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South Africa: Community Fights Curbs On Land Claim
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
15 April 2008
Posted to the web 15 April 2008
Neels Blom
Johannesburg
THE first South African community to have successfully approached the Land Claims Court for the restoration of their land is heading back to court.
Ten years after lodging their claim they are still seeking redress for the systematic dispossession, which started in the 19th century and continued until the 1980s.
The GaMawela community, whose land is in the Steelpoort area of Limpopo, had their land restored by an order of the Land Claims Court in 2006.
However, a condition imposed by the land affairs minister on the transfer agreement imposed an "unnecessary burden and restraint" on the community to deal with their land as they see fit.
At stake in the case is an important principle in the land restitution process, where newly won rights of the community are diluted by a requirement of ministerial consent if a community wanted to encumber, sell or deal with their land as owners.
The minister's condition also means that if land-restitution beneficiaries wish to use their land as collateral for a bank loan to finance a farming enterprise, they would first have to obtain the permission of the minister.
The land, now known as St George farm, lies in the Klein Dwars River valley. The Dwars is a tributary of the Steelpoort, a major tributary of the Olifants River flowing into Mozambique.
The Dwars follows one of the richest mineral reefs in the world, with deposits of chrome, vanadium and platinum group metals. Anglo American subsidiary Anglo Platinum is at an advanced stage of planning of Der Brochen mine, which will affect land claimed by the broader GaMawela community.
Water scarcity is an important limiting factor in the economic development of minerals and human settlement in the area and forms a fundamental issue for this case.
"This case would never have arisen if the community had not lost their land under racist legislation," Durkje Gilfillan of the Legal Resources Centre said yesterday after filing papers at the Land Claims Court. "But even after restitution, they still don't have their full rights."
The GaMawela community lost ownership in 1871, after the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek government awarded the land to one of its officials. Because of the 1913 cut-off date (promulgation of the Land Act), the community could not claim ownership on a basis of dispossession.
Instead, they lodged their claim based on rights as labour tenants, the last of whom were removed from the farm in the 1980s. The land owner when the claim was lodged had opposed the claim, but then sold the land to Rustenburg Platinum, which got the farm to gain access to water. The mining house did not oppose the claim. Mineral rights were held by Anglo Platinum at the time of lodging the claim .
Review of the condition imposed by the minister is pressing for the GaMawela community and Rustenburg Platinum because of expected delays in agreements between the community and mining house on surface use for mining aims.
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The community also saw the minister's condition as unnecessary, since the Community Property Association Act provided for departmental oversight in dealing with the land.
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