Today Riebeeck East residents can enjoy face to face assistance with land claims.
Today Riebeeck East residents can enjoy face to face assistance with land claims.
To facilitate access to the land claims processes, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform is travelling around the country.
The Department's mobile lodgement office was in Grahamstown on Tuesday 1 December and was scheduled to be in Alicedale Wednesday 2 December. Regional land claims lodgement staff, led by Odwa Metu are travelling with the bus.
Assistant director of communication at the Office of the Regional Land Claims Commissioner for the Eastern Cape, Nandi Sondati, explained.
"Last year the President allowed the re-opening of the restitution process by signing into law the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act of 2014, and this will see the process of the lodgement of claims being extended to the 30th June 2019," Sondati said.
The Office of the Regional Land Claims Commissioner has since set up two lodgement offices for the Eastern Cape, in East London and Queenstown.
"Due to the distance of the offices from the rural communities across the Eastern Cape and the means for communities to get to the two offices, the Minister introduced mobile lodgement buses and all-terrain 4X4 trucks that will continue to be deployed to the rural communities of the Eastern Cape until 30 June 2019," Sondati said.
"The mobile lodgement offices are assisting people who wish to lodge their land claims."
"The bus is going around the province until 2019 so should there be people left out now, arrangements will be made for the bus to come back," Sondati said.
The department's mission is 'Reversing the legacy of the 1913 Natives' Land Act'.
There are three types of claim: church, community and family, in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act, 1994 (Act No. 22 of 1994), as amended in 2014. There is a slightly different procedure for each.
Who can come and lodge claims?
A person or a community who was dispossessed of a right in land after 19 June 1913 as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices, and who did not receive just and equitable compensation at the time of dispossession, can claim for restitution of that right in land or equitable redress.
Categories of claimants:
• An individual dispossessed of a right in land.
• A direct descendant or spouse of a person who lost a right in land.
• A juristic person, e.g. a company or a trust.
• An executor or an administrator of an estate of a
deceased person.
• A representative of a community.
What you need to make your claim
Church claim
Stamped nomination letter from the church members/Leaders
Proof of Property description
Certified ID copy of the claimant
Minutes of the meeting where the representative was nominated (stamped)
Attendance register of the meeting where the representative was nominated
(All stamped)
Community claim
Nomination letter that appoints the members to represent the community
List and number of households in the community
Number of beneficiaries
Number of female headed households
Minutes of the meeting where the representatives were nominated (Date, Venue and Resolution of the meeting)
Attendance register of the meeting where the representative were nominated
Alternative contact numbers
Letter from the chief
(All stamped)
Family Claim
Certified ID copy of the nominee and family members
A stamped nomination letter from the family members/Affidavit
Proof of property description / 2 affidavits from the witnesses and ID copies(not family members please ) / Letter from Chief
Death certificate of the deceased
Attendance register
Minutes of the meeting about the dispossession
(All stamped)
