Land Matters Reflections In The Dark

It is currently 23:58 on a September 13 night, it is dark, loadshedding has hit and as a result, I am trying to read. I stumbled upon little notes (and comments?) I had made on Adv. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi's controversial Land Matters. This is a book I've been reading for a few months now, I am often forced to put it down and focus on my academics because really, it's a book I'm reading for pleasure.

Ngcukaitobi is basically tackling the infamous land question in South Africa, he's looking at the past, present and the bleak future of same. He starts by giving much needed history on Africa's communal systems of land-ownership, goes on to assess the 1913 Land Act and subsequent forced removes of natives from their homesteads. Fast forward, he looks at what the government has achieved, if anything, as well as its failures in "bringing back the land."

In Part III: Land Trials And Errors: Restitution, Redistribution And Tenure. Chapter 11 titled 'Our Mysterious Land Tenure' specifically pages 134 and 135, he talks about "Title Deeds Fridays" which was initiated by President Cyril Ramaphosa in May 2018, during his Presidential Campaign, to hand over 11 000 title deeds to qualifying beneficiaries. No mention is made in whether the requirements here would be different from the normal requirements set out in current Land Redistribution Programmes already in motion, again, he makes no mention of how long this handing over would take, would it be the first 5 years in office or would he need to be re-elected to fulfill this promise? Perhaps these are questions only the President's Campaign Manifesto can answer.

The belief here is that this act would "benefit the economy of the country as 'a house is the most important asset that one can own' and it would infuse growth in the economy as people would own something they could use as collateral at financial services institutions".

Two or so paragraphs down, Ngcukaitobi touches on Peruvian Economist Hernando de Soto's 2000 book 'The Mystery Of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs In The West And Fails Everywhere Else' wherein he shares that in South America, it failed because many people do not hold formally registered title to land. A lack of formal title - even where land is owned jointly - prevents people from using property as collateral and as a result, he writes, they are unable to unlock the capital that is found in land.

Really, this sort of makes sense because the whole idea of collective ownership (of land) is not from a capitalism perspective but rather to address communist problems therefore making it impossible to attempt to solve communist problems with capitalism.

Africa is not exempt from this problem, perhaps this is why the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) has not been a great tool in being used as collateral before financial services institutions.