Cape Town - The DA has accused Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille of delaying the handover of six parcels of land to the provincial Department of Human Settlements thus denying the department the opportunity to plan for housing developments on the sites.
Human Settlements standing committee chairperson Matlhodi Maseko (DA) said they had given De Lille and her department time to respond to their questions, yet nearly two months had gone by since she claimed to have handed over land parcels.
“My concern is that these claims will amount to nothing. The Rooidakke and Snake Park Housing Development in Grabouw have seen more than 1 000 housing opportunities built by the local municipality in partnership with the province.
“For more than a decade the local municipality has been waiting for the national Department of Public Works to transfer the land so that residents can begin to receive title deeds for their homes.”
De Lille’s spokesperson Zara Nicholson accused the DA in the province of political grandstanding with regard to the release of land for human settlements purposes in the Western Cape.
“As usual they believe that by repeating the same lies over and over that finally people will believe them.”
She said De Lille had signed off the parcels of land but there were processes to be followed that involved other actors including the Land Affairs Board which has to update the land valuations and the National Treasury which requires the value of the property in order to provide the endorsement.
“Once the transfer of the land has been endorsed by the National Treasury, it comes back to the DPWI to prepare the Power of Attorney which the DG of DPWI signs. This is sent to the Housing Development Agency (HDA) to initiate their planning and development processes.
“Thereafter the transfer is processed to the HDA to undertake conveyancing and the land is then formally transferred onto the books of the HDA.”
Nicholson said none of the processes were controlled by the minister and so there was nothing De Lille could do to speed up the process.
Maseko said: “While we are well aware that these processes take time, it is well within the minister’s reach to inform a provincial government when the Department of Public Works is in the process of handing over land parcels for human settlement purposes, where they are located, and a time frame for the transfer to take place.”
In May this year De Lille listed the parcels of land that she had signed off for in the Western Cape as: 6.9 ha in Stellenbosch; 12 ha in Driftsands: 11 ha that was in two parcels in Ruiterbos Forest Village, Mossel Bay and 3.5 ha that was in two parcels of land in Wellington.
This was after Human Settlements MEC Tertuis Simmers sought clarity about the land parcels.