Making his main input, the Chairperson of the High Level Panel, Mr Kgalema Motlanthe, said his panel should not be seen as an extension of government and is not made up of sitting Members of Parliament, but of experts in various socio-political fields and laws that govern them - and that the panel is currently assessing the impact thereof through its nation-wide public hearings. And this initiative seeks to review these laws to determine their efficacy.

Despite the laws that advocate gender equality, gender inequality is still rife in our society. Males are often given the first preference when it comes to employment, said Ms Nomsa Selebano. "This is caused by our social engineering which confines the role of women to the kitchen. But often it is females who head most households and who rear children. As a result, it is women who still feel the blight of poverty more than men do," she said. 

The Executive Director of Rural Legal Trust, Mr Buti Chakache, said 22 years into our democracy, eviction on farms still happen under the radar of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act and other legal instruments meant to deter this Act. "Most people residing on farms don't know their rights. When evictions happen they have no one to call for help. They end up forming informal structures and settle along provincial roads which are not part of the Gauteng Development Plan. How easy was it for them to be evicted when there are labour courts, Legal Aid and the Extension of Security of Tenure Act, instruments that are meant to prevent this from happening?" he said. 

The Assistant Project Manager of the African Farmers' Association of South Africa, Mr Malebane Thabage, said they had many meetings with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, to no avail. They eventually resolved to march to Pretoria to call on the comprehensive support for the black farmers to operate viable farming businesses. 
To date, R40bn has been spent on land reform, but there is nothing to show because most of the post-land claim settlement funding went to speculative farmers rather than viable black commercial farmers.

"The government claims that it has spent R40bn to support black farmers. We are of the view that the department is currently promoting a dependency syndrome rather than promoting viable black commercial farmers. We have real farmers who are keen to produce and supply. There are also speculators, they use farming to access government funds. We need to have a system that will uproot this practice so that the department can derive value from its funding initiatives," he said.

He also said the "willing buyer, willing seller" programme has failed. "What do we do when there is no willing seller? What if the willing buyer has no money and what if there is no budget, what do we do with these dichotomies? The expropriation of land and the land ceiling, which determines how much a person can lease or occupy land, can be of great help in this regard," he said.

We have developed a nice legal framework, but in an environment that has no capable law enforcement and democratic institutions that are able to implement it, this legal framework is rendered ineffective, said the Deputy National Director of the Legal Resources Centre, Ms Teresa Yates-Wegerif.
"The land reform policy and legislation has not been integrated with the housing and water needs of the rural communities, hence they are still the most disadvantaged communities in this country," she said. 

She added: "Most importantly, we have to deal with non-implementation of tenure laws. And we need an honest assessment of what we have done wrong. We need to resuscitate transformative land reforms and policies and to ensure that there is will to implement them," she said. 
The Coordinator of the Land Access Movement of South Africa, Ms Emily Tjale, said their mission is to combat poverty and to ensure that there is access to land to promote sustainable livelihood in rural areas. But the slow pace of land reform makes this unrealistic. "The dissatisfaction with the slow pace of land distribution is increasing. Those who lodged their land claims 20 years ago have not got back their ancestral land and most of them have passed away. How do we sustain ourselves when we have no land to sustain ourselves?" she asked.

She cited a case study of the slow pace of land restitution. "We got our land back in 2001, but we have not yet received our land back. And how are we expected to improve our livelihood when we don't have land to cultivate?" she said.

Before it was proclaimed that about 30% of the land will be redistributed by 2014. The goal posts have since been shifted, only 10% of the land has been redistributed. "This is due to lack of competency on the part of government officials. This impacts negatively on the affected communities. The concern is that people involved in drafting these laws don't involve the relevant people. Hence we campaign for one woman, one hectare. This was changed by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform to one household, one hectare. We need to review the one household, one hectare policy. We want it to revert back to one woman, one hectare," she said.

She went on to explain the context of this call. "We proposed one woman, one hectare because women are not allowed to own land in traditional communal lands. I am myself a victim of this practice. We need our concerns to be reflected in policy outcomes," she said. 

There is a need of an integrated approach of land reform to involve other governmental portfolios and civil society. There is a need for a land encyclopaedia that will promote and inform land stakeholders about all land policies and reforms.

A member of the public, Mr Dan Monyepao, said he is hurting, the land issue is a disheartening reality of our daily existence. "We want land, not money. Money is expendable, land is not. Are we prepared to give away our land for a mere R50 000? No. Our land was stolen and land theft is a crime. And these thieves are still roaming freely. I want the land, I want to plough and ensure there is food security for our communities," he said.

How we will build a prosperous South Africa when 85% of the land is in the hands of 36 000 commercial farmers? he asked. "Whites must agree that they must give the land back to us so that we can build a prosperous country based on the ideals of nation-building and social cohesion. The Bible says love your neighbour as you love yourself. We are neighbours of these white farmers, but we suffer under their noses. Where is their sense of love and nation-building? No matter what, we will get our land back, no matter how," he said. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) still remains an unfinished business because it fell short of its intention to promote nation-building and social cohesion, said Ms Nomarussia Boane. We thought it would not only concern itself with political crimes, but also the socio-economic inequalities brought to bear on the black masses by apartheid's inhumane laws. "This gap still exists. We need legislation that will take this plight into consideration because the masses of South Africa still suffer from the deep-seated wrongs of the past that were not resolved by the TRC," she said.

What we are faced with is racism and the government has not explained to the people how racism works, said Mr Mike Steinbank. "All that black people are faced with is a result of racism. If the challenges we are faced with are not treated as such by our law-making processes, we will not be able to articulate and resolve the problem that we are currently faced with in this country," he said. 

By Abel Mputing
25 November 2016