08 Feb 2017

The Assistant Minister of Land Management Water and Sanitation Services Mr Itumeleng Moipisi has told parliament that he is not aware that people are removed by land boards from their ancestral lands.

He said where people have been evicted, the land boards would have satisfied themselves that they had occupied land without being duly allocated by the land boards or Dikgosi before establishment of land boards.

Mr Moipisi stated that “a squatter is an individual who occupies a piece of land without any authority or a certificate of land duly issued by the authority responsible for land administration.”

Answering a parliamentary question, the assistant minister highlighted that he was not aware of any colonial land policies which declare foreigners as permanent land owners.

He said, ”what I am aware of is that in tribal and state land areas, non-citizens are granted common law leases, which usually run for 50 years for business plots and 99 years for residential.”

Mr Moipisi noted that these same periods apply to citizens who wish to hold land other than under customary grant in tribal areas.

In addition, he said, “I am not aware that the land policy is similar to the Glen Grey Act 1984 adding that the land policy promotes land ownership and rights.”

MP for Ramotswa, Mr Samuel Rantuana had asked the minister why people were being removed from their ancestral land by land boards and called squatters and what defines squatters.

He asked whether it was not time to change the colonial land policies which declare some foreigners as permanent land owners and if the assistant minister was aware that the present land policy is similar to the Glen Grey Act 1984 which denied the black people the right to own land. ENDS