Labour tenant claims ‘going nowhere slowly’
Nearly half of all labour tenant claims remain unresolved two decades after the start of the process.
Only 11,422 out of 20,523 claims have been resolved since 2001.
Labour tenants received land instead of payment in exchange for labour during apartheid.
After the labour tenant system was declared unjust in 1996, the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development was tasked with approving land claims and handing title deeds.
Project manager at the Association For Rural Advancement project, Siya Sithole, said the slow processing of these claims has put labour tenants in a situation where they face possible eviction by the current land owner.
He says the department admitted in the Land Claims Court that they had abandoned the Labour Tenants Act.
“The department attempted to use other laws and other policies to process labour tenant claims, but in doing that, they diminished the rights of labour tenants, grouping them with other families that had rights,” Sithole said.
Sithole said he asked the court to compel the department to process the Labour Tenants Act, which is only being done now.
“The slow pace is caused by the department’s unwillingness to work collaboratively with key stakeholders and role players in the sector, such as organised agriculture, AgriSA and provincial landowner organisations.
“The department is working on its own, pushing away special masters, pushing away civil society, and sidestepping the community-based organisation. It is going at this alone, and that is what is causing delays,” he added.
Sithole believes the separation of the Department of Agriculture from the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development will cause further delays.
He said the Department of Agriculture, led by John Steenhuisen, has a large support base consisting of landowners who rely on the Democratic Alliance to ensure that their rights are protected.
“Then you have honourable [PAC leader Mzwanele] Nyhontso, who is the Minster of Land Reform and Rural Development, who is tasked and mandated to push through land reform to ensure that the state facilitates the land from those who own it to the previously advantaged."
He said the two ministers need to work together despite serving vastly different constituencies.
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