land

Proposals to change the Constitution's provisions on sexual orientation and property rights have been referred to party caucuses for consideration, according to Die Burger newspaper.

Die Burger reports that Parliament's constitutional review committee has made the unusual move of referring these proposals to political parties.

Almost five percent of Africa's agricultural land has been bought or leased by investors since 2000, according to an international coalition of researchers and NGOs.

The coalition, which has released the world's largest public database of international land deals, estimates that more than 200 million hectares of land - roughly eight times the size of the United Kingdom - were sold or leased between 2000 and 2010.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in Limpopo has criticised the ‘meagre’ payment of just more than R2 million to the Molekana clan for land dispossessed from them and on which Anglo Platinum has a mining operation outside Mokopane.

COSATU provincial secretary, Dan Sebabi, describes the settlement as ‘daylight robbery’ because the clan lost all the rights to the land, including ownership, for a payment totalling R2 295 300, that was shared among 42 households.

Environmental and farm groups have accused the World Bank of helping corporations and international investors snap up cheap land in Africa and developing countries worldwide at the expense of local communities.

In a statement released to coincide with the bank's annual land and poverty conference in Washington DC, the groups, which include NGO Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) and La Via Campesina, say that decades of World Bank policies have pushed African and other governments to privatise land and focus on industrial farming.

North West Human Settlements MEC, Desbo Mohono, has urged the province’s municipalities to create stringent by-laws to prevent the ‘mushrooming’ of informal settlements.

Mohono, points out that, “We cannot win this battle if we continue to be held to ransom by our people, who continue to occupy land illegally and continue to add numbers to the ever emerging informal settlements.”

She made the appeal during the handing over of the informal settlements improvement plan report on Friday in Rustenburg, following a five year investigation.

The National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) has urged the Congress of the South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to work hard to ensure a 70 percent majority win for the African National Congress (ANC) in the next election, to pave the way for amendments to the property clause to speed up land redistribution.

NUMSA criticises the FW De Klerk Foundation which argues that the ANC sought to discard the country’s constitutional consensus by tampering with property rights through the green paper on land reform and the freedom of expression, among others.

The BaPhalaborwa-ba-ga-Selwane community is up in arms because the Limpopo Land Claims Commission has not yet submitted relevant information to the Land Claims Court to motion their legal battle against the Majeje tribal authority.

The Commission was first ordered in 2008 at a pre-trial hearing in the Land Claims Court to submit information, which would help to resolve the land dispute between the Selwane community and the Majeje tribal authority.

According to a study by the International Land Coalition (ILC), national elites in developing countries, including Tanzania, are among the most notorious land grabbers.

The accusation is one of the highlights of a major study on the issue that was conducted last year, which points out that while influential personalities in the countries grow wealthier off land acquired through unfair means, many of their poor and largely voiceless compatriots are rendered poorer.

Aid group, Oxfam, has warned that decades of progress against hunger in Africa is being reversed by rising food prices, chronic droughts and ‘unfair’ land policies.

In its new report, which was released a day after Kenyan police dispersed dozens of protesters trying to hold an overnight vigil to protest rising food prices, the organisations accuses rich nations, transnational corporations and local elites are grabbing land needed for food production.