The following is a submission of the Transkei Land Services Organisation (TRALSO) in respect of the pace of land reform in South Africa. TRALSO is a community service organisation that operates in parts of the Eastern Cape with a special focus on land access and sustainable rural livelihoods. From its formal establishment in 1991 TRALSO developed strong bonds with rural communities who waged relentless land struggles against the apartheid structures for restoration of their land rights and protection from arbitrary administrative practices that resulted in massive removals of communities in the former Transkei and adjacent areas.

Since 1994 TRALSO has assisted about 500 rural communities to lodge land restitution claims with the Eastern Cape Regional Land Claims Commission. Whilst representing a smaller proportion of the overall land claims submitted to the RLCC in comparison to urban land claims, rural land claims invariably represent a bigger and broader base of the victims of land removals: whereas each rural land claim represents 600 - 5000 households, urban land claims are computed according to individual households. This statistical situation might greatly skew the overall picture with regard to the unfolding of the land restitution process. Whilst it is presented with many restitutionary options in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994 (as amended), the Commission has since 2000 leaned rather heavily on monetary compensation towards urban claimants. Consequently, very little land has exchanged hands between the white and black as a result of the land restitution programme in the Eastern Cape. TRALSO views this as an issue fraught with considerable political and economic implications.

TRALSO and the communities have been caused to carry the perception that other tiers and/or departments of the South African government give less regard to the land reform process as a political imperative to eradicate the apartheid legacy and its spatial economy. Reference is hereby made to the failure of municipalities to creatively accommodate the land needs/claims of their constituents within their IDP planning framework. In the Eastern Cape only the Amathole and the Ukhahlamba District Municipalities (unfortunately this credit does not extend to the relevant local municipalities) seem to make provision for land reform of one sort or another. The Department of Agriculture, in its national and provincial incarnations, seems to be very much locked in its old apartheid mould despite the evolution of such programmes as the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP). The Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy is a very laudable conception that has barely transcended the paper on which it is written.

TRALSO believes in the manifold impact of land restitution of land rights lost during decades of the implementation and consolidation of the homeland system. However, TRALSO has come to realize also the inherent limitations of the current restitutionary framework in so far as it precludes in general land claims against removals pre-dating 19^th June 1913. A significant proportion of the communities currently living in Transkei were victims of various policies and interventions seeking to deny the citizenship of the African in South Africa designated a white domain.

The plight of farm-dwellers remains little changed in the ten years of democracy South Africa so rightfully celebrates in 2004. Some exceptionally exploitative conditions exist. During its Redistribution Situational Analysis Study (June - August 2004) TRALSO found out that farm workers on farms between Maclear and Mt Fletcher had just attended a briefing on labour legislation called by the Elands Heights police station, and a uniform picture had been sketched to police officers: no contracts; R150 plus milk and 50kg of mielie meal as monthly wages; widespread deductions from wages for a variety of reasons; and entrenched (dependency-creation) debt cycles.

The disposal of State Land Disposal process remains one of the lingering calamities of the land reform process. The State Land Disposal Act has been used to effect the transfer of homeland farms (for the greater part, to existing farmers on the land, often of an absentee nature). While some of the original Apartheid-era occupants were displaced over time (primarily because the corruption in allocating them land rights in the first place were too evident), many of the original Bantustan-era beneficiaries remain. It could be assumed that some land changed hands speculatively (despite the lack of secure tenure). Faced with the prospect of secure tenure upon transfer (at a cost) via the State Land Disposal Act – many ‘emergent’ farmers saw farm workers as a burden or a threat to their land rights (much as commercial farmers reacted everywhere else). ‘Emergent’ because many of these ‘new’ farmers had in fact been farming their land for some time – albeit seriously constrained by lack of bankable security of tenure, lack of capital and lack of support services. It stands to reason that many farm workers have been around on these farms for some time, either as workers, or as unemployed tenants. It is well documented how the Extension of Security of Tenure Act accelerated farm evictions – specifically illegal evictions. The Department of Land Affairs get both parties to agree on allowing the farm dweller to continue using the land he had been using before disposal. However, the DLA officials interviewed argue that this situation is not the best solution and there is no monitoring as to whether the gentleman’s agreement gets breached

These properties have not been (or are not being) sold at market value due to mismanagement and vandalism which they were subjected to in the hands of former lessees. Most do not have boundary fences and infrastructure, or have experienced serious degradation of such assets. DLA implemented a valuation procedure to realistically reflect their reduced value. For example, Ongeluksnek market value is around R1 000/ha. The state land disposal value was initially reduced to R750/ha, and then further reduced to R400/ha.

It is not possible to express on paper the frustrations and agony to which the victims of land removals have been exposed in the ten years of land reform implementation. Within the Transkei area, it is perhaps useful just to refer to the situation in the Imizizi area in Bizana, O.R. Tambo District. Sometime in 1976 the authorities contrived to establish a sugarcane plantation on 10 000 hectares of land in the Mfolozi, Hlolweni, and Tyeni wards of the Imizizi A/A. The people, and perhaps the headmen, were enticed with all the usual promises of economic development and employment. In its design, the scheme proposed to subdivide the land into 2 ha plantations with the household serving as the basic unit of account. The actual implementation, which was accompanied by a considerable amount of duress, departed from this formula as only a few people participated, most of them from outside of the three villages such that people who were not removed thus participated to the exclusion of a large majority of the victims. The Transkei government had set up the North Pondoland Sugar Company, a subsidiary of the now defunct Transkei Agricultural Corporation (TRACOR). The people expressed their disatisfaction with this but the chiefs and his headmen turned a blind eye as they were also direct participants in this looting of Naboth's Vineyard. These communities lodged land claims in respect of their respective pieces of land. As late as 1998 peoples' houses were being razed to the ground, mielie fields confiscated and cattle butchered and mutilated. There were at least two cases of murder opened in 2003/4 as harassment and intimidation continued to defy the spirit of the most enlightened democratic order this country ever knew. TRALSO, in collaboration with the RLCC, brokered several interventions involving the Department of Land Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the South African Police Services amongst others, all to no avail as the beneficiaries of this system, most of them taxi operators, shop keepers, retired government officials and some failed entrepreneurs enjoyed a veil of impunity. The majority of these communities have continued to rally behind the ruling ANC whilst a number of the perpetrators have vacillated between the ANC and the next pretender. This matter now is in the Land Claims Court (some might assert it is sub-judicae).

In closing, TRALSO would like to bring to raise the issue of the forestry restructuring process in so far as it affects lands that are claimed by communities in the Langeni, Mbolompo, Baziya, Singisi and other areas. Firstly, this process seems to take no regard of the land restitution process or at least the rights of the land claimants. To date it appears significant agreements entered outside the parameters of land restitution exist in relation to the claimed land, e.g. the alleged signing of a 70 year lease agreement.

In conclusion, TRALSO remains available to support a just and orderly land reform process in South Africa. The success of such a process depends upon rectification of many of the weaknesses that have been raised or observed with regard to the land reform process. These include the lack of effective participation of stakeholders, the serious capacity issues within the Department of Land Affairs, the over-reliance upon the market as a force in land reform and the general openness of South Africa's land market to aliens.

TRALSO would like to take this opportunity to thank once again the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs for its continued efforts to engage civil society in its efforts towards a workable land reform programme in South Africa.