n_Land Summit pamphlet

(1)

Birchwood, Boksburg CONCEPT NOTE September 4-6 2014

NATIONAL

LAND TENURE SUMMIT

Department: m

rural development

& land reform

• Clarity on the roles and responsibilities of, and in support of, the CPAs

• Improved governance through separation of land title holding and development and investment structures;

• Improved monitoring of compliance with the CPA Act, as well as departmental policies through:

• The establishment of the Communal Property Associations Office and the appointment of a Registrar of CPAs;

• Strengthening of the advisory capacity of these offices to ensure capacity building and strengthen compliance;

• Pro-active and reactive intervention powers of the Registrar of CPAs with a view of dealing pro-actively with the potential of irregularities.

• The Registrar will have the necessary powers to investigate and report on irregularities, call on CPAs to account, ensure adequate document retention and access to required documentation (internally and externally); and

• Access to courts as a matter of last resort, if required, in the event of irregularities being detected and requiring intervention;

• Improved enterprise development and support;

• Improved accountability and community participation in decision making processes with the introduction of a substantive quorum requirement of 60% of households participating within the CPA;

• The communities will decide (in a meeting where the quorum of 60% of households is present) on the type of governance structure; and

• Future removal of the duality of structures in certain communal areas, where CPAs have been

established in areas with traditional authorities, creating tensions and potential conflict - in the future this practice will be dissuaded.

Agricultural and other landholdings

The proposal seeks to provide for a framework to know and regulate who owns agricultural and other landholdings, to ascertain the extent of such ownership by race, nationality and gender, and how to address existing and future conflicts arising from reforms to the tenure systems.

The strategic objectives of the policy are to:

• Ensure that South Africans have adequate and equal opportunities to gain access to land for residential and productive uses, and are satisfied that historical racial injustices in landholding have been reversed;

• Address major conflicts over land, especially through empowering the yet to be created Land Commission to resolve conflicts arising from the implementation of policies currently being developed;

• Foster conditions that ensure land is utilised to its maximum potential for the greater benefit of all South Africans;

• Enhance land rights and tenure security as well as fostering decongestion within the former homelands;

• Provide for fair, effective and transparent allocation and governance of land to land reform beneficiaries in Commercial Farming Areas and on state-owned land;

• Ensure that South Africa’s most valuable land and land-based assets are recognised, protected and enhanced by foreign persons consistence with the Constitution;

• Improve the ability of the state to monitor and evaluate compliance with constitutional provisions for land tenure and other related reforms through the above database; and,

• Lay the basis for a transparent, fair, accessible and accountable land administration system.

The specific proposed interventions are to:

• Establish a Land Commission;

• Establish District Land Reform Committees to include all key stakeholders;

• Identify and classify controlled land;

• Require full disclosure of land ownership and lease agreements;

• Regulate acquisition and disposal of land by foreign persons;

• Establish and manage a land ownership and lease register;

• Require submission of information on state land;

• Identify district agricultural land use plans;

• Conduct district agricultural value chain analysis;

• Production of district farm valuation rolls;

• District Land Reform Committees to establish minimum and maximum thresholds for agricultural landholdings;

• District Land Reform Committees to formulate and implement district agricultural landholdings plans; and,

• Adjudicate land ownership disputes.

4 GETTING SOUTH AFRICANS TALKING ABOUT LAND TENURE SECURITY

(2)

OBJECTIVES

The aim of the National Land Tenure Summit is to build an inclusive partnership for a common, single and coherent four-tiered land tenure system with particular focus on:

• Strengthen land tenure rights for people living on commercial farming areas;

• Communal land tenure policy;

• Communal Property Institutions; and

• Regulation of agricultural and other land holdings.

KEY CHALLENGES

The root of the land question today arises out of the pervasive process of land alienation that dispossessed the majority of South Africans of their land over the past few centuries.

Commercial farming areas

Legislation meant to curb evictions, provide tenure security and policy interventions to protect evictees have failed to address the growing problem of evictions. The administrative framework within which these laws are managed is uncoordinated and poorly resourced. Subsequently, their implementation and enforcement has been insufficient. Efforts to address land rights of farm dwellers were limited mainly to narrow measures aimed at protecting their land rights on site with little attention and resources given to enhancing their access to agricultural and residential land, and access to viable social services. Policy measures have not sufficiently addressed the land rights needs of the wide range of farm dwellers, workers, tenants and occupiers.

Communal areas

Land rights insecurities and conflicts exist in the communal areas, mainly as a consequence of land shortages, the influx of new land investors and the creation of a new land tenure system in these areas, leading to greater demands for the redistribution of commercial farming areas. Land rights held under local land administration institutions including Trusts, Communal Property Associations and traditional structures face governance challenges due to the lack of clarity and disputes around land rights. The absence of a comprehensive and coherent tenure system and democratic systems for administering and managing these rights has resulted in poor land governance fraught with lack of effective implementation, corruption in land allocation, and increased conflicts between land administration structures and communities, especially impacting the rights of women, youth and other marginalised citizens.

Communal Property Associations

Introducing Communal Property Associations has generated new land tenure insecurities and problems,

which involves persons with vested interests in land, including traditional leadership institutions.

Challenges facing CPAs include:

• poor governance practices and endemic infighting among members, especially regarding substantive and procedural rights;

• inadequate state support and monitoring of CPAs;

• lack of accountability and misrepresentation of communities’ desire on the part of CPAs;

• problematic relations between CPAs and surrounding communities, traditional authorities and other land administration structures, particularly opposing traditional leadership bodies; and,

• widespread disagreements over land use plans and actual land use activities.

Agricultural and other landholdings

Colonial and apartheid governments from the 1900s to end of the 1980s prohibited African people from owning land in 87% of the country or to participate in mainstream agriculture except as labourers. There has thus been a long-held view by the majority of the population - since Plaatjie’s ANC in 1912, the Freedom Charter in the 1950s, the 1990s in the RDP, and now Section 25 in the Constitution - that the land should be shared among those who work it to banish poverty, unemployment and inequality. There is also evidence that suggests that land redistribution from large landholdings to small family farms promotes food security, equity, competitiveness, efficiency, employment and income in and well beyond agriculture and the rural economy. And market liberalisa- tion in the 1990s produced unintended outcomes of lower employment levels, income disparities, land concen- tration, rising barriers to entry and participation in the agricultural sector, and shifts in the balance of power in the agricultural value chains; Furthermore, the decade between 1997 and 2007 witnessed significant shifts in ownership and acquisition of residential and agricultural properties by foreign nationals in certain regions. But the nature, extent, trends and impact of land acquisition, use and investment in the country’s land by foreign persons remains unknown as no comprehensive database exists to develop an understanding of such. Related to this is the absence of information and knowledge of the extent of land holdings by South Africans in terms of race and gender.

THEMATIC AREAS FOR THE SUMMIT

The Summit will focus on four policy proposals in order to obtain some national consensus to implement them:

Commercial farming areas

The policy proposal seeks to resolve land rights disputes and tenure insecurities. Its objectives are to:

• Promote long lasting solutions to land tenure insecurities among farm dwellers and workers;

• Create share equity, co-management and other empowerment schemes arrangements;

• Prevent unlawful evictions of farm workers and dwellers;

• Develop widespread appreciation of land rights among all stakeholders;

• Establish effective land rights adjudication and mediation processes;

• Develop mechanisms to effectively monitor land rights infringements and address policy gaps.

Specific proposed interventions include:

• Promote a decentralised and accessible land rights management system by establishing Land Rights Management Committees to support the resolution of land rights issues;

• Create an accessible land rights information database to promote sustainable land rights awareness and capacity building;

• Implement targeted redress and redistributive measures to improve equitable access to land amongst farm dwellers, workers and other residents of commercial farming areas;

• Incentivise landowners to improve land rights and service delivery for farm dwellers;

• Implement various measures to enhance land rights and tenure options for redistribution and restitu tion beneficiaries;

• Create and support stakeholder fora to institutionalise alternate dispute resolution processes and to promote tenure security; and

• Establish share equity, co-management and other empowerment schemes to enable farm dwellers and workers to become owners, managers, professionals, protected and skilled employees and consumers.

Communal areas

The policy seeks to reform communal tenure to ensure security of land rights and production relations for people living in communal areas. Its objectives include:

• Engender transformation of formal authority relations, specifically the role of traditional authorities and other land governance bodies in relation to that of households and the state;

• Improve democratic land governance and allocation of tenure rights;

• Empower citizens to play an active role in land-related decisions;

• Decongest communal spaces;

• Ensure gender equity in land governance structures and allocation of tenure rights;

• Decrease rural unemployment, household food security, and increase literacy and skills base of communal area residents;

• Stimulate an overall increase in the per capita income and well-being of the poorest 40 per cent of rural South Africans.

• Establish institutionalised use rights, particularly for households, and other users;

• Provide clarity around the respective roles and responsibilities of government, traditional authorities and other land administration bodies and citizens;

Proposed interventions are:

• To transfer state land to communities living in communal areas;

• Institutionalise land rights in communal areas;

• Undertake Rights Inquiry, Surveys and Registration;

• Strengthen and rationalise Communal Area Land Administration Systems;

• Clearly define Authority, Roles and Responsibilities within the Context of Rural Economy Transformation;

• Institute tenure reform within a developmental approach built upon a land redistribution programme;

• Improve land use planning, land valuation and development in Communal Areas;

• Promote the application of Social Solutions to Social Problems; and

• Clarify, strengthen and formalise land rights on State and Trust Lands within the Communal Areas.