Richard Spoor Profile picture
Sep 15, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
One of the reasons for the violence around mining is insecure tenure for people living in the former bantustans. Despite decades of promises there has been no substantive reform. What little has been achieved has been achieved through the courts. dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-0…
The Courts have spelled out the rights of communal land owning communities and processes that should be followed in the alienation of communal land. This has resulted in some key victories for well organised communities, but elsewhere the impact has been small.
Local chiefs and headmen, and in the case of KZN the Ngonyama Trust, still enjoy unconstrained power of over land paying scant regard to the guidance provided by the courts. Absent a strong and organised community they are free to allocate community land to cronies as they will.
The result of this lawless and corrupt dispossession of people’s land invariably leads to violence by both the dispossessors and the dispossessed. Troublesome people need to be dealt with through threats and violence and sometimes they fight back.
In a situation where there is secure tenure, land is leased or sold by formal written agreement between nominally equal parties. Violence and duress are rare exceptions. It’s the absence of a coherent legal framework and access to peaceful remedies that leads to violence.
The State, hostage as it is to the political support of the rural elites who exercise such disproportionate power over the land of others, has failed to take the legislative measures required to reign these elites in and to secure peace and good order for the benefit of the poor.

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More from @Richard_Spoor

Aug 27
Good news for all scammers out there. There is a brilliant new opportunity for the enterprising.
Step 1. Get a lawyer friend to get himself appointed as a Small Claims Court Commissioner. The DOJ is none too fussy so it is easy.
Step 2. Set yourself up as a “legal consultant”.
Step 3. Find some clients. Anyone will do.
Step 4. Help them file a claim for up to R20 000 in the Small Claims Court
against someone else who can pay R20 000. It doesn’t matter who, or if the claim is bullshit.
Step 5. Set the date for hearing on a day when your Small Claims Court Commissioner mate is sitting.
Step 6. Remind your Commissioner friend to rule for your client.
Step 7. Get a writ of execution and collect your winnings.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 19
I have an obscure matter in KZN, from what was once Griekwaland East. In 1902 sixteen African families clubbed together to buy the farm Krom Hoek from the estate of the Griekwa leader Adam Kok.
For decades these families recorded the passing of title to their heirs and in some instances to third parties at the deeds registry in Kokstad. Apartheid, taxes and the cost of property transfer put an end the that, and by the mid 70’s registration stopped.
The Land Titles Adjustment Act 111 of 1993 was passed to fix this. The Minister could designate farms like Krom Hoek, which she did, and then appoint a Commissioner to receive applications and adjudicate them and issue new title deeds to the present owners.
Read 7 tweets
Jul 4
A politically connected developer is building another shopping mall in Marite near Bushbuckridge. She needs to move a whole bunch of people who have lived there forever to clear the land she needs. She hired the local chief to do the removals.
The Chief is Lamack Mokoena the chairperson of the Mpumalanga House of Traditional Leaders and the national president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa).likely the most powerful chief in Mpumalanga.
The Chief allocates land and can take it away by having a community resolution passed approving the mall development and resolving that residents permits to occupy the land be taken from them. He had such a resolution passed.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 10
Following a resettlement of a community by a large platinum mining company in Limpopo and as part of livelihoods restoration project, the resettled community became the BEE partner of a big contractor on the mine.
It has been incredibly successful, the community got jobs, a profit share to all the families and significant skills development. However the contract is coming to an end. The mining company then says that they will renew it but only if the contractor replaces the community…
with a new BEE partner of the company’s choosing. The nominated BEE partner is a trust headed by the local chief, a politically connected local attorney and a senior executive of the mining company concerned. They demand that the community sell their shares to the trust at a…
Read 8 tweets
Feb 26
Our trade union client gets good information that Samancor Chrome is engaged in large scale transfer pricing. They sell chrome that they mine in SA to a related offshore company at a heavy discount to the market price. They do so to lower their profit in SA and their taxes.
This is bad news for the unions members who have shares in the company through a worker empowerment trust set up by the company as part of its BEE obligations. The trust gets a reduced dividend and workers get a smaller distribution.
The Union calls upon Samancor Ito Section 165 of the Companies Act to investigate the allegations and to recover the moneys lost through the transfer pricing scheme. Samancor appoints an audit firm to do the investigation.
Read 10 tweets
Feb 14
This is how SANRAl moves rural people in Pondoland to make way for their grand vanity project, the N2 greenfields freeway along the Transkei Wild Coast. You know the one, it’s a toll road with the highest bridges in the world built and designed to facilitate dune strip mining.
But perhaps the first thing is to explain how they should move them. Because SANRAL uses foreign (Chinese) contractors and uses World Bank money it is obliged to subscribe to IFC social and environmental standards. These require that SANRAl prepare a RAP.
A Relocation Action Plan requires that SANRAl consider the social and economic consequences of its forced displacement on the people it plans to move. Where will they be moved to? The minimum housing standards that will apply, compensation and provision of alternative livelihoods
Read 17 tweets

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