Many black South Africans have suffered dispossession of their land, denial of adequate access to land, inadequate tribal or apartheid forms of title to accessible land, and restrictions on their use of accessible land.
These historical disadvantages have severely handicapped small business development, small-scale agriculture, and the provision of housing. Various other factors, including unrealistically high building, surveying, and registration standards, continue to impede rapid land reform and economic growth.
The gradualist approaches thus far adopted to address the huge need for land and housing have hardly made a dent in the problem. The longing for property and shelter cries out for a swifter and more purposeful approach. Many of the measures recommended in this report involve the simple suspension or abolition of obstructive laws and regulations. They can be implemented at the stroke of a pen and will have a dramatic and virtually immediate effect.
Recommendations
PROPERTY AND RIGHTS IN LAND
Amend the Constitution to prevent future legislation from placing obstacles in the way of obtaining secure title.
Grant security of tenure to holders of informal land rights.
Give people the right to deal with or dispose of their land without undue restriction.
Withdraw the 2019 State Land Leasing Policy.
Ensure free transferability of tribal land rights subject to possibly confining transfer to members of the tribe.
Respect tenant/owner agreements relating to land.
The ‘custodianship’ risk in the Expropriation Bill
SUPERFLUOUS GOVERNMENT LAND
Transfer superfluous government land to the homeless free of charge.
DEMOCRATISED ADMINISTRATION AND DISPOSAL OF TRIBAL LAND
Empower tribal chiefs to dispose of land into secure and tradeable forms of title.
CHALLENGE OF SECURE TITLE
Allocate new land by a simple form of registration.
Suspend the Land Survey Act for conversions to ownership and transfers to existing occupiers.
Make the Deeds Office registration requirement optional.
Suspend the requirement to use a conveyancer for routine property transactions.
Convert all apartheid title to full ownership.
CHALLENGE OF FINANCING
Repeal credit law ceilings on interest rates.
SUBDIVISION OF AGRICULTURAL LAND
Repeal the Subdivision of Agricultural Land Act.
REMOVAL OF RESTRICTIONS ON LAND USE
Scrap prescriptive land-use controls.
Simplify requirements for the establishment of formal settlements.
Create Special Housing Zones exempt from building codes, interest-rate ceilings, and costly formalities for mortgage or non-mortgage finance.
Reduce minimum housing standards to realistic levels.
Amend land-use schemes and municipal by-laws, replacing zoning laws with nuisance and neighbourhood law.
HOUSING CONSUMERS PROTECTION MEASURES ACT, 1998
Repeal the Housing Consumers Protection Measures Act.
REMOVAL OF TRANSFER DUTIES
Abolish duties and taxes on transfer or supply of land.
EXPROPRIATION
Withdraw the Bill to amend the Constitution that would authorise expropriation of land without compensation and state custodianship of land.
Considerations
Relaxed standards and formalities will probably result in slightly increased uncertainty. There is a trade-off between reduced costs, speed of delivery and more land reform, on the one hand, and administrative imperfections, objections from vested interests, and less orderly development on the other.
The question is whether net benefits exceed net disadvantages.
