09 Mar 2023

A tender for survey and examination of the survey diagrams was floated in August last year as a measure to accelerate registration of Secure Land Titles (SLT)Answering a question on Wednesday, Minister of Lands and Water Affairs, Dr Kefentse Mzwinila told Parliament that the tender consisted of three parts, in Part A which entailed the Cadastral Survey and consisted of the survey of the general plans of plots and was awarded to 27 companies.

Dr Mzwinila said Part B consisted of the examination of the survey records and it had been awarded to six companies, while Part C, being the survey of the outside figures was awarded to 13 companies.

In the past, he said survey in tribal land did not follow the prescribed requirements of the SLTs as the general plans were in some cases surveyed without the outside figures.

“Therefore, the tender was meant to among others normalise the arrangement so that each land parcel can be easily traced to its parent plot,” he said.

However, the minister said the award of the Cadastral Survey (Part A) was challenged by one of the bidders, leading to the procurement tribunal setting aside Part A of the tender. He added that the incident resulted in the delay of the tendering exercise as Part B of the tender depended on the output of Part A.

He indicated that the tender was expected to yield an additional 63 316 plots ready for allocation and issuance of SLTs.

“The situation has affected their delivery timelines as the tendering process has to restart. The exercise began on March 6 this year and it is expected to be completed by April 5.

Therefore, the plots will be ready in the first quarter of the financial year 2023/2024,” he said.

Further, the minister said by end of February this year, 493 004 people had registered their plots since the introduction of SLTs, out of which 1 953 people had since been issued with SLTs.

He also told legislators that the ministry intended to complete the registration exercise of the exiting land rights by the end of the 2023/2024 financial year.

“The expected number of land parcels to be registered for SLTs is 836 906. So far the ministry has registered approximately 58.9 per cent since April last year. It must be noted that completion of the registration exercise depended on plot owners forthcoming to register their plots and update their records at landboards,” the minister said, adding the ministry continued to encourage plot holders to register.

He further explained that the introduction of SLTs followed the commencement of the re-enacted Tribal Land Act of 2018 and the Deeds Registry (Amendment) Act, 2017 and the process required plot holders to register their land rights with the Registrar of Deeds through the landboards.

He added that the individual land parcels’ registration must be preceded by registration of the parents’ plots in the name of the concerned landboards with the Registrar of Deeds and the process involved the survey and registration of Cadastral Areas which were village boundaries.

To date, he said 454 out of 532 village boundaries had been registered and the registration of village boundaries would be followed by the registration of Certificate of Registered Titles (CRTs), which entailed boundary of wards or blocks of plots commonly known as outside figures.

Parliament was further told that so far, 290 out of 1 433 CRTs had been registered, adding “the next stage is the registration of General Plans (GPs) which details each ward in terms of individual plots and their land uses.”

To date, he said 23 out of 1432 GPs had been registered, yielding 7 286 plots that culminated in the production of the individual SLTs.

Sefhare-Ramokgonami MP, Dr Kekgonegile Gobotswang had asked the minister to update Parliament on progress in the introduction of SLTs and state the number of people that had registered their plots since the beginning of the exercise.

Dr Gobotswang also wanted to know the number of plot owners that had registered to be issued with SLTs and if there were targets set to complete the registration exercise. ENDS