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President Jacob Zuma opened the 2016 session of the National House of Traditional Leaders with a renewed call to push back the cut-off for land restitution to the 1800s. But:
. His remarks about land reform must be read squarely in the context of the local government elections due by August. They are a misguided appeal mainly to traditional leaders, but also to rural people who are desperate about the slow pace of land reform.
. He promised to push back the 1913 cut-off date before the last election, yet the 2014 Restitution Amendment Act left the date intact.
. “Land reform lies at the centre of the government’s efforts to bring about inclusive economic development,” he said. This is not reflected either in the budget or the effort devoted to land restitution. At the current pace, it will take about 140 years to process just the claims already lodged.
. The president went off script, as he did last year and the year before, to urge traditional leaders to engage top lawyers to claim land for chiefs on behalf of their people. It would take inventive lawyering to overturn the constitutional provision that promises restitution not to chiefs, but to those who were actually dispossessed.
. The land does not, never has, and can never belong to chiefs. It belongs to the ordinary people who use and occupy it, who have inherited it over generations.
. Most communal land is registered in the name of the government and held in trust on behalf of the underlying owners. Section 25(6) of the Constitution makes it clear that tenure vests in those who are insecure because of past racial discrimination – not traditional leaders.
. President Zuma has said he hopes to retire to a traditional title at his Nkandla home, but like the chiefs whose company he seeks, he often forgets the communities he needs to serve.
. “I strongly believe that access to land and security of tenure are key to development,” the president said, but he spoke only of access and security for traditional leaders. Nowhere did he mention the need to secure the tenure of ordinary women and men who live in South Africa’s former homelands: single mothers, Marikana widows, grandfathers with silicosis brought home from the gold mines, young men aspiring to marry.
. Restitution and reform were included in the 1996 Constitution, partly to dismantle apartheid’s Bantustans. Encouraging chiefs to claim vast swaths of land would expand, rather than dismantle, the legacy of the Bantustans.
Boyle is a senior researcher at the Land and Accountability Research Centre at the University of Cape Town.
