Foreigners get nod on land ownership

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Cabinet has approved the long-awaited green-paper on land reform, Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti revealed.
Business Day: 2011/08/26

Foreigners get nod on land ownership

Government appears to have abandoned the notion that foreigners should not own land in SA by proposing that foreigners enjoy freehold title but with conditions applied

WYNDHAM HARTLEY

CAPE TOWN — The government appears to have abandoned the notion that foreigners should not own land in SA by proposing that foreigners enjoy freehold title but with conditions applied.

The green paper on land reform approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday proposes freehold for foreigners but with obligations and conditions attached.

Earlier leaked drafts of the green paper contained only precarious tenure for foreigners.

Previous statements from President Jacob Zuma and Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti also hinted that foreigners would be restricted to leasing land in SA.

Sunday Ogunronbi, the head of policy research and legislation development at the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, told a post-Cabinet news briefing that the intention was to regulate foreign ownership of land and that this would be done with "different scenarios for different areas".

In this way different conditions would apply in cases of coastal or agricultural land.

He said a possible condition to buying large tracts of agricultural land could be the inclusion of a South African partner or that all the produce from the land could not be exported.

Democratic Alliance (DA) national spokeswoman Lindiwe Mazibuko said she was pleased at the signs that the government was backing off a ban on foreign land ownership but stressed that without having had sight of the green paper or the regulations — which will come later — she was unable to comment in detail.

Ms Mazibuko said that anything less than freehold title for foreigners and South Africans alike would be a burden.

She said the only real concerns for the DA were growth, prosperity and food security.

Mr Ogunronbi said that there was no mention in the policy document of a land ownership ceiling on the basis of race.

The other elements of the four- tier tenure framework are leasehold only for state and public land, freehold with limited extent for privately owned land and communal tenure with institutionalised rights for communally owned land. "The communal land tenure system, because of its complexity and, the nullification of the Communal Land Rights Act by the Constitutional Court, will be treated in a separate policy articulation," the green paper says.

It also says two imperatives for land reform were that the government has to "improve on past perspectives, without disrupting agricultural production and food security; and to avoid or minimise redistribution and restitution which do not generate sustainable livelihoods, employment and incomes".

The green paper will be made public next week.

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