south africa

south africa
all”. He said the majority of people wanted to
see land reform, but this should be approached
with care.
He said policies in South Africa and
Zimbabwe differed (but he omitted to say that
this might change when the Youth League takes
over the country). “I’m not even certain that the
Constitution of Zimbabwe is the same as that in
South Africa, because with that you must look
at what a country can do.”
He admitted that the government had not
“delivered adequately” on land reform, but it
was working to put this right.
“We are now even looking at re-opening
the land claims,” he said, with reference to the
1998 cut-off date for claims of people who had
lost their land after 1913. “There are problems,
but there is no way that we will do what the
Zimbabweans did. We said we should do things
within the law,” he said.
Spokesman for the Ministry of Rural
Development and Land Reform, Mtobeli
Mxotwa, said a memorandum calling for the
reopening of land claims had been submitted
to Cabinet, which would discuss and hopefully
approve it some time, after which it will go to
Parliament so that the Restitution Act could be
amended.
The reopening would not include opening
claims to those who had lost their property
before 1913, as was previously raised as a
possibility.
There are no time frames. It’s all just about
as clear as the recent 11-page Green Paper on
land reform, a policy document that is supposed
to guide government on how to go about this
rather emotive issue without messing it up
further than it has been so far, but which some
land claims
lobbyists say is no policy paper at all.
It’s also not clear how the reopening of claims
would link to the Green Paper, if at all, but
officials gave the assurance that it does, despite
the Green Paper not making any mention of it.
But Ben Cousins from Plaas said even though
the re-opening of claims was unlikely to be a
massive logistical and financial headache for the
department, it seemed ill thought-out.
“It is true that the information campaign in
the 1990s to get people to register (their land
claims) wasn’t communicated 100% effectively.
Some people who might have claimed, did not.
But if there were large numbers of people, they
would have made a bigger fuss.”
He said government could gain politically from
such a move, and even though there wouldn’t
be that much claims, it still ran a small risk
of running out of money to settle the existing
claims.
A possible clue as to why the process might be
reopened could be found in media reports in May,
saying that land reform minister Gugile Nkwinti
was told at a meeting with residents of Kentonon-Sea
that the land claim period of three years
was too short and poorly publicised. Apparently
people had raised a similar complaint a few days
earlier.
At the time, the department denied reports
that it would reopen the window for land claims,
as it had to be referred to Zuma and his Cabinet
first.
If Zuma’s word is to be believed, the process
seems to be steaming ahead, for now at least.
read more:
1. Grey fog in a green paper in Timeslive
tuesday - 4 october 2011