Too much red tape in Land Bill – Free Market Foundation

The Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act (Ultra) will have a devastating unintended consequences and deprive millions of mainly poor black South Africans of their right to land, the Free Market Foundation (FMF) has warned.

Those affected are those who have land allocated to them through traditional structures but who don’t hold title deeds.

The FMF said the Amendment Bill proposed that former owners must apply to bureaucrats for ownership instead of it being automatic, and proposes unbridled discretionary powers for unelected and unaccountable officials. In August, the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, announced it will hold public hearings on the Bill, which seeks to amend the Ultra to provide for the application for conversion of land tenure rights to ownership.

The committee adopted the report on the Bill this month and it has been referred to parliament. Hermann Pretorius, head of strategic initiatives at the Institute for Race Relations (IRR), said one of the most tragic failings of post-apartheid South Africa had been in respect of the property rights of people living in the former homelands.

Ownership of the land on which they live has generally been denied them. The Amendment Bill will, instead of automatically converting land tenure rights to ownership, places the discretion in the hands of a bureaucracy that is often not up to the tasks required of it.

“The amendment increases the distance between an aspirant landowner and his or her title deeds; it paces hurdles in the way of prosperity,” he said. “The expansion of official discretion – as this Bill seems to encourage – will make this worse.”

The IRR is also against the Land Expropriation Bill, arguing that, if enacted, the legislation would deepen the steady erosion of property rights under the ANC, as well as being a red flag to the investment on which growth and job creation depend. The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies stressed that the state’s expropriation powers had always been there.

Its lead researcher on land reform Dr Farai Mtero said the National Land Allocation and Beneficiary Selection Policy needed to be finalised. This policy would put in place transparent mechanisms for land identification and allocation.

“So finalising methods of land acquisition without the methods of land allocation in place provides a fertile ground for elite capture and corruption,” he said.

The constitution already provided for expropriation of land and the conditions included the need to ensure just and equitable compensation whenever land was expropriated. He said there had been no effort by the state to expropriate land and this was a policy decision, not a constitutional imperative.

“So the popular argument that the willing buyer-willing seller has been a stumbling block to land reform does not hold true,” Mtero said.

Pretorius said the efforts of last week’s South Africa Investment Conference had been undermined by the government’s determination to press ahead. The Expropriation Bill, if enacted, would add to an already hostile regulatory environment which – whatever the pledges at fancy conferences – had led to a steady withdrawal of investment.

“The government’s lack of political will to reform means it will continue to shoot itself in the foot on investment, resorting to marketing South Africa as a charity case rather than as a competitive economy on the world stage,” he said.

– siphom@citizen.co.za

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