Le chercheur jésuite explique d'autres formes de propriété foncière en Afrique du Sud
Le chercheur jésuite explique d'autres formes de propriété foncière en Afrique du Sud
Conférence des évêques catholiques d'Afrique australe (SACBC) || Par Matsepane Morare, SJ || 10 mai 2017
Document d ' information 430
Mai 2017
Autres formes de propriété foncière
1. Présentation
L'histoire de la dépossession des terres en Afrique du Sud a été discutée et étudiée et analysée pendant des années. La terre a été l'une des questions majeures de la lutte contre le colonialisme et l'apartheid, et donc aussi un point de discorde important lors des négociations qui ont donné naissance à la Constitution du pays en 1996. Cela a conduit à ce que l'on a appelé la « clause de propriété » dans la Charte des droits, et a donné lieu à de nombreux arguments et différends sur ce que la Constitution dit réellement sur la question de la dépossession de terres et de la réparation par l'État. La plupart des gens acceptent que les régimes de propriété foncière en Afrique du Sud sont inégaux, injustes et préjudiciables au tissu et au fonctionnement de la société. En outre, la propriété foncière est largement considérée comme un moyen crucial de lutter contre la pauvreté et les inégalités sociales dans le pays. La question qui se pose est donc de savoir comment modifier les régimes de propriété et inclure les personnes précédemment exclues.
2. La clause foncière
La Constitution provisoire de 1993 ainsi que le paragraphe 7 de l ' article 25 de la Constitution de 1996 et la loi 22 de 1994 sur la restitution des droits fonciers traitaient tous de la dépossession des terres. On fait souvent valoir à tort que l'article 25 de la Constitution non seulement protège les propriétaires fonciers et consacre leur droit à la propriété foncière, mais aussi qu'il constitue le principal obstacle à la réforme foncière et à la restitution des terres. L'article a également été interprété à tort comme signifiant que les terres ne peuvent être acquises que par le biais du principe du «vendeur volontaire». Toutefois, tout ce que dit l'article, c'est que nul ne peut être privé arbitrairement de ses biens; chaque fois que des terres sont récupérées ou expropriées, comme le dit le paragraphe 25(2)
Le processus doit être correct sur le plan procédural et juste pour tout le monde. En fait, le paragraphe 25(7) confère clairement un droit de propriété à ceux qui ont perdu leurs terres en vertu de lois injustes antérieures et demande clairement que ces droits soient réparés. Même si la Constitution était modifiée pour permettre l'expropriation sans compensation, l'État devrait encore satisfaire à l'exigence constitutionnelle selon laquelle le processus doit être juste et équitable pour tous.
3. Politiques passées
Le programme de restitution des terres pour l ' après-1994 a été soumis à trois restrictions importantes. Premièrement, il avait une date butoir de 1913; deuxièmement, l'accent était mis sur les dépossessions communautaires majeures qui pouvaient très facilement être confirmées historiquement; et enfin, il y avait un point final le 31 décembre 1998, après quoi les revendications ne pouvaient être faites. Par conséquent, les terres prises avant 1913 et les terres prises à des groupes et/ou individus plus petits qui n'avaient ni la capacité ni les preuves de dépossession, ne pouvaient pas être restaurées. De plus, les particuliers et les collectivités qui, pour diverses raisons, n'avaient pas réussi à présenter de demandes d'indemnisation au cours des quatre années qui ont précédé décembre 1998 ont été exclus. Pour répondre à certaines de ces préoccupations, le processus a été rouvert en 2014, mais il s'est arrêté en raison de contestations judiciaires. Cela signifie que beaucoup de ceux qui n'avaient pas les moyens de récupérer des terres qu'ils avaient perdues, ou qui avaient simplement été empêchés de posséder légalement des terres par le passé, restent sans terre.
Mais quel est l'état actuel de la propriété foncière?
4. Propriété et autres formes de propriété
Certains ont fait valoir qu'il n'est pas nécessaire que les gens possèdent des terres, mais plutôt que leurs droits d'accès soient garantis.
Il existe de nombreuses formes de propriété foncière en Afrique du Sud, la propriété foncière directe étant l'une des formes de propriété foncière de type BP 430 :
d'eux. Parmi les autres formes d'occupation, mentionnons les terres communales (comme dans les associations de propriétés communautaires), les terres communes, les coentreprises et diverses formes de location ou de location.
‘Land tenure’ refers to the terms and conditions on which land is held, used and transacted and, as noted, it is a broader concept than just land ownership.
Its main purpose is to enhance and secure peoples’ land rights, whatever they are. Rules of tenure indicate how property rights are to be allocated within society. This is to ensure that arbitrary depravations and evictions, landlessness, and general property insecurity, are avoided, as well as to ensure that rights holders are able to invest in the land and use it sustainably.
4.1. Communal land 1
The communal land tenure policy deals with tenure systems affecting mostly rural land occupied by African communities. It refers not to ownership but to ‘use rights’ enjoyed by communities. ‘Communal property signifies the collective relationship between people and their shared land. The policy seeks to reform communal tenure so as to ensure the security of land rights and production relations for people residing in communal areas by establishing institutionalised use rights, especially for households and other users, which will then be administered either by traditional councils in areas that observe a customary law or communal property outside these counsels.
Though the values underlying this system are considered a continuation of old forms of traditional land tenure in African communities, the question of who actually owns the land is still a contested one. There is no clear agreement as to whether the land belongs to the state, the tribal councils, the chiefs and other traditional leaders, or to the communities living on the land.
4.2. Commonage land
Commonage refers to land owned by a municipality under the Department of Land Affairs’ Municipal Commonage Programme of 1997, where land was availed mainly for use by poor or subsistence farmers to graze livestock and for small-scale allotment farming. Subsistence farmers are thus able to make use of commonage to supplement their income, as well as to provide for household consumption. Commonage was seen as a stepping stone to more commercial forms of farming, but also for giving subsistence farmers access to agricultural land without them actually having to buy or own large pieces of land for their exclusive use.2
4.3. ‘One Hectare One Household’
A similar programme is referred to as the ‘One Hectare One Household’ plan, where one hectare of land is allocated to every needy household. The land to be allocated will be acquired by the state and surveyed, and land-use plans will be drawn up, with a title deed issued to each household. Any surplus land that is left over after each household is allocated their one hectare, will be communally owned and designated for collective use. The idea is to then promote the formation of co-operatives linked to agri-parks.3
4.4. Joint ventures
There are several collective schemes ranging from ‘Strengthening the Relative Rights of People Working the Land’ (colloquially known as the 50/50 voluntary share scheme), to other ‘Equity Share Schemes’, and ‘Out-grower/contract’ farming.
These ventures refer to new farmers being given land reform subsidies by government so as to enable them to acquire shares in existing agricultural enterprises. However, this does not include land ownership rights. The idea behind joint ventures is that outside help or investment is needed to sustain agriculture and to improve productivity and livelihoods. Such ventures may be able to offer local communities sustainable development over a period of time.
These forms of ‘ownership’ have come under criticism mainly because they do not actually include ownership of the land or the farm, but simply provide equity in what is owned by someone else. Thus the relationship between the various partners becomes unequal. Some have argued that the relationship between the mainly white farmers who own the land and the new black farmers who own equity becomes characterised by paternalistic attitudes. Even worse, the new equity partners have no actual say in the running of the farm, and since they have no rights of residence on the land, they can be evicted from it.4
4.5. Individual ownership
Individual ownership of land is the most common form of ownership, and most of farming land is often owned individually and handed down through families. This is the form that dominates BP 430: Alternative forms of Land Ownership 3
2 http://www.plaas.org.za/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/ELARSA%2005.pdf
4 Boyce Tom, Researcher at TCOE: Presentation at the CPLO roundtable discussion on “Alternative Forms of Land Ownership”. 15/03/2017, Townhouse Hotel, Cape Town.
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the housing market as well, where it is supported by the possession of title deeds and the cadastral system. There has been an attempt to promote this form of ownership even for traditional communal land, arguably to allow for it to be used as bankable collateral, thereby facilitating economic activity with the land as an asset. Those opposing the turning of communal land tenure into individual land ownership point to the complexities of familial and gender conflicts, and the possibility of land being sold off by poor people, leaving them and their families even more destitute.
4.6. Group ownership
Other forms of group ownership have been tried, including trusts and Community Property Associations (CPAs). Because these are actual forms of ownership, and not just equity, they have the advantage that everyone’s voice is the same. However, like everything that is collectively owned, consensus is often very difficult to achieve. There have been other problems with these schemes and new legislative amendments are presently before Parliament to deal with some of the challenges.
Coupled with this form of ownership especially of agricultural land are various programmes to support the previously excluded in the development of the land. These programmes include the Settlement Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG), and Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD). It is noteworthy that government has also come up with systems of tenure where the state owns the land and leases it out to beneficiaries for production, reserving the right to revoke the lease should the beneficiaries fail to deliver in terms of production. The Proactive Land Acquisition System (PLAS) is one such scheme, with the aim of leasing out the land rather than transferring ownership.
5. Conclusion
There are several points that are of significance here. The first is that, with commonage and communal land, access does not depend on ownership. This distinction is important because for many people and communities the question of ownership is secondary to the question of access. Thus, it does not necessarily matter for those groups who actually owns the land as long as they have access to it to meet their developmental, economic, and social needs. Accordingly, the question of alternative forms of ownership gets overtaken by alternative forms of tenure, i.e. alternative forms of secure rights of access to land, beyond necessarily owning the land.
But the question of actual ownership is important for many other reasons. These range from the ability to trade in land because one actually owns it; to the right to decide how land can and should be used because one owns that land; to being able to bequeath land to one’s children or the next generation; to the ability to use the land for any social and economic activity that allows for development; to the power to determine social access by others. But more important in a country with South Africa’s history of dispossession, ownership of the land allows for a healing narrative of liberation and restitutive justice where those who had been previously dispossessed can truly say that the land has been returned to them. And even beyond this narrative, the glaring, racially-defined inequalities that still dictate our spatial geography can begin to be reduced and normalised.
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Matsepane Morare SJ
Researcher
Sondré Bailey
Research Intern
Sondré Bailey is master’s student in political science at the
University of the Western Cape, currently completing a semester
internship at CPLO.
Source: SACBC…
