Ingonyama Trust told to stop converting 'occupying' rights to long-term leases
Parliament’s portfolio committee on rural development and land reform has rebuked the Ingonyama Trust for watering down the rights of people living on its land, and ordered it to stop encouraging people to convert their "permission to occupy" rights to long-term leases pending further consultation. The trust owns about 30% of the land in KwaZulu-Natal, including the land on which former president Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead is built. Last November the trust went on a drive to get people living on its land to exchange their permission to occupy rights for long-term leases, a move critics said amounted to asking people to pay rent on land they already owned. "What we would like to see is the conversion of informal ownership to title deed, that will give our people the dignity [of owning] the land in which they are residing. They are not tenants, they are the owners," said committee chairperson Phumuzile Ngwenya-Mabila.
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