Why land claims are in such a shambles

As a property valuer I have taken a keen interest in the land claims process going back to the December 31, 1998, deadline for claims.

In 2012 I wrote a widely circulated article detailing with many examples how this 1998 deadline had been ignored by decree of then President Thabo Mbeki, who sanctioned the lodgement of thousands of late claims, all technically invalid.

We now hear that just short of 80 000 claims were lodged, but my guess is that maybe half of these came in after the deadline. Of course this is now old hat with the deadline being extended, but what is interesting is how Mbeki believed that regulations were made for man, not the other way around.

In just one example of many, the KwaZulu-Natal commissioner accepted and published a claim by a local community that their communal land had been taken from them after the relevant year 1913, when this land had been surveyed and registered in ownership of a white settler in 1859! All this able to be verified by the commissioner just a few blocks away from his office in Pietermaritzburg.

During all this, the various commissioners’ offices in the country were in a shambles, due in part to an admitted “lack of capacity of staff ”! How marvellous to hear this from our government: this could apply to our 253 municipalities.

Of course, any office would be in a shambles if thousands of claimants all arrived on New Year’s Eve, to get a December 31 date stamp on their application, but we know this never really happened, as a forensic examination would show. NORMAN E MAURICE SCOTTBURGH, KZN