Association For Rural Advancement
Statement on the landless sit-in: Amajuba land reform offices
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

19 July 2011

The Association For Rural Advancement condemns in the strongest possible terms the use of police machinery to deal with land issues.

In honouring the true fighting legacy of Nelson Mandela, the planned peaceful sit-in by the landless people of Utrecht, Newcastle and Dannhauser was aimed at securing an audience with senior department official, Director-General Mr Mduduzi Shabane, and the relevant member of the KZN legislature or national parliament. Instead of engaging with the people, the department unleashed the police. Not only was this police action unwarranted, but it also serves to obscure the true issues.

For too long the people of the Amajuba District have been raising their concerns with the office of Land Reform and Rural Development at many levels and at many times, but in vain. It is in our view that such an audience with both senior officials and politicians will ensure accountability which has been lacking thus far within the department.

AFRA calls on MEC Lydia Johnson and her counterpart, the Chairperson of the Agriculture and Rural Development portfolio committee, Mr Themba Mthembu, to take charge of the situation and engage with the landless to ensure decent and orderly land reform and rural development. It is our view that the lack of a hands-on approach by our politicians on critical matters of land reform and rural development in this province has resulted in elites and officials dictating the direction of land reform and rural development in a manner that has caused internal tensions within beneficiary communities. There are many court decisions which have not yet been implemented, to the detriment of the poor rural landless.

The current situation in Newcastle is a predictable manifestation of the growing impatience of our landless rural people.

END.

Issued by Land Rights NGO:
Association For Rural Advancement (AFRA)

For more information contact
Thabo Manyathi (073 602 2370)