MPs rap Ingonyama Trust over dilution of land rights

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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. In November 2017 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 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 chairwoman Phumuzile Ngwenya-Mabila.

The trust is a statutory body that reports to the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform and was established in 1994 to manage land owned by the KwaZulu-Natal government. Its sole beneficiary is Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini.

It has been entering into lease agreements with people living on its land for some time. Zuma, for example, has a 40-year lease that was signed in 2011. That agreement entails annual rent of R8,000 a year.

MPs voiced disquiet with the trust's plans, saying they would water down people's customary land rights and render them vulnerable to eviction. "I really doubt you have the interests of rural people at heart if you are to reduce their ownership to tenants. What if they cannot pay? What will happen to them?" said the ANC's Elleck Nchabeleng.

The trust board's chairman, Judge Jerome Ngwenya, said many of the people who occupied the land managed by the trust were well-paid public servants and people "should not sit there for free".

Source: Business Day