these rights.

The DA remains the only party that supports the extension and protection of land ownership so that more black people can own their land. Under a DA national government, communal residents will own the land they live on and suitable government-owned land will be used for redistribution purposes. Where feasible, expropriation of land with compensation will be made possible but not at the expense of food security. Additionally, those land owners who want to farm will receive the support they need to be successful, through the transfer of skills and by providing access to the resources and markets they need to sell their goods.

The only real constraint to land reform remains the ANCled government that continues to hold beneficiaries hostage for its failures. The ANC simply needs to put South Africans first by giving ownership rather than forcing our citizens to be tenants on the land.

The DA remains the only party that supports the extension and protection of land ownership so that more black people can own their land