LANDLESS PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT (LPM)

The Landless People's Movement would like to make a request to make their submission before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee hearing. We believe that as a national movement that represent the landless people of South Africa , including the farm workers, labour tenants, restitution claimants, redistribution applicants, the rural poor living in the former homelands areas and the urban poor living in the informal settlements we should be given a chance to raise our concerns about The Pace of Land Reform in South Africa.

We would further like to request that at least three(3) people from our organisation be given an opportunity to give presentations as follows:

Molefe Pilane - (LPM's National Youth Co-Ordinator) from North-West & Gauteng Province) – The Pace of Land Reform in South Africa and the LPM's national position

Thandi Makinana -( LPM's National Women's Co-Ordinator) from the Eastern Cape ) – Land Reform from a Rural Women's perspective

Mangaliso Kubheka - (National Organiser) - from Kwazulu/Natal) - The Pace of Land Reform from a Labour Tenants perspective and the LPM's national position

The Landless People's Movement was formed in July 2001 by leaders of various landless people of South Africa who believed that all the landless people of South Africa needed to organize together to get back the land that was stolen from us during colonialism and apartheid.

The LPM is a national movement comprising of the landless people of South Africa , including farm workers, labour tenants, restitution claimants, redistribution applicants, the rural poor living in informal settlements. As the movement for all landless people, the LPM is not aligned to any ' political party.

• To unite all the landless people of South Africa ,to end the legacy of colonial and apartheid lad dispossession in all its forms and transform South Africa's land and asset distribution pattern as rapidly as possible by returning the land and other stolen assets-including miners rights to its rightful owners, to struggle for land and for secure land tenure for farm dwellers, to empower .educate and build capacity of the landless to return to the land and use it effectively to meet their multiple social .cultural and economic needs etc

• The LPM operates in all nine(9) provinces of South Africa and have its structures in both rural and urban areas
• LPM intervenes in areas like Rural (esp. Farm Evictions) & Urban Evictions (eg Informal Settlements) ,by using Legal Channels, Mass actions for resistance and other means toensure that the rights of the landless are respected.
• We also intervene to resolve problems like Farm evictions, burial rights issues.child labour issues, unfair labour practices in the farm areas,and other human rights abuses and discriminations in the farm areas etc

We hope that our request will be favourably be considered & and hope to hear from you soon!!

For any communication with the LPM please contact:

Molefe Pilane at molefepilanelpm(Svahoo.co.uk

Cell: 084 668 4530

ALUTAH CONTINUA!!!!!

THANK YOU!!!!

We the landless people of South Africa wants the government and the world to know that we are the people

who have borne the brunt of colonialism and neo-colonialism, of the invasion of our land by the wealthy

countries of the world, of the theft of our natural resources, and of the forced extraction of our labour by

colonists.

We are the people who have borne the brunt of apartheid, of forced removals from our fields and homes, of poverty in the rural areas, of oppression on the farms and of starvation, neglect and disease in the Bantustans.

We have suffered from migrant labour, which has caused our family life to and communities to collapse. We

have starved because of unemployment and low wages. We have seen our land dry up and blow away in the

wind because we have been forced into smaller and smaller places.

We continue to suffer under these conditions because the legacy of colonialism and apartheid has not been

defeated in our areas. We continue to suffer from forced removals and evictions from the farms we have worked for generations, and from gross violations of our basic human rights through the abuse at the hands of

the farmers who own these lands. We continue to suffer widespread injustices due to the racist criminal justice

system that prevails in our areas. We are the people who still bear the brunt of the colonial and apartheid

legacy and the neo-liberal policies which today require us to buy back our stolen land and pay fro…. services we have never enjoyed, while taking away our jobs and driving our young people into the cities. These are the biggest problems facing our country today.

We have fought for the end of colonialism and apartheid, and welcomed the birth of the new South Africa. But

for us there is nothing new because there is still no land, no services, and no growth in our areas.

We will no longer sit back and watch as the wealth builds up in the hands of a tiny urban elite, while on the

edges of the cities, in the small towns and in the countryside, we continue to suffer and starve.

The Landless People's Movement would therefore like to submit the following to the Portfolio Committee:

Ten years into our democracy only 3% of land has been redistributed despite the RDP target of 30% in the first five years (1994- 1999). The Landless People's Movement watches with dismay as government still refuse to a least acknowledge and respond to the demands (made as far back as 2001) of our movement to among others hold a National Land Summit. We believe that it is through the holding of the Summit that we wilt be able to sit around the table with all other stakeholders like NGOs, Social Movements and others, to review our countries Land Reform policies & programmes which are a dismal failure. At a slow pace at which land is being distributed in this country ( 3% over 10 years) it will take use 100 years to distribute the 30% that RDP document failed to deliver and and the so-called Agri-BEE will fail to deliver as well, the landless people think that this is totally unacceptable.

Very little progress have been made in through this programme:

LRAD- Land Redistribution and Agricultural Programme

Through this programme government has made little progress to redistribute land to the landless majority in South Africa as a result of the requirements like the R5000-00 the applicants must pay upfront in order for them to submit their .application. Most of our people are very poor and cannot even afford the required amount. Also the grants that each individual receive when the application is approved is very little that it cannot be used to purchase high quality, fertile and productive land, which result in the beneficiaries being forced to buy dry and unproductive land.

LRAD does not offer a solution because it does not recognise that as the landless people we need land for many different things and not just for agricultural development. The LPM demands that:

• The land that is chosen for redistribution must be fertile and the beneficiaries should be able to use it productively
• All black people in South Africa who need land must have a right to land reform, because we all lost land through colonialism and apartheid

The Land restitution has also moved very slowly due to many reasons like:

• The slow processing of claims
• The policy of willing-seller , willing-buyer policy which gives the landowners the freedom to inflate prices on their land deliberately and thereby making it impossible and difficult for the government to afford such land,
• The purchase of land by foreigners which has resulted in increased land prices,
• Some landowners who are opposed to the restitution process and grad the process into protracted negotiations

The LPM demands that:

• Outstanding land restitution cases must urgently be finalised
• The market-led, willing seller- willing buyer, demand-driven land reform programme must be scra… replaced with a state-led, needs-based, supply-led programme
• People who have been evicted from their land, farm dwellers and other poor landless people sho… priority for land reform
• The government must actively utilize its powers to expropriate land for land reform
• No landowner should be allowed to hold land reform to ransom to demand huge compensation
• Communities should be compensated for damages and losses suffered due to their forced remc…..
• Indigenous people's right to the land must be recognised and communities must be able to make land that was taken as back as 1652.
• The bulk of land restitution budget should be spent supporting claimant communities to make la…. rather than paying huge compensation to the beneficiaries of apartheid
• Land restoration should take precedence over financial compensation in the restitution program…. land begins to shift from white to black ownership

• There must be adequate post-settlement support for communities, specially training, xtension a…

production finance. There must be proper co-ordination between government departments to en

sustainable development.

• When land is restored to a community , it must be shared fairly within that community. There m…. discrimination as to who has access to land - especially not against women.
• Women's land rights must be protected and they must have security of tenure. Their rights to la… registered in their own name. In the case of married couples , the man and the woman should b…. names on the title deed.

2. RESTITUTION DEADLINE- DECEMBER 2005

Latest Reports on Settled Restitution Claims for the financial year, 01st April 2003 to 31^st March 2004, show that government has not redistributed any piece of land in Gauteng and Western Cape but have spent about R300 million in financial/cash compensation in these provinces. We as a movement believe that this is not land reform that has taken place because no land was transferred.

The Department of Land Affairs and its commissioners seems to be enjoying taking the easier route and less painful route of cash/financial compensation instead of giving people land. We ' therefore as the movement appeal to the land claimants to opt for land instead of cash compensation. This is totally unacceptable to spend much needed resources to further enrich those who stole our land from our forefathers. We therefore see this continuing enrichment of the white farmers as the biggest betrayal in the history of the liberation struggle. Again government gives us some of their unrealistic type of target regarding Land Reform. The government still has not met its first target date as which was document in the RDP- Reconstruction and Development Programme( as far back as 1994) : ' The Land redistribution programme must aim to redistribute 30% of agricultural land within the first five years of the programme", and 10 years later in 2004 they have not yet reached their target. The LPM says this is not slowness but it is dismal failure.

The government is failing to use its powers given to it by the South African Constitution (such as the power to expropriate), with the result that farmers are inflating land prices deliberately. Several reports state the extremely high market prices of most of the remaining productive farms in provinces like Limpopo, KZN, and Mpumalanga. We feel that the government is not willing to prioritise Land Reform in terms of the resources allocated to the DLA.

Furthermore we are very sceptical already as a movement about the December 2005 target being met. We feel that the announcement of the date is just one of those 'wishful thinking' statements by a frustrated government. We will therefore not be surprised to hear them reviewing the date soon. However we demand that the government meet this deadline and complete all processes involved in restitution, including land returns and settlement options as promised by the President.

3. LAND PRICING SCANDALS

Newspaper reports about provincial Land Commissioners buying farms in Mpumalanga proves the about what we have said and will continue to say that the farmers and the so-called land speculate land prices deliberately to profit out of a process that is aimed at correcting the wrongs of the past. we believe that this is not just limited to one province we therefore demand:

a. that investigations into the prices of land purchased by government cover all the nine (9) provir….

b. that the investigations should cover the period from 1994 to 2004,

c. that findings of the investigations should also be made public and those found responsible shou…prosecuted.

4. AGRI- BEE AND LAND FOR THE LANDLESS

Again government is continuing with its policy of ignoring the landless poor and focuses on building ai…. friends in the black middle class. Agri-BEE cannot take place without the transfer of land to the landle……other social movements, many of the progressive NGOs were never consulted and are still not consu ….drafting of the Agri-BEE document. The LPM goes further to demand:

a. that the RDP target of redistributing 30% of land be delivered immediately as th…. instalment on the equitable redistribution that must finally be achieved.

b. Outstanding land restitution cases must urgently be finalised

c. The market-led, willing seller- willing buyer, demand-driven land reform program…. scrapped and replaced with a state-led, needs-based, supply-led programme

d. People who have been evicted from their land, farm dwellers and other poor la….. should be given top priority for land reform

LAND TENURE REFORM:

This process of Land reform has failed even dismally more than Restitution and Redistribution programmes. Farm workers and Labour tenants are still living in the same conditions as the day the coloniser started the process of land dispossession centuries ago.

They are still living like. slaves in the land of their birth, they are the most poorest , most isolated and most vulnerable people in our country. They conditions sems to be getting worse by the day, they are still being to lions after being assaulted, they are still being shot and killed for 'trespassing ' in the land of their birth, they get dragged behind the 'bakkkie' for kilometres to death. The human rights abuses in the farms goes on and on everyday as if we do not have a justice system in existence in this country.

• Farm workers and labour tenants should be given land of their own
• The Extension of Security of Tenure Act and the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act must be amended to stop evictions and give farm dwellers real rights.
• We demand a halt to all evictions of labour tenants and farm workers

The LPM says enough is enough! We will not watch and stand-by when government and the farmers continue to ignore the landless poor and continue with business as usual. We will not stand by when our people are still facing constant evictions from the farms, when there are still many incidents of human rights abuses like beatings, killings, the refusal to bury our people in the farms, cases of tortures and other cases of gross human rights violations. If the farmers and the government continues to ignore the LPM they will have to take responsibility of what the anger of the more than about 10 million ' Citizens without Rights" ( farmdwellers,

farmworkers, labour tenants and other landless people) in the rural/farm areas as well as the millions living in informal settlements next to our urban centres will do.

Landless People's Movement Interim National Council

National Chairperson Josiah Gasehete (Northern Cape); National Deputy Chairperson Niate Patrick Mojapelo (Limpopo); National General Secretary Thobekile Radebe (KwaZulu-

Natal; National Assistant General Secretary Paul Tikoane (Free State); National Treasurer Nancy Sephiri (Northern Cape); National Organiser Mangaliso Kubheka (KwaZulu-Natal);

National Projects and Education Officer Maureen Mnisi (Gauteng); Additional Members: Butiza Hiatshwayo (Mpumalanga); Thandi Makinana (Eastern Cape); Goaganelwe

Motsarnai (Northern Cape); Randall Roussouw (Western Cape); Molefe Pilane (North-West).