We must learn from mistakes made in land restitution process

ON JUNE 30, President Jacob Zuma signed the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act and re-opened the land claims process. In the next round of land restitution, South Africa must build on the successes and learn from the mistakes of the first round.

My recently released book, We Want What’s Ours: Learning from South Africa’s Land Restitution Program (Oxford University Press, 2014), is based on 150 interviews of South Africans forcibly removed from urban areas in Gauteng and the Western Cape, who received compensation through the restitution programme. The book provides a bottom-up evaluation of its successes and failures.

One of the study’s main findings was that the land restitution process often left the poorest of the poor feeling disrespected and ignored because they did not have the capacity to make their voices heard. With nearly 80 000 claims to settle and limited resources, officials had to pick which claims would receive the institutional attention they deserved.

As the proverb says, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the oil. So, who was able to make the most noise? The interview data shows it was individuals and communities who were able to constantly call and visit the commission.

The Paarl community is a good example. Paarl was among the first communities to receive compensation in the Western Cape. When claimants from nearby communities, who were struggling to get through the process, learnt the commission had finalised Paarl’s claim, they asked Mr Karl* (one of the leaders in Paarl’s claimant committee) for advice. He said: “If you don’t go there, if you don’t set up meetings and you don’t speak to them constantly, you will get nowhere. There are so many people coming to them, so many claims. If you’re not making sure they look at your claim, they’ll just leave it.”

Mr Karl was right. Most of the commu- nities and individuals in the study that successfully navigated the process reported that constant calls and contact was their main strategy. Poor people didn’t have the taxi fare to constantly go to the commission’s regional offices in the city centre to hold officials accountable for promises or to buy air time to call the commission for updates. As a result, poor people were left with the short end of the stick.

Mrs Doe’s* story was illustrative. During apartheid, Mrs Doe’s family was evicted from Cape Town’s city centre and they filed a claim through the land restitution programme. She reported: “There was no communication. I had to go every time – the only way to make anything happen was to be face to face with the right people. My phone bill was sky-high every month and I’m a pensioner. Yes! And on crutches; on crutches every time I had to go in.”

Like many other claimants, Mrs Doe’s pension was her main source of income. It was only at great financial and physical cost that she was able to use the strategy of constant contact to push her claim forward.

This strategy, however, was out of Mr Rabodila’s* reach. The apartheid authorities evicted him and his family from the Luyolo location in Simon’s Town, moving them to Gugulethu. Mr Rabodila was one of the leaders who guided his community through the restitution process. He described his community’s experience: “You run rings to get those people. They set up meetings, you go the day of the meeting, and you wait there for hours and then only to be told: ‘No, that man is out of town.’ It’s full of bureaucrats. You won’t win for reasons unknown. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack to get those commission people.”

Mr Rabodila was a pensioner who lived in a hostel, and did not have the money to repeatedly visit and call the commission. As a result, he was left frustrated and in the dark. When I asked him what message he had for the land claims commissioner in the Western Cape, he said: “You are doing an injustice! Yes, it’s an injustice!”

This time round, the commission must create a more effective communication strategy so claimants know exactly what is going on with their claim and are not left uninformed and feeling like second-class citizens. If not, the poorest of the poor will continue to feel disrespected and ignored, and the restitution process may inadvertently salt the wounds it was meant to heal.

If you are interested in hearing more about We Want What’s Ours, please join us at the Book Lounge (71 Roeland Street) tomorrow at 5.30pm. I will be joined by Andries du Toit, the director of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies at UWC, to lead a discussion about what must happen in round two of restitution.

Atuahene is a professor of law at IIT, Chicago-Kent College of Law and chief executive of Land Solutions International. She is a graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has done extensive research, writing, public speaking and consulting on land issues. For more information on her book, go to wewantwhatsours.com