Democracy should feed land hunger

South Africa is experiencing a harsh, recurring cycle of seasonal natural disasters, mainly characterized by floods. The KwaZulu-Natal province experienced a deadly series of natural disasters, exacerbated by heavy rains driven by inevitable climate change. Last year, the Eastern Cape was devastated by similar floods, with approximate damages of over R5 billion. This year, it was Mpumalanga’s turn, with an estimated damage cost of R2 billion and in Limpopo, Premier Phophi Ramathuba said their preliminary damage assessment cost was R10 billion. So far, nearly half of the South African provinces have been affected by multiple hazards and strained by the devastating damage.

A few weeks after lives were lost, interrupted, and property destroyed, it appears the same habit of moving on is normalised, as we did with the acceptance of the informal settlements, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape disasters has begun. The conversation about the devastation of these natural disasters is left to the victims, those close to them and a few caring leaders. The politicians, as expected, made a few single visits. The invisible and silent, painful question of belonging is only covered by the etched souls of the victims. The conversation will be revisited next year, when another province is ravaged. Our inaction has already created other victims of the next rainy season.

In 1994, there were about three hundred informal settlements. Thirty-two years later, South Africa has over four thousand informal settlements and it is home to more than four million people. In addition, Zandile Phiri of the United Democratic Movement, postulates that in the past two years, nearly three thousand shacks were destroyed by fire in the informal settlements countrywide and lives were lost and destroyed every year out of the four thousand existing informal settlements in the country, as it happened recently at Imizamo Yethu and Masiphumelele informal settlements. South Africans have normalised abnormality with poor human settlements and guarantees of human life losses.

At the centre of this undesirable cycle of flood experiences and fires lies a consequential topic of land administration in post-1994 South Africa. The question should address the connection between democracy and land ownership as the basis of belonging. It is shocking that a post-1994 dispensation, emerging from a colonial-apartheid liberation struggle whose core objective was the return of land, has presided over the increase of informal settlements from 300 to 4000. A painful neglect of the people whose struggle was about restoring their dignity, reversing overcrowding of bantustans, and preserving cultural epistimicide.

The debate about land administration under national leadership, traditional leaders, the Department of Human Settlements and municipalities is extremely urgent to ensure that land for residential purposes is well administered. The recent floods and fires not only depict a real story of climate change but also about how land administration, particularly for residential purposes, has been neglected for more than a quarter of a century. There is no winning formula for those residing outside regulated residential areas. During the winter season, fires ravaging the lives of informal settlements, two seasons after winter, it is heavy floods devastating properties of those staying in unsurveyed lands, sold by traditional leaders, mostly in rural areas. All our leaders have failed the people of South Africa when administering land for human settlement. 

There is an unfolding observable quasi-development in South Africa pointing to the direction of poor land administration post-1994.  The increase of informal settlements and the mushrooming of upper-class houses and properties in these unsurveyed rural lands answers a question about land hunger for residential purposes in South Africa. The algorithm points to the natural human desire to fulfill basic needs for shelter, which is affecting all social classes. These strong and desperate urges to gain access to land for residential purposes are clearly dichotomised, with the haves building in rural lands and have-nots grabbing pieces of land in informal settlements mostly on the outskirts of urban areas. Poor land administration has perpetuated the structural inequality in our society.

A dispensation operating under the democratic setup, rooted and spirited in the liberation struggle for land, should logically address this question: What does democracy and belonging mean to the people affected by winter fires in informal settlements and properties ravaged by heavy summer floods, 32 years post-1994 South Africa? The existence of democracy should feed the land hunger. There is an urgent need for our leaders to develop a plan regarding the perpetuated increase of informal settlements. South African democracy is the face of the land struggle; failure to emulate it is a betrayal of those who sacrificed their lives for the dignity of the masses. 

The most painful part about the absence of land administration is that its effects attach a colour and race to the victims: blacks. The victims, whose dignity is taken away due to land hunger for residential purposes, are blacks. The most troubling part is that even in death, the poor land administration will follow them. In informal settlements, the graveyards resemble exactly the type of land they lived on, as it happens in some townships. Until land administration is recognised as a tool that gives blacks peace and dignity in life and death, the liberation struggle for land will never be won.

Land administration has not taken place in South Africa since April 1994. The Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Human Settlements, and SALGA should address the land administration lacuna in post-1994 South Africa. Our leaders cannot afford to be spectators to the repetition of these severe historical inequalities. 

Simion Mashego is an independent researcher and land reform expert