Ingonyama Trust still has tight grip of rural KZN land, as SCA yet to hear merits of case

Ingwenyama Trust is still firmly in control of 29.67% of the land in KwaZulu-Natal (28,000 square kilometres), with the merits on its Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) to retain the land still to be decided.

On 17 August, the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein, Free State, confirmed the Pietermaritzburg High Court’s ruling against the Trust’s bid to appeal the recusal of Judge Mjabuliseni Madondo and the late Judge Jerome Mnguni.

This means the SCA was yet to decide on the merits of the main legal challenge on the validity of the leases for the land in Ingwenyama Trust’s control.

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Sharita Samuel, Legal Resources Centre director, explained that the Judgement was handed down by the Pietermaritzburg High Court’s on 11 June 2021, on the main matter of the leases case.

She said the Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) appealed that judgement in July 2021, that application for leave to appeal was then sat down and in May 2022 but the ITB introduced new grounds in this application.

Samuel said ITB introduced grounds in this application that Madondo and Mnguni ought to be recused as they had property on land held by the Trust.

She said the argument was that this raised a potential for bias, that the judgement against the Trust be declared invalid.

“We opposed that part of the application for that recusal…in May [2022] the [Pietermaritzburg High Court] granted the leave to appeal, fully on the merits but the application relating to the recusal aspect was dismissed and it was that dismissal of the recusal ground that the ITB took to the SCA together with the notice for appeal on the merits,” Samuel explained.

She said in essence there were two matters before the SCA brought by ITB and on the 17 August, the appeal relating to the recusal has now been decided and the order has been issued.

“So it is on the recusal grounds that has been dismissed by the SCA but the appeal relating to the merits of the 2021 judgement is yet to be considered by the SCA, meaning that the matter is not finalised at this stage. The heart of the dispute is still to be argued,” Samuel said.

Landlord

The Ingonyama Trust is a corporate entity established to administer the land traditionally owned by the Zulu people, represented by their king, for the benefit, material welfare and social well-being of the Zulu nation, who continue to occupy the land as they historically have done.[1] The Trust owns 29.67% of the land in KwaZulu-Natal, which is equivalent to 28,000 square kilometres, or 10,811 square miles.[2]

The Board of the Trust consists of the Zulu King, MisuZulu Zulu kaZwelithini, who chairs the Board, and eight members appointed by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform in the national government, after consultation with the King, the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal and the chairperson of the KwaZulu-Natal House of Traditional Leaders.[1]

The Trust stands to lose control of over about three million hectares of KwaZulu-Natal rural land after the June last year ruling by the Pietermaritzburg high court that the Trust’s practice of imposing rent on households living on rural land controlled by the entity was unlawful.

Unconstitutional

The trust was dragged to court by the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) and the Rural Women’s Movement, after a group of rural women complained that the trust has converted their Permission To Occupy (PTO) agreements into lease contracts, requiring them to pay rent for houses built on the entity’s land.

The Trust has said that the latest judgement has been confused to be a ruling on the main matter when it was not.

 Ingonyama Trust Spokesperson Simpiwe Mxakaza said he could not understand how the judgement on the recusal application was confused with the application on the merits of the main application, that of the leases, that was outstanding.

“The judgement that was taken was on the matter of the recusal of the judges…it has nothing to do with [the matter of the leases]” he said, adding that merits on the issue of the leases was still outstanding.