IN August 2019 as I was doing research for my book A Desire to Return to The Ruins – I learnt of the passing of 89-year-old Mndeni Sikhakhane at his home in KwaZulu-Natal.
He was one of the key litigants in a case brought by thousands of farm labour tenants to reclaim their land tenure rights.
In the book I write about other elderly land claimants who sadly passed on before they could realise the dream they harboured for many painful decades – to return to the ruins where they and their forebears were forcibly displaced by a brutal, racist, white minority government.
Since submitting claims for the return of their land through the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994, many had been frustrated by never ending red tape and incompetence within the state machinery.
In fact for the longest time before the formation of the EFF in 2012, it seemed at some point, the process had ground completely to a halt.
That was until the ANC was woken from its slumber by the emergence of the EFF which took up the land issue with such vigour, it succeeded in forcing the ANC to support its parliamentary motion to amend the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation.
Since it was voted into power in April 1994, the ANC has never appeared to have the land restitution and reform issue as a top priority.
Various players, including civil society groups, political parties and ordinary folk point to a lack of political will from the ANC to aggressively tackle the land issue.
This is deeply sad because it was the dispossession of land and violation of land rights of indigenous South Africans by the racist Union of South Africa, that mobilised leaders from different parts of the country to establish the SA Native National Congress, later renamed the African National Congress.
It has since become the norm for ANC leaders to take to public platforms to sing the same old song about the slow pace of the land restitution process, offering now tangible solutions.
At the opening of the party’s 55th conference last week ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa noted that “the 54th National Conference recognised, the pace of land reform has been too slow to meet the needs of the majority of citizens who remain landless.”
This was in essence, acknowledgement of failure, that in the five years since 2017, the ANC was still failing to deliver on the land issue.
These days the ANC has even resorted to avoiding mentioning the exact number of outstanding land claims, choosing instead to focus on its supposed successes in the form of billions spent and the number of hectares restored to the people.
Ramaphosa continued on this trajectory in his political report at the opening of the ANC’s 55th National Conference.
He said: “Since the advent of democracy, government has transferred over 4 million hectares of land through restitution and over 5 million hectares through redistribution, accounting for nearly 11% of commercial farmland.”
He acknowledged however that “this is far below the initial target of 30% by 2014.”
In May 2020 the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR) told a meeting of the Parliamentary portfolio committee on Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development that targets for its five year Strategic Plan were to settle 2150 land claims and to finalise 2200 claims in line with the current budget and capacity.
The commission said there were 7 743 outstanding land claims. But it noted that due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown, it had to revise its targets for 2020/21.
Earlier, in the 2019/20 annual report of the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights the chief land claims commissioner Nomfundo Ntloko-Gobodo mentioned that the commission had “improved dramatically from the rather dismal 42% delivery on settled claims in the previous year to settling 436 claims this year.”
She noted that in addition the commission had been able to “finalise 686 claims to the amount of R2 683 313 that flowed directly to beneficiaries by ways of land or financial compensation.”
In the same report Minister Thoko Didiza said “in excess of 49 294 South Africans benefitted through the programme by having their land restored, or, where this was not possible or feasible, being paid financial compensation.”
In the department of rural development, agriculture and land reform’s 2021/22 annual report Didiza notes that the department has acquired 55 235 hectares of land through the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) for redistribution.
She said work is also underway toward the establishment of the Land and Agrarian Development Agency, and that the conceptual framework for its creation is expected to be completed by the end of the 2022/2023 financial year.
Ramaphosa told his party’s 55th national conference: “Despite the setback to our efforts to amend Section 25 of the Constitution, we continue to pursue all available options, including through legislation like the Expropriation Bill, to implement our 54th National Conference resolution on land redistribution without compensation.”
He further mentioned that “there are a number of instruments we will use to drive meaningful land reform, not only to correct a historical injustice but to also use our land more effectively for economic growth and transformation. The ownership of land and the transfer thereof in rural areas under the control of our traditional leaders is being addressed with their full participation. An essential part of a more inclusive economy is greater access to land for all those who work it and need it.”
Maybe to be fair to the ANC one could argue that prior to 1994 they had no experience in governing a country, let alone the capacity to take on a project as massive as the land restitution process.
It could be further argued that perhaps in the first five years after the passing of the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994 they were consumed with the process of setting up systems and getting to grips with the massive task at hand.
But what reasonable justification is there for the deplorable results of the land claims process in the period from 1999 to the present? It’s been 23 long years since and we are still sitting at more than 7 000 outstanding land claims.
It seems that to the ANC the land matter is a convenient electioneering tool used to wind up the emotions of voters ahead of elections. Can such a party still be trusted to deliver on the deeply emotive issue of land restitution and land reform after having skirted around the matter for more than two decades?
We may never truly know the extent of the number of the dispossessed who like Sikhakhane, died with broken hearts while waiting for the restoration of their land tenure rights under a democratic government.
But the great number of outstanding land claims still waiting to be resolved, estimated at between 7000 and 9000 tells of a tragedy of great proportions. – news@mukurukuru.co.za
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