REGIONAL land claims commissioner for Gauteng and North West Tumi Seboka says she has little choice but to recommend to government the expropriation of land to settle troublesome cases to complete the land restitution process by March next year.
Seboka, who succeeded regional commissioner Blessing Mpela in November, announced her strategies yesterday for settling land claims in her region by government’s March deadline.
She said the commission’s work had reached its final stages, with only 19 cases still to be settled in Gauteng and 80 cases in North West. In Gauteng, 11957 claims have been made and in North West 1899. All urban cases had been settled, with more than half resulting in claimants waiving restoration in favour of cash.
There were, however, difficulties in settling the remaining cases, Seboka said. “A trend has developed in which landowners would introduce a new clause every time the matter came close to a conclusion.
“They will try anything,” she said. “It means cases have to be reinvestigated from scratch and this unnecessarily delayed restitution.
“I must indicate that in all cases where negotiations are going to be stalled by intransigence and deliberate frustration of the restitution process by the current landowners, we are going to expropriate. I have said this before and nothing is going to convince me otherwise,” she said.
The commissioner confirmed that the decision whether “intransigence and deliberate frustration” on the part of landowners were delaying the settlement of a claim was hers to take.
“Landowners ask me that question, too. I take the decision in terms of the legislation,” she said.
Seboka cited a number of examples where expropriation seemed inevitable. The landowners of these properties have said, however, that they opposed the land claims in terms of the legislation and that the dispossessions were not racially motivated.
The GM of the white-dominated agricultural union TAU SA, Bennie van Zyl, denied that landowners were frustrating the restitution process. “It is not in the interest of agriculture or of individual farmers to delay the process. Farmers need to get on with production, but they cannot do this while land claims are hanging over their heads,” he said.
A memorandum of agreement was reached with government early last year in which the land-claims process was spelled out, but land claims commissioners had yet to adhere to it, Van Zyl said.
“What happens is that officials would not advise landowners that a land-claim investigation was under way, and that the first they hear of it was when the process is supposed to be in the final stages. Now, when farmers raise objections to what is simply an invalid claim or often dishonest, they are accused of frustrating the process.”
Another problem was that of capacity at land affairs, Van Zyl said. “The officials do not have the ability to deliver. Landowners cannot be held responsible for that.
“We don’t think government is pursuing an honest agenda in settling land claims,” Van Zyl said.
Seboka admitted to capacity problems at the commission and said it was partly due to high staff turnover. “Staff exodus within the department has become a national problem,” she said, though she pointed out that vacancies in her region had dropped to 35 from 90 last November.
“The problem is that employees prefer permanent jobs, but at the commission our work will be done by next year. At the moment I consider staff retention to be my biggest challenge, considering the amount of time left — 15 months, to be precise — to finalise the settlement of all land claims,” Seboka said.
