Words and Deeds
Current news in the field of property law
An Information Service supplied by the KwaZulu-Natal Law Society

Calling for written comments by interested parties in terms of section 20
GenN 589/GG 28788/28-04-2006

Speaking at the Geoforum Conference in Johannesburg last Friday, Chris Stevens, a partner at Tabacks & Associates, told delegates of the negative and positive results South Africa's mineral codes, namely the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) and the Mining Charter.

Positively, he says, the new legislation had forced the release of rights by South Africa’s larger miners, including those that have been acquired by Wits Gold, which recently listed on the JSE, and of another gold company, which Stevens says will list on London’s AIM soon. Eland Platinum, also recently listed, also bought mineral rights from Anglo Platinum not so long ago and is busy developing a mine on that property.

Mining companies have also been able to merge contiguous mineral rights, which Stevens says would not have been possible in the past. Aquarius Platinum and Anglo Platinum, have signed "pool and share agreements" on contiguous properties over the last few years.

The negatives of the new code include timing delays on the granting of new exploration permits. "Explorers want to come in and do their work quickly," said Stevens, adding that this naivety towards exploration from government was getting better. "My perception is that there is lots more coming through now".

Another negative, which he has seen through his work as a specialist in mining and mineral law, was the granting of "pockets" of rights to applicants. "A company would apply for rights on a large portion of land, and the department was giving rights to other applicants that were dispersed amongst the large portion".

And probably the most negative according to Stevens was the amount of litigation going on following the refusal of mineral rights. TThere is numerous litigation on the go," says Stevens.

Stevens says companies and government need to work together to resolve issues before a right is refused and then reaches the realm of the courts. He describes the issue as the "most negative" as it creates the perception for foreign explorers that they would get into some sort of legal scrap if they attempted to get hold of mineral rights in South Africa.

Anglo American, the largest miner in South Africa, has already confirmed that it has had rights refused and issued court papers to the Department of Minerals regarding the decisions.

The MPRDA officially commenced on 1 May 2004 and gives the State sovereignty and custodianship over the country's mineral resources. The Charter was created to provide a framework for the empowerment of historically disadvantaged South Africans in the Mining Industry.

Mineweb website

The highlight of the Aucor multiple auction held at the Inanda Club yesterday was an A-grade office complex in Pretoria which was knocked down for R47m, but prime industrial properties in Gauteng fared less well.

The auction was notable for a number of huge properties with gross lettable areas as high as nearly 40000m'.

A case in point was what was described as an "enormous" factory, warehouse and offices, forming two adjoining complexes on the corner of Commando, Price and Nobel streets in Industria West, Johannesburg.

The complexes, with a neat office component, are let to a strong-listed tenant.

It sold for a rather low price of R24,5m, which auctioneer Eddie Winterstein said was not an adequate price for such a property.

Equally impressive in size is Trio City on Caithness Road, Ophirton. The complex, with a gross lettable area of 28282m', consists of four buildings on four properties with industrial, warehousing, retail and office components. It sold for R13m.

A factory/warehouse in Heriotdale with a gross lettable area of 6920m' sold for R5,25m.

A light industrial facility on a 35000m' stand in Wadeville offered an office-showroom component with a gross lettable of 1800m' and a 1400m' production factory. There is in additional 20000m' of vacant land ready for development. Bidding moved up slowly until the hammer price of R16,5m was reached.

In Cleveland, a well-let industrial park on Hospital Street, consisting of four factories with a gross lettable area of 7356m' and a large yard fetched R3,15m.

The main attraction was undoubtedly Rentmeester Park, an A-grade office block on Watermeyer Street, Val de Grace, in Pretoria. The office block, with a gross lettable area of 11863m', is 90% let to government and other blue-chip tenants. An adjoining stand on Rauch Avenue with a gross lettable area of 382m' was sold with the office block, and they fetched a combined R47m.

Smaller retail and residential properties also came under the hammer. A building used for retail and warehousing in the central shopping centre of Stilfontein sold for R900000, and the default re-auction of business premises with a gross lettable area of 620m' in Olivedale fetched R2,2m.

Three shops and 12 apartments in a block on Central Avenue in Mayfair sold for R2,8m.

An interesting building, fully fitted and furnished for restaurant use, with a gross lettable area of 509m', on Voortrekker Road in Brakpan, achieved a hammer price of R800000.

On offer in Midrand was an upmarket office block with a gross lettable area of 778m' in Waterfall Office Park, which was knocked down for R5,25m.

There were no offers for two Craighall Park office blocks on Rothersay Avenue.

Randburg again featured with a double-storey block on Hendrik Verwoerd Drive, Kensington B, and seven individual office buildings in The Palms on Main Road, close to the magistrate's court.

The former, with a gross lettable area of 1604m', sold for R5m. The Palms - which is fully let with a gross lettable area of 1750m' - was knocked down for R6,5m.

Rosebank offered what was described as a prestigious double-storey building on Keyes Road. The building, with a gross lettable area of 728m' and exposure to Jan Smuts Avenue, achieved a price of R5,5m.

Two brand new "finish-it-yourself" dwellings in Brooklands Lifestyle Estate in Samrand also came under the hammer.

The one, a 260m' double-storey home with three bedrooms and 2,5 bathrooms sold for R700000 ; the second, a 180m' three-bedroomed house with two bathrooms, sold for R750000.

Savannah Hills Country Estate, in Sagewood Extension 3 Midrand, had a four-bedroomed house with three bathrooms on offer. The house is designed for open plan living.

It sold for R1,75m.

Low-cost housing land in Mafikeng was an interesting offer.

The proposed development for the 27,4ha property makes allowance for 453 units, a shopping centre, filling station, church and schools.

A winning bid of R2,5m was received for the property.

allAfrica website

The recent interest rate hike and the threat of more hikes this year are expected to push the declining rate of growth in house prices even lower than previously expected.

First National Bank property economist John Loos said yesterday that the rate of house-price inflation had been declining steadily, even before the interest rate hike.

Loos said he now expected house-price inflation to "bottom out" at an average rate of 8,4% next year, down from a previous estimate of about 10%. He had also revised this year's house-price growth forecast down from 11,8% to 11,1%.

House-price growth peaked at more than 35% in September 2004, and had since then been declining steadily.

Loos said house-price growth had been declining because housing had become relatively expensive, and this had affected demand.

But he said he expected the housing market to bounce back in 2008.

Loos said that he believed that with good economic growth and gross domestic product growth averaging 4%-5% a year, "demand will start getting ahead of supply again, and we'll see some mild recovery in house-price inflation back up into double-digit figures".

Property economist Erwin Rode, of Rode & Associates, said there was no doubt house-price growth was slowing down. TThe only question is where it will bottom.

"The crucial thing is to what degree supply will be added, given our dysfunctional municipalities," said Rode. He said there were delays in planning approval for residential developments, and that could slow down supply in future.

"That is the big unknown. If supply is going to be elastic, in other words responding quickly to demand, then growth in prices will stay around the inflation rate for the next few years," said Rode.

But he said that if supply was "constrained" and the economy continued growing at the current rate of about 4%, it would boost prices to above the inflation rate.

Rode said another issue that could affect the housing market was the shortage of power.

"There is a question mark around whether municipalities will allow new residential townships to be established when they know they cannot supply the electricity. If such a constraint on electricity supply is going to constrain the supply of new houses, then this will add a further boost to house prices," he said.

Business Day website

Roy Cokayne

Pretoria - Rising prices in the smaller and cheaper end of the housing market are threatening to shut out the more than 10 percent of South African households that are unable to get either a subsidised house for free or afford those houses that are available on the market.

According to John Loos, a property strategist at First National Bank commercial banking, demand for housing appeared to be shifting steadily to the lower end of the market, due to strong land price inflation, decreasing affordability and mildly increasing pressure on households.

Loos said that since late last year the size category that Absa termed small - 80m² to 140m² - had seen a turnaround in price inflation. The inflation rate of houses in this segment moved in the opposite direction to the bigger units, whose inflation rates were still on a steady downward course.

Erwin Rode, the chief executive of property services company Rode & Associates, said this situation would get worse as interest rates increased.

"This is South Africa's socioeconomic problem. The margins for housing developers in this price category are wafer-thin, so it's not a very lucrative area to do business in. It's no small wonder that developers have ignored this niche".

Rode suggested that the best way to tackle the problem was for the authorities to make land available for housing developments in this sector at "rockbottom prices".

But he said that low-cost housing developments had to be undertaken on a large scale because developers needed economies of scale at extremely low price levels to make a decent return on their investment.

Attempts to obtain comment from the housing department were unsuccessful.

Loos added that there was an ongoing lack of planned supply in the affordable housing market, with less than 5 percent of the number of housing projects awarded between January and April being housing developments with an estimated value of between R100 000 and R200 000 a unit.

This compared poorly with 13.5 percent of projects that were estimated to have been awarded in the R200 000 to R500 000 category and 13 percent in the R500 000 to R1 million range.

With about 42.5 percent of the country's households in the affordable housing target market and earning between R1 500 and R8 000 a month, a significant development opportunity appeared to exist in the lower end of the market, he said.

Business Report website

A mountain range higher than the Drakensberg, bugs that live in boiling water, and an international boundary with France.

South Africa is set to become a whole lot more interesting thanks to a massive underwater land concession in the final stages of completion.

In terms of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, the country is in the process of claiming between 300 000 and one million square kilometres - between 25% and 80% of its current land mass - of underwater territory off the South African mainland and around its sub-Antarctic islands.

SA's current maritime territory - called the marine Exclusive Economic Zone - extends 370km offshore. However, under the new UN maritime rules, the boundary will extend up to 650km offshore.

This week the South African Petroleum Agency, which is managing South Africa's offshore claim - to be submitted to the UN - said the deal had economic potential in terms of possible offshore oil, gas and mineral deposits, as well as pharmaceuticals derived from deep-sea organisms.

The revised map also means South Africa and France could be neighbours, because South Africa's Marion Island and Prince Edward Island are on the same submarine mountain range as the French Crozet Islands. The two countries are collaborating on drawing up a common border.

"This is the biggest-ever distribution of territory in the world - and so far without bloodshed," said Ian McLachlan, chairman of South Africa's Shelf Claim Working Group.

"It's a significant amount of territory".

Limited resources and rising demand for liquid fuels meant new territory - no matter how deep - was at a premium, McLachlan said, particularly since the advent of new mining technology enabling extraction of deep-sea treasures, including natural gas hydrate - gas trapped in ice deposits on the sea-bed.

The sea-bed, in some places deeper than 5km, is considered the world's final frontier. That is why there is an international scramble to submit claims in terms of the new UN law. In total, 45 countries are eligible for extended territory. However, so far only five have submitted their claims because of the complexity of the process and the cost of surveying the claimed territory.

The South African government has earmarked R23-million for its claim in addition to funding a project to help other African states prepare their own claims.

"The world is so small now that this is the last foreseeable allocation of territory," said McLachlan.

Jacinto Rocha, South Africa's Minerals and Energy Affairs Deputy Director-General in charge of minerals regulation, confirmed this week that the country was pushing ahead with its territory claim ' which must be finalised before May 2009.

He said the move was being led by the national Petroleum Agency, in collaboration with eight other government departments including the navy, the Council for Geoscience, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

"If there are these kinds of vehicles [to claim territory] then we should not just sit back, but we should take advantage of them," Rocha said.

Poorer nations lacking sophisticated surveying equipment, including many African states, are at a severe disadvantage, according to Sven Coles of the South African Council for Geoscience.

Coles said : "This has the potential to become an elitist land grab.

"Certain nations can throw millions at an assessment of their offshore zone, whereas other developing nations don’t have the capacity to do so".

South Africa was working closely with Senegal in a Nepad-aligned programme to help African coastal states, Coles said.

Henry Valentine of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said most oil and gas deposits were on continental shelves.

"South Africa has a very narrow shelf. The only big shelf bank we have is the Agulhas Bank. The big advantage will be around Marion Island in the South Indian Ocean. There we will have a much bigger area we will be able to control," he said.

McLachlan said the new territory would mean the inclusion of some new species - including a giant clam and a blind 4m-long tube worm with no mouth or guts.

McLachlan said : "It is a dark, cold and alien world at the bottom of the sea - even the surface of Mars is more accurately mapped".

Sunday Times website

Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana has urged land owners not to delay the land restitution process, saying her ministry only has until 2008 to settle 10 percent of the remaining land claims.

And she says, she's running against time.

"President Thabo Mbeki has given the commission a clear directive to resolve all the outstanding land claims by 2008 ...our people cannot wait for 1001 years from 1913, the year the law that dispossessed them was enacted.

"I will not allow 'taai-heads' [the hard headed] to frustrate the fast-tracking of the remaining unresolved claims," said Ms Xingwana.

Handing over on Saturday a prime piece of land to the Gumbi community in Phongola, which also boasts a game reserve, Ms Xingwana indicated that it was becoming difficult to finalise rural land claims.

She said out of 79 000 land claims lodged since 1998 more than 71 000 had been completed and only 10 per cent remained unresolved.

In KwaZulu-Natal out of more than 14 000 claims originally lodged, only 1 700 were still outstanding.

These are mainly rural claims which are said to be difficult to resolve because the history of forced removals was not properly documented.

Ms Xingwana also reiterated government's commitment to redistribute all 30 percent of agricultural land to the previously dispossessed.

The 3 000 hectares game reserve given to the Gumbi community is already generating much revenue for the beneficiaries through a thriving lodge establishment and professional game hunting.

The land was given back to 657 households who were forcibly dispossessed of their land rights in Phongola under apartheid.

allAfrica website

Oupa Segalwe

Lichtenburg - Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulama Xingwana said her department would "deal drastically" with landowners who deliberately delayed the land restoration process.

Ms Xingwana said this during the handing-over ceremony of about 478 hectares of land to the Bafokeng ba ga Mafethe community in Bessiesvlei Farm, in the Central Region of the North West yesterday.

The Minister's remarks come amid the revelation by the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR) that, in the North West alone, it had been experiencing resistance from landowners who deliberately delayed the restoration process.

According to the commission, the landowners generally challenged the validity of claims and refused commission officials access to the land for inspection.

Ms Xingwana said her department would ensure that the mandate to restore land back to its rightful owners was not compromised by unco-operative landowners.

"Indeed we will take drastic actions to deal with these individuals, who think they can frustrate our programme," she said.

She added that it should be noted that the land reform programme was not adversarial, but rather reconciliatory.

The Minister however acknowledged that the land restitution programme was still faced with challenges regarding the usage of land by claimants after restoration.

These challenges include among others, the lack of skills from the new emerging farmers, lack of mentorship programmes and disputes among the claiming communities.

In terms of lack of skills, she said the recently launched Royal Agricultural Colleges Fellowship Programme (RACFP) in the United Kingdom will come handy for the emerging farmers.

"Through this programme, the department will attract those who have experience in the land reform, agriculture or natural resource management to be further trained in the UK to acquire the necessary skills," the Minister said.

The programme is linked to the Accelerated and Shared Initiative for South Africa (Asgi-SA) and it is aimed at alleviating poverty in the country and the SADC region.

A representative for the Bafokeng bag a Mafethe, Madala Mafethe told BuaNews that prior to 1994, the family did not have hope that they would one day restore their great-grandfather's land.

Mr Mafethe said the family planned to do some intensive farming on the land.

"We have seen situations where people are given back their land but due to the lack of skills, resources and interest, they fail to use the land in a sustainable way. Our intention is to use this land economically," he said.

The Commission for the Restitution of Land Rights has, thus far, made major progress in the district by ensuring that over 300 of the 541 claims lodged in the district have been settled.

These claims form part of the 1715 that have been lodged in the entire province.

The are about 25 remaining claims, while 99 have been dismissed as they did not meet the Commissions' requirements to process them.

The Commission on was established following the amendment of the Restitution Act of 1994, which sought to provide restitution of land rights to persons or communities dispossessed of land as a result of past racial discriminatory practices.

It aims to provide equitable redress and restoration of land to victims of these dispossessions, particularly the landless and the rural poor and to contribute towards the equitable redistribution of land in the country, among other things.

The deadline for all Land Claims Commission activities was to be finalised last year.

However, President Thabo Mbeki announced in his State of the Nation address last year that the lifespan of the Commission would be extended, pushing back the deadline to end of March 2008 to allow for the processing of outstanding claims.-BuaNews

BuaNews Online website

Neels Blom

Ladysmith — The land affairs department has devised a new approach to agrarian reform to accelerate the redistribution of land and establishing an agricultural base for rural economic development.

Government has acknowledged that the land-reform process has been too slow to meet expectations of a contribution to economic growth from the beneficiaries of land reform.

The target for the restitution of land rights has been revised to 2008, and a target for the transfer of 30% of white-owned agricultural land to black beneficiaries has been set for 2014.

Land reform in SA consists of the restitution of land rights to previously dispossessed people, the granting of land rights to tenant labourers, and the transfer of land to emerging commercial farmers.

The land-transfer process has been bedevilled by resistance from white landowners, rising property prices, competing claims and bureaucratic delays, while the establishment of emerging farmers has been set back by commercial failures.

Now Agriculture and Land Affairs Deputy Minister Dirk du Toit has presented two KwaZulu-Natal projects in the Ladysmith district. This is as a departure from the previous demand- driven approach, to what the department calls an area-based plan for agrarian reform.

The area-based plan intends to integrate the factors that affect reform projects by focusing projects on demands for specific commodities, consolidating infrastructure and other cost factors. It intends to address a lack of farm-management and business skills, operational finance, and a need for partnership with business and farmers' associations.

It intends also to align municipal integrated development plans to address the need for residential land.

Du Toit acknowledged the risk of a poor success rate in establishing emerging farmers, but said that the area-based plan had a greater chance of succeeding than the ad hoc approach that had been followed to date.

Du Toit reiterated the department’s position that the urgency of land reform necessitated a more assertive approach to land acquisition. "The willing-buyer, willing-seller approach is obviously preferable, since it is better to achieve something without a fight, but negotiations cannot go on forever," he said.

White farmers who stand to lose their farms have criticised the reform process. The Transvaal Agriculture Union has said there have been many opportunistic land claims, that the reforms have almost universally failed to establish black commercial farming because of corruption and infighting among beneficiaries, and that there was a lack of post-transfer government support.

When asked about resistance to land reform, the vice-chairman of the Qedusizi land-reform project, Roland Henderson, said it was a myth that white farmers opposed land reform.

Business Day website

Durban - About 12,6%, or 46000ha, of sugar-cane land has been redistributed to black owners, but there are complaints that government’s land reform process is too slow.

Government has set a target of redistributing 30% of South African land to blacks by 2014.

About 47000 of about 50000 registered cane growers are small-scale farmers, while 2000 large producers grow about 75% of SA's sugar cane production.

Sugar Cane Growers' Association chairman Bruce Galloway said last week the delay in appointing a provincial regional land claims commissioner had affected delivery and many growers were frustrated with the slow progress of land reform, especially land restitution.

Chief land claims commissioner Thozamile Gwanya said, however, that there had never been a period when there was a vacuum in the land claims commissioner's office in KwaZulu-Natal. Acting commissioner Linda Faleni had been appointed to the province in April.

Gwanya said land reform was by its nature a slow process, not only in KwaZulu-Natal.

The average time taken to resolve a rural land claim had recently been shortened from six to three years. He said it was possible to resolve claims in a year if all parties co-operated with the process.

The sugar industry has established the not-for-profit Inkezo Land Company to transfer white-owned land to black farmers.

Inkezo has helped transfer 3550ha since 2004, with a further 1800ha in the pipeline.

The target for this year has been set at 7000ha.

Business Day website

Neels Blom

So often when we talk about the poor, talk is where it remains. We talk empathetically and with exasperation about the history and the structural conditions that rob fellow human beings of their dignity and potential, but it seems no amount of hand-wringing can break the cycle of misery.

So we turn to government. Poverty, after all, is the prevailing legacy of apartheid and poor people the intended main beneficiaries of government's transformation policies.

Government, in turn, has identified land reform as central to the alleviation of poverty. The programme, begun with the passing of legislation in 1996, has three main elements : restitution of rights through the land claims process; the redistribution of land via acquisition to develop a black farming middle class; and securing tenure for people living on the land of others.

A survey by the nongovernmental land-reform organisation Nkuzi Development Association shows that 90282 households have benefited since the land restitution process began, while 66360 households have benefited from land redistribution.

While the restitution and redistribution processes have their share of apparently intractable problems, people who have no historical land claims or access to tribally held land, and have little or no chance to benefit from redistribution of farms, are the most vulnerable. In 2001, the national census tells us, 2,9-million black people were living on other people's farms and smallholdings, most of them in poverty and without security of tenure.

Three laws - the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act (LTA), the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (Esta) and the Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Occupation of Land Act (Pieola) - have been enacted to protect them. Yet only 7543 people have won tenure in terms of LTA and Esta and, despite the terms of Pieola, 942303 people have been evicted between 1994 and 2004, Nkuzi's survey shows.

That is 200000 more than in the preceding nine years, during which 737114 people were evicted - an irony that will not be lost on those who oppose land reform. Of a total of more than 1,6-million people evicted, only 1% resulted from a legal process.

When a group of people illegally occupy a piece of land, start small gardens and produce a surplus, and we then call it a successful land reform, government should be worried about its programme. It means that the various laws, policy papers and innumerable fresh initiatives have amounted to nothing.

This example was cited by Nkuzi's programme manager, Marc Wegerif, who was responding on Thursday to a series of papers delivered under the auspices of the Southern African Regional Poverty Network.

The squatters described by Wegerif had developed their lives and their illegally held land without help from anyone, including government. In fact, all they got from government was harassment, said Wegerif.

In 2001, when 3000 squatters were evicted from a farm in a peri-urban area in Bredell on the East Rand, government was instrumental in their removal, despite the farmer's willingness to sell the land to government to allow the people to remain. These cases illustrated government's failure to capture people's initiative and was indicative of a general paralysis at land affairs, said Wegerif.

The papers assessed a range of conditions affecting people without security of tenure, including legislation, intensification in agriculture and increasing competition for land, and presented case studies illustrating the obstacles.

Respondents to the papers representing government, labour, organised agriculture, emerging farmers and poverty advocacy groups agreed on two things: there were "gaps in the legislation" and "more work was needed".

Annelize Crosby, representing farmers' body AgriSA, said organised agriculture was working with labour and that it would be "part of the solution, not the problem". The big problem, as she saw it, was conflicting rights.

Neither Crosby nor Phillip Khage, labour federation Cosatu's representative, would disclose anything about their co-operation.

The director of tenure reform at land affairs, Sipho Sibanda, admitted that there was a degree of paralysis in government, but said the minister was constrained by the letter of the law.

And so it goes, until each representative has "committed" their organisations to "being part of the solution", uttered a quota of clichés and darkly alluded to the spectre of a Zimbabwe-style land grab. Another round of talking ends without a plan or resolution.

Perhaps the departing Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza, and the seemingly endless number of people who make a living from talking about the poor, will have cause to reflect on the book, The End of Poverty, in which the author Jeffrey Sachs asks whether the rich can afford to help the poor and replies with the more pertinent question : "Can they afford not to?"

After all, the minister did use the quote to open her address to the Land Summit held in Johannesburg last year.

allAfrica website

Chris Khumalo

Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana will officially hand over more than 15 000 hectares of land to a KwaZulu-Natal community at the weekend.

The people of Phongola, north of KwaZulu-Natal were forcibly removed from their land during apartheid.

This massive land restoration will see a total of 657 households who were removed when their area was declared a "black spot" taking ownership of a game reserve.

Spokesperson for KwaZulu-Natal Land Claims Commission, Zwelihle Mememela, said the claimants were removed to various resettlements including Jozini and Nongoma.

The land restoration will take place in Milimani Game Sanctuary in Phongola.

"Among the land to be restored is a 3 000 hectares of Milimani game reserve, which is already generating the much-needed revenue for the beneficiaries through a thriving lodge establishment and professional game hunting," said Mr Memela.

He said Ms Xingwana, accompanied by Chief Land Claims Commissioner Tozi Gwanya, would officially hand over the land to the beneficiaries in an event that would put an end to the sufferings of the claimants.

Mr Memela described this as a major land restoration in the Zululand District Municipality.

allAfrica website

Bulelani Phillip

Gadija van der Schyff, whose parents were forcibly removed from their Crawford house in 1980, is one of 19 people in the area waiting for a settlement in terms of the government's land restitution programme.

She has been waiting since 1995, after lodging a land claim on behalf of herself, three brothers and sister, and is hoping her claim will be finalised ahead of the 2008 deadline, as stated over the weekend by Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana.

Van der Schyff sat through the city of Cape Town's mayoral committee meeting last week, which discussed the issue of land availability for the Crawford claims, to hear about the progress of her resettlement claim. The committee agreed that the city's human settlement services director, Seth Maqethuka, be assigned to enter into negotiations with the Land Claims Commission about a land availability agreement for the Crawford claimants.

The original land occupied by the claimants is now under private ownership.

The commission had asked the city on October 30, 2003 to release land for the claimants on a specific site in Crawford.

A site for the claimants has now been earmarked on the Rondebosch East common, on the corner of Kromboom Road and Seventh Avenue.

The 1,18 hectare site is well serviced, but the city envisages sub-dividing a portion into plots and developing these before selling them on the open market. The Land Claims Commission will receive the remaining land for resettlement purposes.

Van der Schyff said her parents' 500m2 house in Aryshire Street had included three bedrooms, a dining room, a bathroom and a toilet. They had been forced to sell it for R22 000 after the area was designated a white residential area under apartheid's Group Areas Act.

"When my father was forced to sell, I was on pilgrimage in Mecca. If I had been here, I would have never allowed my father to sell the house to a white group," she said.

"My father was a carpenter and, every day after work, he used to go to the site and do work on the house. It was heartbreaking for him to be forced to sell, because that (house) was his life and it became our life. My mother was also very sad," she recalled.

The Van der Schyff's original property is now being occupied by the Sunni Mohammed Mosque in Rondebosch East.

Ken Abrahams, 62, another claimant and who is the chairperson of the Crawford Claimants Committee, said the resettlement process had been difficult.

"We are satisfied with the progress over the last year, but, prior to that, it was an uphill struggle," he said.

Abrahams said his parent's 1 081m2 house, located on the corner of Rokeby and Alexander roads in Rondebosch East, had been sold for R18 000.

Private homes currently built there are valued at almost R2-million, he said.

Van der Schyff and Abrahams agree that the money paid to their parents by the apartheid government was "insufficient" to compensate them. Abrahams said he had been forced to leave school in order to earn an income to take out a bond.

However, the pair are not too perturbed by what has become of the original site for their houses but are satisfied that they are about to get land back.

"What's important is not the monetary gain," said Abrahams. "What's important is that a wrong has been rectified and that is the most important thing".

Van der Schyff added: "My parents would feel very proud".

bulelanip@incape.co.za

IOL website

Modise Kabeli

About a thousand residents of Mdantsane are demanding reimbursement for their houses which were forcibly taken from them by the former Ciskei government.

They claim these forced evictions started before Lennox Sebe's time but during his rule of the former homeland things became worse as evictions were politically motivated.

The residents said different reasons were given for taking people's houses, with arrears in rent payment among them. Others lost their houses because it was suspected that they were originally from Transkei and some children had their parents' homes taken because their parents were deceased. However, most had their houses taken because they were viewed as enemies of the ruling party - Ciskei National Independence Party (CNIP).

An angry Boyce Mockson, a resident in Mdantsane's NU2, said his home - also at NU2 - was taken and given to a supporter of the then Ciskei government. "My home was taken and given to someone who had been living with me as a boarder".

He said that on that fateful day, his cousin whom he had left there to continue paying the rent, was kicked out and his house given to a boarder.

Mockson claimed that the boarder was given the house because "he was a CNIP member".

He said the person given his house passed away recently and his family now lives in it. "Since then I never got another house. I have a family which includes my wife and three children. We live in shacks".

He said when his house was taken he did not owe any rent money on the property.

Another resident, Mzwamadoda Yonana, said his parent's house was taken away and their furniture was stolen by thieves.

They were only left with the clothes in their bags, he said.

East London claimants committee spokesperson Xolisa Vuso said most residents took their individual cases to court, which in many instances ruled in their favour.

But because there was no one with a right to kick the occupants out of the houses, the claimants resorted to being allocated new houses somewhere.

Vuso said all they wanted now was for the Buffalo City Municipality to build them houses.

"We don't want to protest against the municipality. The site where the project was to be built was identified; all they needed to do was submit the proposal to Bhisho".

Vuso said the claimants had already indicated the area where they would like their houses to be built - near the Mdantsane Cemetery.

Ward 35 councillor Sithembiso Tyilo yesterday said the municipality had already met with the group and more arrangements were being made to meet with their representatives soon to see how the matter could be taken forward.

Daily Dispatch

Sunday Times website

Although the authorities promised to pay back all white farmers for buildings and infrastructure on their seized farms, many complain the sums offered are only a fraction of the real value of their properties. – Sapa-DPA

Mail & Guardian website