‘Change in constitution would hurt poor most’
IF the constitution is changed to allow land restitution without compensation, it would set off a chain reaction that would hit poorer communities – and the recipients of the land – the hardest.
This is according to veteran property valuer MC Dippenaar, who has served the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs for 46 years and has seen farms trade hands a number of times in his career.
“It doesn’t work,” Dippenaar, 64, fondly known as Oubaas by his colleagues, said.
“If the constitution is amended, it would be catastrophic for the country. Restitution without compensation would collapse all forms of property rights and the economy.
“Foreign investors would not want to invest in the country, and it would set off a chain reaction that could affect food security – and that means everyone, including the people that would receive the land, would be hit hard.”
Dippenaar, who has lived in Port Elizabeth since the department’s regional office moved here from Graaff-Reinet in 1994, said he hoped land redistribution would be approached wisely.
“Agriculture is complex and dependent on external factors, including nature and markets, and requires meticulous planning,” Dippenaar said.
“Land is being awarded to people without agricultural training. The state should rather identify young people and send them to agricultural colleges [before giving them land].
“The only way this is really going to work is if the state buys land adjacent to large or mega-farms, because there is no longer room for small commercial farms.
“If they buy this land and make it part of the larger farm, the recipient can be a shareholder [and benefit from] the farmer’s resources and knowledge.”
Dippenaar, now a chief valuer on the brink of retirement, visited many such farms after starting his career with the department in April 1972.
“We were responsible for valuations across the Cape province, visiting towns from Maclear and Cradock to George and Kimberley.”
After the department moved its offices, his travels were limited to certain Eastern Cape municipalities, including the Sarah Baartman, Amathole and Chris Hani districts, where he valued all the houses and farms in the area as part of general valuations. These were done every seven years.
“In the last 10 years we haven’t done the valuations ourselves, but we’ve been monitoring what the private sector contractors, who are appointed to value the properties, are doing.”
Dippenaar believes valuations have become simpler to conduct over the years.
“When I started, we’d calculate the values based on the costs of establishment minus the depreciation, but from 1993 it has been calculated based on market value. This is actually easier.” The processes are likely to change in future. “We started doing research a few years ago on how it works in other countries, like America and in Europe, where they value the plot the property is built on. This is far [from being implemented here], but it would mean the value is based solely on the erf, with different areas having different tariffs.”
Before this is implemented, though, the state still has a lot of homework to do.
“At present, the state doesn’t have an inventory of all the properties it owns, even though it is estimated that the state owns more than 50% of the land [including national parks, forest plantations and communal land] in South Africa.”
“They can’t put a value on this land if they do not know how large it is,” Dippenaar said.
He said the most pressing problem, however, was the thousands of people living on properties that still belonged to municipalities.
“There are people who have lived in townships for 50 years and just want the title deeds to the houses where they live. They just want jobs and houses, but they can’t move closer to cities and job opportunities because the house [is not theirs to sell].”