IN GOOD FAITH: The promised land
An inept, uncaring government department is standing in the way of labour tenants realising their constitutional rights to property
In the debate about the appropriate role of courts in SA, consider this: almost 11,000 poor and vulnerable people claiming rights as labour tenants have been hung out to dry by an inept, uncaring government service that has done virtually nothing to realise their rights over 15 years. Their constitutional right to land now depends on the courts and whether the judiciary can craft an alternative path through the malign administrative chaos prevailing in the department of rural development & land reform. Labour tenants are people — or the descendants of people — who worked on a farm without being paid wages, in exchange for the right to live on, and work, a part of the farm for themselves. Though the system was made illegal in the 1960s, it continues in some forms. Now the law promises that labour tenants, or their children or grandchildren, once officially designated as such by the land claims court, may be given ownership of the small portion of land they occupied or, in some cases,...
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