Government draft bill to protect communal land

Government is busy formulating legislation that would make it impossible for people living in rural and communal areas to lose their land because they could not service their debts.

- Advertisement -

Rural Development and Land Reform minister Gugile Nkwinti told delegates at the KwaZulu-Natal Rural Development Summit held Durban recently that government will protect the loss of the country’s land to speculators and market vagaries. 
Nkwinti’s spokesperson Mthobeli Mxotwa said the department was drafting a communal land tenure bill that will institutionalise land use rights.

This bill will also empower the community property associations to have first right of refusal, and the government to have a second right of refusal once a communal land holder wanted to sell his or her land. “In this way the land will be protected from unscrupulous creditors who would otherwise have taken away the land to recoup their payment,” Nkwinti said. Nkwinti said government would never allow a situation, such as has happened among some African countries where the country had lost all its communal land to creditors.

Follow Peter Mashala on Twitter @Peter_Mashala

- Advertisement -