‘Landless data’ could improve monitoring of land reform

To measure the progress being made with land reform, it is important to determine how many South Africans remain landless.

This was according to Nomzamo Zondo, the director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (Seri).

Zondo and Ashraf Mahomed, managing director of Ashraf Mahomed Attorneys, were hosted by Siviwe Mdoda, land justice educator at the Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education, at a webinar during which South Africa’s Expropriation Bill was discussed. The question asked of panellists was: “Will the state’s approach to the Expropriation Bill speed up land reform?”

During the webinar, Zondo focused on what was missing from the bill, and also provided some thoughts on what should be included in order to achieve success with land reform.

“With the current system in place, we only have a record of who owns the land. This means that over 60% of our population is not [acknowledged] because they do not own land, and are therefore not catered for.”

She explained that the system needed to be able to record anyone with access to land and their rights, not only the owner.

“For example, if you are dealing with a farm where there are ESTA [Extension of Security of Tenure Act] occupiers, you recognise the owner, but also the occupiers. The same goes for labour tenants. In this way you are then able to see what you need to do to either increase the tenure of the people who are at the bottom [of the list], or possibly expropriate from the persons who are at the top.”

Zondo also pointed out that elite-capture, corruption and inefficiency were crippling the land reform programme. She said this was the reason why people who had submitted their claims over 20 years ago were still waiting.

The transparency and monitoring of the bill needed to be discussed, she said. “It doesn’t help us to have a bill that gives government power when we can’t hold them accountable.”

To address these issues, she suggested that an ombudsman be appointed to oversee communities’ expropriation cases, as a way of creating a balance between state officials and affected communities.

According to Zondo, another weakness of the bill was the fact that there was no real engagement with beneficiaries. “As long as the voices of the communities are not included in the expropriation process, we are not going [to get] far in terms of the bill’s intended purpose. [In] 27 years we have not moved very far.” – Jeandré van der Walt

FW ARCHIVE Appointing an ombudsman to assist communities in land expropriation cases could facilitate land reform in South Africa.