Land claims fast tracked

A provincial land claims commission in South Africa on Monday began to fast track close to 6,000 restitution claims lodged over the past four years, African Eye News reported. The claims are expected to be validated by June next year after the commission hired three private companies to speed up the process, said provincial land claims commissioner Mashile Mokono.

The companies are expected to research the claims and determine if they met the requirements of the Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1996. In terms of the Act, land under claim must have been forcefully confiscated by the government using discriminatory laws on or before June 1913. "By the end of June 2002 we will have accurate statistics on valid restitution claims," Mokono said. He said the validation campaign would prioritise claims on state land including projects managed by the provincial agricultural parastatal, the Agriculture and Rural Development Corporation (ARDC).

Most of the claims in the Northern Province were rural and undocumented, which demanded "painstaking" research, he explained.
The commission has restored more than 25,000 hectares worth US $340,000 to 4,194 families since 1996. More than 200 families have received financial compensation for their lost land.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Mpumalanga province, two farm worker communities that once faced eviction were thrown a lifeline at the weekend when they were given title deeds to 775 hectares of land. The communities would live on the land and were expected to operate agricultural businesses, said provincial land department spokesman Arthur Ndlovu on Monday. The project is part of 76,127 hectares of land worth US $1.5 million that have been given to 12,400 Mpumalanga communities since 1994 under the government's land redistribution programme. However, of the 6,473 land restitution claims that have been lodged in the province since 1996, only five have been settled so far.