Durban - The Constitutional Court has effectively put a stop to any new land claims. The court, in a judgment handed down on Thursday, has also put about 75 000 to 80 000 claims, which were lodged after July 2014, on ice.
This was after it ruled, in a unanimous judgment, that the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act of 2014 was invalid because of the lack of adequate public consultation.
The Amendment Act reopened the land claims process in 2014 after the first process had been closed in 1998.
For the first process, 79 696 claims were lodged, of which 78 750 had been settled, according to the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform this week.
At least one massive land claim, which would have covered most of the land in KwaZulu-Natal, will not be affected by the judgment because it has not yet been lodged.
When the land claims process reopened, Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini said he would lodge the “biggest land claim” for all the land in KZN, as it had once belonged to the Zulu kingdom.
But Jerome Ngwenya, the chairman of the Ingonyama Trust, which was meant to co-ordinate the claim, said the “intended Zulu nation” claim had not yet been lodged.
He added that the judgment meant that there was currently no law in terms of which the claim could be lodged.
KwaZulu-Natal agricultural union Kwanalu’s president, Andy Buchan, said the union had always actively engaged the department and raised its concerns over the amendment to the act.
“Those concerns related to the expectations of the claimants which could potentially be frustrated by the limited resources and budget allocation available to process the numerous additional claims that have been lodged. Kwanalu has and will continue to proactively participate in working with the commissioner to expedite the completion of long-outstanding claims.”
However, new claimants have not been left in the lurch as the court said it would be “unjust” and prejudicial to rule that the new claims were invalid as they had been filed in “good faith”.
But the court interdicted the Land Claims Commission from dealing with those claims pending a new act to reopen the land claims process.
If pre-1998 claims are finalised before the new act is enacted, the court has given the commission the authority to process new claims and this may be possible, as the backlog of old claims is less than 1 000.
Also, if the new act is not enacted within 24 months, the commission can approach the Concourt for a new remedy.
The Concourt case had been brought by the Land Access Movement of South Africa, the KZN-based Association for Rural Advancement and other land rights and communal property associations, which said that beyond the public consultation problems, other issues with the amendment act included that it had no provision to protect existing claims from being usurped by new claimants who wished to claim the same land, and that the commission lacked the capacity to deal with the high volume of claims.
On Thursday the Association for Rural Advancement said the judgment was “significant” in processing the original claims, which it said had been prejudiced by the reopening of the land claims process.
The association’s programme manager, Glenn Farred, said the overall issues relating to land claims remained, and the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform was in urgent need of a coherent and comprehensive strategy.
The court found that the public consultation processes related to the amendment act had been inadequate.
The Mercury