PROPER MANAGEMENT OF MUNICIPAL commonages could salvage the country's compromised land-reform programme. So said the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) which, together with the Trust for Community Outreach and Education, published a guide on access and use of municipal commonages.

LRC lawyer Kobus Pienaar said South Africa's estimated one million hectares of municipality-owned commonages presented a modest but sound basis for launching less risky land-reform projects, as the land will remain municipally-owned while the land users can get public administrative support - unlike the situation on the majority of 4 000 land-reform projects established on 6 million hectares of land.

The booklet's authors said it'll take massive and costly effort to rehabilitate land-reform projects where land has been transferred to private ownership. Where land has remained in municipal ownership and control, getting things right or fixing them will be easier.

"What few people know," said Pienaar, "is that the 1997 White Paper on Land Policy makes provision for the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform to provide grant funds to municipalities for municipal commonages.

"Also, Section 10 of the Provision of Land and Assistance Act 126 (1993) allows the department's minister to provide money to municipalities to acquire, maintain, plan, develop or improve municipally-owned land. It also allows for capacity building, skills development, training and development. Subject to conditions, like the submission of a comprehensive development plan for municipal land, the department is willing to assist municipalities that approach it. But few have seized this opportunity, and municipal commonages are generally being misused at present."

The booklet states that municipal commonages were historically managed by white municipalities, and so much of it was leased to commercial white farmers or private interest groups. "Where those municipalities were centrally involved in the administration of commonages, our new democratised municipalities refuse to provide administrative support to individual new black users," said Pienaar. "Instead, the attitude seems to be to just hand over land without any checks and balances, and then sit back and say: 'Look what happens if you give poor people land'."

Municipalities also don't budget for municipal commonage management, and town councils are often more interested in selling off commonage to commercial entities than taking care of it for the benefit of the poor.

Where commonage is being leased, there's gross inequity in how it's allocated, with better-resourced "emergent" farmers getting preference over subsistence farmers.

The LRC will present their booklet to parliament, with a number of demands. "We'll insist that municipalities provide better information and more transparency on municipal commonage lands," said Pienaar. "Communities need to know where municipal commonage is located, who's using it, what's being paid, the conditions attached to existing leases and when these come to an end."

To read this booklet, please visit: http://www.lrc.org.za/booklets/1243-municipal-commonage

By Sean Christie