Hi, welcome to my Poliseries: an exploration of the vision each parliamentary party has for South Africa’s future. The topic I explore in this regard is land reform. In this report, I discuss the Good Party (Good); a political party, founded in 2018, whose vision of a future South Africa is centred on socialism, environmentalism and non-racialism.
Founded in 2018 by its current leader: Patricia de Lille, who has since been tasked by the ANC government to become its Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Good holds two seats in parliament. Its mission is the urbanisation of South Africa to enable a better life for all; this, as more people migrate to towns and cities from rural areas in search of opportunities. The land question it sees as central to inclusive access to opportunities in this sense – from both sides: concerning rural land reform and development to curb urban migration and redressing apartheid spatial planning which, having been continued by the current ANC government, has resulted in a focus of land reform efforts via low-cost housing in city and town outskirts. Citing that it is not enough that people own land, but that they do so in a manner aware of their contribution to society.
Without delving into the details, Good targets all aspects of land reform: restitution, redistribution and tenure security as part of its greater efforts against the legacy of apartheid: racism. This it dubs ‘spatial justice’: a social program consisting of three tenets:
Access to land ownership
Housing
Public transport
I will not discuss the third tenet as that falls short of our focus at this time.
Access to Landownership
Good does not regard the amendment of the constitution to enable expropriation without compensation as necessary; it regards section 25 of the document as sufficient leeway for all that government needs to implement its land reform efforts – including expropriation without compensation where appropriate. With the constitution as it is, the party aims to put underused and unused public land to use for land reform purposes; it seems that it sees this as a necessary first step before the consideration of targeting private land. A hope that land reform goals can be achieved with little upset to the current status quo; a way of simply uplifting people to higher socioeconomic levels without having any one of those who already inhabiting those above, come down a few.
It will require greater involvement of local government authorities wherein it will task them with conducting land audits in their districts to identify the ratio of private to public land for the above-stated purpose. In this sense, it has promised to finalise all restitution claims within 5 years of coming into power. I have to say that Good’s hope, as stated above, will be short-lived when I consider restitution efforts as part of the land reform program; As I understand it, restitution claims are for the redistribution, specifically, the ‘giving back’ of specific plots/portions of land. If that land is privately owned, then expropriation, with/out compensation, will have to be considered.
Housing
Under this tenet, Good has two goals; both, again, centred on greater local government involvement: first, Good plans to accelerate low-income housing delivery as part of its redistributive efforts of its land reform plan. The mitigation of bureaucratic inefficiency by granting local government greater autonomy is a reliable means to achieve this end. Furthermore, the party wants to shift housing delivery emphasis from city and town outskirts to inner-city/towns; another one of the ways it will redress the apartheid era’s spatial planning legacy by curtailing the development of the urban sprawl. For Good, it is not enough to simply provide people with housing if that situates them in areas far from opportunity – far from inner cities/towns; their lives would have been impacted positively but that positive impact would, overall, be insignificant in changing their lives for the better. Redistribution is more than just about handing out houses, it is about establishing fair access to the opportunity to better one’s life; this requires that those previously left out be formerly economically re-integrated. With economic activity, generally, heavily dependent on place – spatial planning is crucial to efforts for reform in this sense.
Its second goal involves using local government to develop, together with informal settlement dwellers, localised programs aimed at providing them with title deeds. This, as their right-of-way, to re-enter the economy. I wonder how much of an impact this will have on these dwellers’ economic position when taking into consideration the value of that land; what I mean is: is it in demand? And, if so, from whom? My answers to these questions would be: yes, it is in demand but from others in similar situations: unemployed and looking to dwell in said informal settlements for lack of money to buy property and in search of employment. So, imagine owning a title deed for the ownership of land sought after by those with little to no money – I’d say that keeps low the cap in value of that land. Either way, this may stimulate somewhat of a property market in informal settlements and, at the very least, open the economic door enough for their dwellers to set one foot in.
I find that Good is the first party, so far, whose manifesto appeals to me in the way it reads. It seems to me that they are solutions-oriented instead of problems-oriented; meaning their vision of a better South Africa is not based on complaints on current-day issues, usually displayed as finger-pointing by other parties, Good simply takes stock of the situation, and proposes solutions. This may be a reason Patricia de Lille was invited to join the ANC government. Also, I like that its solutions are not too detailed; some of the other parties have used their complaints to detail how they would do a better job, but I find that this leaves out contextual factors that influence the outcome. Good simply outlines a vision with clear objectives and leaves the contextual details to local governments – which leads me to my last pleasantry: Good’s intention to delegate what seems to be most of the functions of land reform to local governments is something I support as a step in the right direction as it should alleviate bureaucratic inefficiency thus curtail corruption and improve service delivery. Although I do feel that it does not go far enough, this is thinking which being progressive – I appreciate.
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