Some interesting reading regarding land rights given the CC case in 2010 and figuring out who to consult ...in hindsight...
http://mg.co.za/article/2014-07-23-frameworks-on-land-rights-need-to-evolve-and-be-updated
Frameworks on land rights need to evolve and be updated
23 Jul 2014 09:42|
Using Aninka Claassens’s paper, Communal Land, Property Rights and Traditional Leadership, as a springboard, the discussion – which featured panellists such as gender politics and cultural issues researcher Nomboniso Gasa and mining and rural transformation researcher Gavin Capps – touched on the evolution, or lack thereof, of land ownership and tenure laws and the lingering, problematic notion of “custodianship” as it relates to African land ownership. Claassens explained that there were three main laws to be considered when framing the discussion on land ownership.
The first was the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act of 2003, which “takes the tribal boundaries of the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act and makes those the traditional council boundaries of the future”.
The second is the Communal Land Rights Act of 2004, which “transfers title to all the land in the former Bantustans to traditional communities headed by traditional councils”.
The third was the Traditional Courts Bill “which reinforced the construct of unilateral chiefly power within those tribal boundaries that coincide with the boundaries of the Bantustan, enabling chiefs to order forced labour and the power to take away customary entitlement such as land rights”. Claassens explained that the vesting of power in traditional leaders has been deeply disputed historically in places such as Mpondoland, Sekhukhuneland, and the Baforotsi areas, while the laws had been opposed. Bantustan power dynamics
The Communal Land Rights Act was struck down in its entirety by the Constitutional Court in 2010
and the Traditional Courts Bill did not get enough support in Parliament.
“The basis on which they have been contested by organisations such as the Alliance for Rural Democracy,” Claassens said, “is not because people are anti-custom, but because strong opponents feel the laws have nothing to do with custom but with Bantustan power dynamics defeated by rural people in the uprisings of the 1980s."continues
and another section states...
“The Traditional Local Government Framework Act of 2003 was not accidental,” she said. “People thought this affirmation of colonially prescribed culture had something to do with the vote, but that was a little part of it.
There is a much bigger project that is a social re-engineering of identities for the purpose of economic interests, self-interests
. “One of the disturbing things coming out of public discourse and Claassens’s paper is this notion of custodianship, that Africans need custodianship. We need people to hold land in trust for us.
Even this 51% land reform project that Nkwinti is talking about on behalf of farmworkers, that land will go into trust. It is a re-assertion of the Smuts dream. It is the infantilisation of Africans.”
Capps began by explaining that the frenetic growth of the mining industry – especially that of platinum in the 1990s, was at the heart of South Africa’s changing political economy. He argued that “the consolidation of the South African state after 1910 and the whole series of legislation which laid down the spatial, social and racial divisions of the South Africa” was inherited by the 1994 dispensation.
“Chiefs played an important role in the functioning of the system. People were forced to leave the land through taxation and the chiefs were the tax collectors. This is part of their legacy despite the changes experienced in 1994,” he said. Capps said it was key to consider that the platinum belt, which accounts for over 80% of the world’s platinum reserves, fell within two former homelands (Bophuthatswana and Lebowa). He said homelands were turning from places of the production of migrant labour and the dumping ground of the unemployed into new frontiers for the economy.
This was explicitly noticeable in the mining of platinum, especially. “If you’re a capitalist and you want to get a mineral out of the ground, standing between you and that mineral is some kind of land owner or occupier,” Capps said. “Your job, as much as possible working with the state, is to remove that barrier because that barrier is a barrier to accumulation. I don’t think that there is ever one single interest that is able to drive things through, but we have to see the things going on at the moment in terms of these general tendencies.”continues
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http://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-07-seven-facts-about-the-restitution-of-land-rights-act
*Seven facts about the Restitution of Land Rights Act
07 Aug 2014 00:00|
this part interested me...(re consultation delemna)
"4. Traditional land reform traditionally gets shot down
Two significant laws relating to land ownership in former Bantustan areas have been shot down already.
One is the Communal Land Rights Act of 2004, which in effect transferred ownership of all the land in the former Bantustans to traditional communities headed by traditional councils
This law was struck down in the Constitutional Court in 2010.
The other is the Traditional Courts Bill which, according to land rights researcher Aninka Claassens, “reinforced the construct of unilateral chiefly power within those tribal boundaries that coincide with the boundaries of the Bantustan, enabling chiefs to order forced labour and the power to take away customary entitlement such as land rights”.
Lacking sufficient support, this Bill stalled in Parliament." continues
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Laws struck down ? How can an industry operate given these uncertainties and how much does it cost everyone? One minute the councils are legitimate owners and the next a law is struck down AND are those people informed of a 2010 change ?
All it creates is tension and reasons for unrest and disputes.
as shareholders of a proposed project we should have access to information regarding land owners and compensation etc...the incertainty creates suspicion unless you search for reasons for dispute and delay beyond the control of any director....
This may not be relevant to nkwe but it must be a huge barrier to the economy of SA and the future of mining there.
