Cities should lead the country’s reform process

Researcher says a real land revolution is within our grasp

LAND reform is desperately needed in South Africa, but efforts to do this should focus on South Africans who live in cities, and not just those living on rural land.

This is according to a researcher at the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR).

IRR consultant Marius Roodt says land reform efforts should be aimed at giving people who have tenuous land rights in cities the title deeds to their homes.

In an opinion piece, Roodt writes that empowering people by giving them titles to their land will give them dignity and provide them with opportunities they did not have before.

Cape Town recently saw an example of this method of land redistribution when the City of Cape Town gave ownership to Jassiem and Asiela Francis when they received the title deed to 76 Chiapinni Street, Schotschekloof, in Bo- Kaap, where they had been tenants for 24 years (see right).

This method has also been strongly propagated in Joburg by Mayor Herman Mashaba.

Roodt says cities are the engine room of the economy, and should be the focus of what “could be a truly revolutionary land reform process”.

He says South Africa has a history of land dispossession and “this must be rectified to the greatest extent possible”.

“However, most people who have benefited from land reform chose to take money rather than land, showing land hunger is not the burning issue some claim it to be.”

At the same time South Africa is notsimply a rural country, and is urbanising quickly. In 1990 around 52% of South Africans lived in cities. A quarter of a century later, this had increased to 65%.