Cacadu, the district municipality incorporating Makana, has the highest number of communities who were not given a chance of redress in terms of the Land Restitution Act.
This was revealed by the Chief Director of Land Restitution at the Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Zukile Pityi, during a media briefing in East Londonon Thursday, 10 July.
Cacadu, the district municipality incorporating Makana, has the highest number of communities who were not given a chance of redress in terms of the Land Restitution Act.
This was revealed by the Chief Director of Land Restitution at the Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Zukile Pityi, during a media briefing in East Londonon Thursday, 10 July.
Pityi said out of 991 claims not granted in the province during the lodgement process in 1998 the Cacadu region, with around 300, has the highest number of those claims.
“This area has not rural areas but farms that are now being used by white farmers, in this process we will make sure that the 300 claims are settled,” Pityi said.
He said there are around 35 farms in the Makana area owned by white farmers, which makes it difficult for the people who want to claim that land.
“That is why some of the cases go to court, because the land is being used for other purposes by the white farmers,” he said.
Pityi said an example is the issue of the Salem land claim, whereby previously disadvantaged people claim the land belongs to them.
“The court has decided that the land must go back to the people, but is it a difficult issue because …the farmers who are currently using that land are appealing the decision of the court. We are currently assisting that community with a business plan, so that they can …use that land to develop themselves,” he said.
In May the Land Claims Court ruled that a community claim on land in Salem, 27km south-west of Grahamstown, is valid.
The claim dragged on for more than a decade. The claimants are mostly elderly people with roots in the Salem area. The claim is on land making up the Salem Commonage, a tract of land around the village.
It is occupied by smallholdings and farms ranging from 60ha to 200ha, including a private game farm and lodge.
A spokesperson for the legal counsel for the 17 landowners involved, confirmed that their application for leave to appeal Judge AJ Sardiwalla's judgment is set for a hearing in the Land Claims Court in Durban on 4 August.
Pityi said there are five land claims in Salem granted, but the challenge is that the communities do not know what to do with the land.
“We only get involved up to the post-settlement stage. Unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to assist communities who lodge claims about what they can do to use the land as a benefit to them; that is another department’s jurisdiction of,” he said.
Pityi said the commission had already settled the claim of a community from Farmerfield, near Salem.
“That community was removed from their area and moved to King Williams Town, so now they have been granted that land back. There are many other communities also in Kaba Langa [near Uitenhage]which we are busy processing as this office,” he said.
The Land Restitution Office has two satellite offices where people can lodge claims in the province: East London and Queenstown. The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform responded after President Jacob Zuma signed the Land Rights Amendment Act of 2014, which opens an opportunity for qualifying South Africans, who missed the initial deadline in 1998, to re-lodge their claims. Pityi said this process will be open for five years and the deadline will be the June 30 2019.
Bonani Loliwe of land rights campaign, Vulamasango Singene, emphasised that this issue of re-lodgement of claims did not start because of the elections.
“It is an outcome of consultations that were done by the Minister through public participations. In those consultations it was clear that many people were left out of the lodgement of land claims process, which closed in December 1998.
“This was also part of the resolutions of the Land Summit of 2005, that the state should re-open the land claims process to accommodate those who did not lodge claims,” said Loliwe.
Vulamasango Singene is a campaign of the Border Rural Committee, to give people living in the former Ciskei and Transkei a chance to lodge land restitution claims.
The campaign holds that according to the original act, only people who lived in the former 'white' parts of the Eastern Cape enjoyed access to land restitution claims.
