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JOHANNESBURG- The South African government has expropriated its first farm after price negotiations with the farm's owner ended in a stalemate.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church, which owns the land in the Northern Cape province, will receive $4.9m.

Last year, the lands minister- who has blamed white farmers for inflating prices and stalling change- set a six month deadline for such negotiations.

Land reform is one of South Africa's most politically charged issues.

Returning land seized from black farmers during apartheid was one of the key promises made by the African National Congress when it came to power in 1994.

More than 12 years later, only 4% of white-owned land has been transferred and the government has come under fire for going too slowly.

The expropriated farm, north of Kimberly, has been claimed by local families.

The church has 60 days to handover ownership documents to the state, Reuters news agency reports.

The expropriation took effect on 26 January, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights said in a statement.

Lands Minister Lulu Xingwana has denied charges that land reform is being carried "Zimbabwe style".

But she has said price negotiations could not go on "forever".

Labels: land claims, land reform

HARARE- About 700 families of the Chitsa clan, who have been living in the Gonarezhou National Park since 2000, will be relocated to alternative land at the end of the cropping season, the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority has said.

The Authority has been pushing for this measure to enable the integration of the Park into the Kruger in South Africa and Limpopo Parks in Mozambique to form the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.



The Chitsa people, at the instigation of their leaders, have been resisting relocation attempts by the authority arguing that the area was their ancestral home.

They claim that they were hoodwinked into leaving the park by the colonial regime under the pretext that they wanted to clear the area of tsetse fly before people could return.

They further claim that after the clearing of the tsetse fly, the colonial regime made their land part of the Gonarezhou Park and they were never allowed to return.

Parks spokesperson, Retired Major Edward Mbewe, said that the community, after a series of consultations and meetings, had agreed to be relocated.

"We have covered quite a lot of ground and the political will is on our side.

"We held several meetings with the chiefs, the area’s Member of Parliament, headman Chitsa, provincial and district administrators and everyone agreed that they should be relocated to allow the smooth implementation of the Transfrontier Park. They will be moving," said Rtd Maj Mbewe.

He said the authority had not started the relocation process due to the current cropping season and as soon as the season is over, the relocation process would start.

"As an authority, we can not do things which are inhuman and as soon as they harvest their crops, we will start the relocation process.

"Currently, we are also working on a comprehensive programme on how the relocation would be implemented," Rtd Maj Mbewe added.

He said chiefs and other traditional leaders who attended the consultative meetings, had concurred with the Chitsa community on the historical importance of the park.

Rtd Maj Mbewe said while the settlement of the families in the park was against the Parks and Wildlife Act, the authority would not disrupt the community’s farming activities through a hurried relocation.

"In the meantime, we are enforcing some of the provisions of the Act as we work out on the comprehensive relocation programme.

"We will be limiting the movement of their livestock in the park. We are also making sure that dogs are not allowed in the area."

Labels: gonarezhou, great limpopo park, land reform, transfrontier park

NELSPRUIT- For decades, the imposing granite statue of Boer hero Paul Kruger has dominated the main entrance to the Kruger National Park.

Now members of the Mahlangana clan in Manyeleti near Bushbuckridge want the statue removed from Kruger Gate and replaced by one of their own heroes: 19th century king Ma'nyeleti Mnisi.



"This would be a fitting tribute to a great hero who fought for his people," said Oris Mnisi, historian and spokesperson of the Mnisi chieftainship. "The other nations have honoured their respective kings and now we want to honour King Ma'nyeleti."

Mnisi said the king ruled from the 1820s to the late 1850s and held sway over a swathe of land from the former Lourenco Marques (modern-day Maputo) to Mashishing (formerly Lydenburg) and Badplaas, "including the entire area making up the Kruger Park today".

Over the decades King Ma'nyeleti led the Mahlangana as well as Shangaan, Swazi and Mapulana clans in the area, said Mnisi. He also fought Portuguese colonialists in the Lebombo Mountains.

"King Ma'nyeleti was a good friend of King Sekhukhune, and was very brave," he said. "That is proven by the fact that he killed the elephant that killed him. They both died at the same spot, and he was carrying only a spear. The elephant crushed him after he had stabbed it, and they died together."

Mnisi said representatives of the clan had approached the Mpumalanga department of local government and housing in a bid to replace Paul Kruger's statue with one of Ma'nyeleti.

Departmental spokesperson Simphiwe Kunene said he was not aware of the request, but promised to investigate.

Kruger National Park spokesperson Raymond Travers also expressed surprise at the proposal. "We haven't had an approach like that yet- I think it's very interesting. A couple of years ago we wanted to remove the statue to rehabilitate the area around it but we couldn't because we didn't comply with the procedures of the South African Heritage Resources Agency.

"I would imagine that any proposal like this would first need to go through a full scoping report and would have to comply with the agency's procedures.

King Ma'nyeleti already has one reserve in the named after him- the 22,000 hectare Manyeleti Game Reserve to the west of the Kruger National Park.

The Mnisi clan lodged a successful land claim in the area several years ago and now helps the Mpumalanga Parks and Tourism Agency manage the reserve. All lodges in the Manyeleti reserve, which is home to the big five- lion, elephant, rhino, leopard and buffalo- are privately owned and lease land on concession.

The Shangaan name Ma'nyeleti means "shooting star".

According to Mnisi, the king got the name because there was a shooting star the night he was born at a kraal less than a kilometre from where the Kruger National Park and the Manyeleti Game Reserves converge.

Labels: land claims, land reform, manyeleti, restitution

JOHANNESBURG- The Limpopo regional Land Claims Commission (LCC) is forging ahead in evaluating the land claims against one of South Africa's most fertile regions, which includes a farm belonging to SA Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni.

The farms are thought to be worth about R3 billion and there is another R3 billion of forestry.

Mashile Mokono, the regional commissioner, has found that the land claims by the Makgoba community for the Magoebaskloof were prima facie valid. These claims are against 168 prime agricultural farms, comprising almost 200 000ha, in the Hoedspruit and Blydepoort areas of Tzaneen, about 70km from Polokwane (formerly Pietersburg).

A number of land owners in the region contend that the claims are invalid.

On the other hand, Charles Molifi, a spokesperson for the Limpopo LCC, said there were many willing sellers who had come forward. Their farms were being valued by the national department of agriculture.

He said those not willing to sell would be referred to the legal unit of the LCC. From there they could take the LCC to the land claims court. Expropriation would be a last resort.

According to a report by the committee representing the land owners, preliminary indications are that as much as 40 percent of the land could be available on a willing seller basis.

Two Government Gazette notices were issued by Mokono last year, in which he identified the farms. One of these is the large Sapekoe Tea Estate, formerly South Africa's foremost tea producer and exporter.

The first Government Gazette notice omitted Mboweni's 2 231ha farm and two farms belonging to Bishop Joseph Lekganyane of the St Egenas Zion Church, whose headquarters are in Limpopo.

A subsequent notice included the three farms. A source in the regional LCC said these farms could not be included in the first gazette because research into them had not been completed.

Cathy Powers, a spokesperson for Mboweni, said he was on record as saying that he was willing to co-operate with the process.

Former Limpopo premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi also owns a plot in the region, where he has built a huge home known as Pumpkin Palace because it is on a former pumpkin producing farm.

Ramatlhodi said: "I have told the government that I am willing to sell. I can't stand in the way of the land claims. I could not sleep well with that."

Two claims on the farms were lodged in 1998 on behalf of the Makgoba community. These were made under the Land Restitution Act of 1994, which applies to the land from which black people were forcibly removed from 1913.

In his report, Mokono said the land dispossession of the Makgoba community took place after June 19 1913, and the community was forced to scatter.

He said the Makgoba people were dispossessed when the department of forestry established plantations of blue gum and pine.

He described it as "a subtle and indirect act of racial discrimination, which ... cannot be said to have been for the public interest but to divest [the] Makgoba people of their unregistered rights on the fertile land, thereby implementing the racial law that prevented black people from owning or leasing land in South Africa".

The land owners commissioned research by a University of the North history academic, Louis Changuion. His report concludes that the Makgoba community has no claim to the farms in Magoebaskloof.

"The Makgoba tribe occupied the area constituting these farms until the war with the ZAR [Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek] in 1894/95. This war ended on June 11 1895, when Chief Makgoba was beheaded by Swazi warriors.

"The Boer War Council took a decision to remove the Makgoba tribe, as well as their associates- the Tsolobo, the Mmamathola and Mosote tribes, and to resettle them near Pretoria. As a result, all the Makgoba tribe was removed from the area in 1895."

Labels: land claims, land reform, restitution

The situation in Zimbabwe has demonstrated for the southern Africa region that if land issues are handled poorly, conflict of one kind or another is almost inevitable, a report by the International Crisis Group has warned.

The ICG, an independent organisation, said that there would have to be an increase in political will to tackle land reform in South Africa. The inequality of land ownership and the historical injustices are considered the worst in Africa, with three quarters of agricultural land still in the hands of 60,000 white farmers.

The President of the ICG, Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister, said it was unlikely that South Africa would replicate the Zimbabwean land crisis but warned that 'countries across the region are burdened with chronic land problems that are frustrating attempts to promote economic development and eradicate poverty.'

The report recognised that post apartheid South Africa had undertaken substantial land reform but to reach its target of redistributing 30% of agricultural land into black hands by 2015 required a major effort on the part of government, donors and NGOs. So far only 3% of rural land had been transferred to black people since 1994 and only one half of a percent of the budget had been devoted to land reform.

"The land issue remains politically explosive, not least because levels of land dispossession over the last century and a half rival those anywhere in the world. Land expropriation was the central tool of social control and economic subjugation," the report said.

The report, entitled Blood and Soil states that in South Africa "violence on farms and in rural areas remains unacceptably high," and the ANC government is not adequately addressing what could become a political time bomb if land redistribution is not urgently tackled.

The report recommends a number of steps that should be taken to improve South Africa's land distribution programme, including the formation of partnerships, encouragement of innovation, support of land reform beneficiaries with HIV/AIDS, improvement on reform planning, and holding a southern Africa land summit.

The ICG warns South Africa "that violence fuelled by inequality and unfulfilled expectations could become a much larger factor in its future, as the emotive issue of land becomes linked to dissatisfaction over the country's basic ills: unemployment and poverty." This, the ICG claims will become a major issue in the 2009 elections.

The full ICG report can be read at the International Crisis Group's website.

Labels: land claims, land reform, restitution, zimbabwe

PRETORIA- Almost 50% of the country's national and provincial parks are under dispute over ownership in one form or another, according to the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

"Communities are now becoming owners of national parks and it is forcing the parks system to rethink how to approach co-operation with communities," said the epartment's director-general, Crispian Olver.

While co-operation with communities living on the boundaries of conservation areas had improved, the matter was still touchy, he said.

There was still an old school mindset in SA National Parks and in provincial parks that believed these conservation areas were places for animals and not people, particularly those living on the park's boundary.

But that mindset had changed considerably because of the land claims process.

Olver said conservation authorities initially saw this as a big threat.

But the department was increasingly seeing it as an opportunity as it linked some of its work, such as community-based natural resource management and building community benefits from tourism and small, medium and micro enterprise developments.

"You are starting to see a series of, I would almost say, experiments where communities are now developing various economic activities around parks and even in parks."

For example, the Makuleke in the northern Kruger National Park had game lodges that they owned and managed.

"In fact have hunting safaris, which is in its own right a controversial issue."

There were similar projects in the Richtersveld, Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park and in the Eastern Cape.

"A number of experiments are underway which are going to be valuable for the future of conservation in this country. It is forcing the pace of change with conservation authorities," he said.

Labels: land claims, land reform, national park, restitution