Make 20 million South Africans property owners before 2020! 

1 May 2019  

Land is an emotional touch point for South Africans. Although studies show consistently that this is an important issue for less than 5% of our population, political parties use the issue as a destructive political rallying point. We are tired of this rubbish. We know how to fix this.

And we are talking real empowerment. Like all our policies, it is simple, effective, cheap.

1.    We demand that government hand over all State-owned residential land to its occupants immediately, in freehold title deeds. This includes all rented township land and all RDP housing that is tied up in restrictions on sale. This will create 7 058 502 homeowners/property owners.

2.    We demand that all residents in dwelling units on communally held land in former homelands be given title to their homes. This will create 13 991 168 homeowners/property owners.

Handing over title deeds allows the homeowners to use their property as security for home improvements or starting a business, or to sell their homes and move to other areas as they become more prosperous.

With 21 049 670 recipients, this will be the biggest transfer of wealth in our country’s history.

We will hold a public town hall meeting on our YouTube channel to take questions at 12h30 on Thursday, 2 May 2019. We also provide details attached to this release.

For those asking for details from politicians, we salute you! So let us break that down:

RDP Housing & state owned residential land.

In theory, RDP housing handover should be easily implemented as all of these properties are already documented in the names of their assigned legal occupants.

What needs to be fixed is that out of 4 606 401 RDP houses handed over, most of the occupants have not received title deeds. There are 2 924 774 RDP homes where title deeds have not been handed over. The backlog for processing these title deeds grows every year as more RDP houses are built.

In the case of state owned subsidised housing, there are 3 093 140 houses/units completed, and 1 040 588 serviced sites completed.

Adding these units to the backlog of title deeds gives our total of 7 058 502 home/property owners.

Government offers many excuses for not processing these such as deceased estates, untraceable beneficiaries, or illegal occupants. We believe the simple solution is to mass issue title deeds in the names of the original beneficiaries.

Communally held land in the former homelands and Bantustans

This second item is more contentious. There are many who believe allocating property rights here cannot be achieved as these areas have never been formally divided into erven (or lots or plots or stands).

Our investigations show this is simply not true. Government has access to geographic and spatial statistical data for these areas designating every single dwelling unit and is immediately able to allocate those homes to the occupants without needing to demarcate extent of ownership of the surrounding property.

As a very specific and symbolic example: the Nkandla local municipality has a population of 114 408. Here, the State has already identified 213 Small Area Layers, 142 Main Places, 15 Tribal Authorities, and 27 665 Dwelling Frames (homes). We have visualized the data to make it easier to understand.

Overall view of Nkandla:

Closer view of Xulu area:

Zoomed in view with each red dot representing actual location of every home:

So while we agree that there has been on demarcation of the land surrounding these homes, there is no reason why ownership of these homes may not be transferred to the occupants. GPS coordinates can pinpoint the precise location for legal purposes

Summary

The ZACP has demonstrated that the fast and efficient transfer of property rights to millions of South Africans is a question of will, not a question of ability.

Granting millions of South Africans the rights that were stripped from them and never restored will be the greatest creation of wealth in South African history.

Ending the Bantustans will unlock dead capital and empower the poorest South Africans to ignite economic activity in their neighbourhoods, This will uplift the economy of the country.

#EndBantustans #PeoplesCapitalism #VotePurpleCow

Issued by ZACP, 1 May 2019