Preamble

We, the landless people of South Africa, declare our needs for our government and the world to know.

We are the people who have borne the brunt of colonialism and neo-colonialism, of the invasion of our land by the wealthy countries of the world, of the theft of our natural resources, and of the forced extraction of our labour by the colonists.

We are the people who have borne the brunt of apartheid, of forced removals from our fields and homes, of poverty in the rural areas, of oppression on the farms and of starvation, neglect and disease in the Bantustans. We have suffered from migrant labour, which has caused our family life and communities to collapse. We have starved because of unemployment and low wages. We have seen our children stunted because of little food, no water and no sanitation. We have seen our land dry up and blow away in the wind, because we have been forced into smaller and smaller places.

We continue to suffer under these conditions because the legacy of colonialism and apartheid has not been defeated in our areas. We continue to suffer from forced removals from our homes, from evictions - legal and illegal - from the farms we have worked for generations, and from gross violations of our basic human rights through abuse at the hands of the farmers who own these lands. We continue to suffer widespread injustices due to the racist criminal justice system that prevails in our areas. We are the people who still bear the brunt of the colonial and apartheid legacy and the neo-liberal policies which today require us to buy back our stolen land and pay for services we have never enjoyed, while taking away our jobs and driving our young people into the cities. These are the biggest problems facing our country today.

We fought for the end of colonialism and apartheid, and welcomed the birth of a new South Africa. But for us there is nothing new because there is still no land, no services and no growth in our areas. We will no longer sit back and watch as the wealth builds up in the hands of a tiny urban elite, while on the edges of the cities, in the small towns and in the countryside, we continue to suffer and starve.

These are our demands. We have discussed them in each of our communities, in our regions and as a nation of landless people.

Nothing that:

 Almost 350 years have passed since the first colonists arrived on our shores to force us off our land;
 Since that time, colonialism and apartheid brutally and systematically dispossessed our people of most of the land of South Africa, leaving the African population on 13% of the land, with the remaining 87% of land held by white farmers and the state;
 Our ancestors fought for all of that time to keep their land, and we placed our hopes for the return of our birthright in the liberation movement that we supported and helped to put in power;
 Land reform, including restitution, redistribution and tenure reform, were promised to us as the country’s landless people in 1994, and are required by the Constitution for which we fought;
 The Reconstruction and Development programme promised to redistribute 30% of agricultural land between 1994 and 1999, but today less than 2% of land (mostly poor quality) has been redistributed through land reform;
 The restitution programme has delivered very little land reform due to the slow processing of claims;
 The redistribution programme, which has moved even more slowly, has not allowed people who qualify for housing grants to obtain land, causing great hardship to landless people, especially children and labour tenants, who need land for livestock grazing and crops;
 The new Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme does not offer a solution, because it also does not recognise that as landless people, we need land for many different things;
 The tenure reform programme has delivered nothing because most of our people still do not have formal land rights and cannot invest in our land;
 Our people who have received land have been unable to use it effectively due to a lack of post-settlement support;
 Our people who work on farms constantly have their basic human rights violated through abuse, evictions, slave-like working conditions and racism;
 Our children who live on farms are forced to labour on them and suffer from a lack of schooling facilities;
 Our people cannot receive justice due to biased and racist police and magistrates in rural areas;
 The World Bank’s "market-led, willing seller-willing buyer" land reform formula has failed in Zimbabwe and many other countries, and is failing and will continue to fail in South Africa;
 Poverty remains greatest in the rural areas, where 70% of South Africa’s poor live, including a disproportionate number of women, children and elderly people, yet rural development receives lower priority than urban development;
 We continue to live as exiles in the land of our birth, denied the basic attributes of citizenship through our subjection to abuse and exploitation at the hands of those who benefited from apartheid and who still own most of the land;
 Although there are many policies and laws in place, there has been very little improvement in our lives;
 We still lack the most basic services and infrastructure;
 Our taxes and national resources are being used to repay apartheid debts and buy expensive weapons rather than to develop our country and our people;
 We are no longer consulted about the policies that are supposed to transform our lives; and
 In spite of the slow delivery of land reform, our people have received little communication and report-backs from the government.

Aand putting on record that:

 We, the landless people of South Africa have not sat idly by waiting for the government to deliver our land to us;
 We adopted the Community Land Charter in 1994 on the eve of the new South Africa, and waited patiently for the new government to deliver the land reform it promised to us;
 We adopted the Rural People’s Charter in 1999 and tried to influence the policies that affect us;
 We have written letters to request meetings with the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs and the President;
 Due to the lack of response to such letters, we have organised numerous pickets and submitted various memoranda to the President;
 We have submitted various other memoranda to relevant national and provincial government departments;
 We have held provincial land rights conferences and submitted the resolutions of these conferences to our provincial governments;
 We have held regional conferences to strengthen regional land reform forums comprising landless communities within our regions;
 Our efforts have not resulted in sufficient responsiveness from the government, nor in any significant change to the problems of land reform; and
 We are still waiting for our land!

We Therefore demand:

Land

The land that was stolen from us must be returned! Give us our land now

1. We need our land to live on, for grazing, farming, economic opportunities and community facilities.

2. The colonial and apartheid landscape in which white people own most of the land must be radically altered so that land is shared proportionately between blacks and whites. We say, "One farmer, one farm!"

3. The RDP target of redistributing 30% of land must be delivered immediately, as this is merely a first installment on the equitable redistribution that must finally be achieved.

4. Land reform must be implemented rapidly and comprehensively.

5. Outstanding land restitution cases must be urgently finalised.

6. Land tenure reform must be implemented urgently, especially in the former Bantustans. In the process of tenure reform, communal land rights must be retained.

7. Men and women must be equally represented in all community decision-making and landholding structures.

8. The market-led, willing seller-willing buyer, demand-driven land reform programme must be scrapped and replaced with a state-led, needs-based, supply-led programme.

9. People who have been evicted from their land, farm dwellers and other poor landless people should be given top priority for land reform.

10. Government resettlement programmes must provide for the different land needs of communities. Not all rural people want to farm, but all rural people need land.

11. Women demand equal access to and ownership of land for various uses (ploughing, residential, grazing, income-generation projects etc.), irrespective of their marital status.

12. Government must provide state resources and adequate support to poor rural people (with special attention to women’s needs and interests) for subsistence production and small-scale farming.

13. There must be adequate post-settlement support for communities, especially training, extension advice and production finance. There must be proper coordination between government departments to ensure sustainable development.

14. Communities who were forcibly removed from their land through colonialism and apartheid must have their land and mineral rights returned immediately and unconditionally.

15. Land restoration should take precedence over financial compensation in the restitution programme, so that land begins to shift from white to black ownership.

16. The bulk of the land restitution budget should be spent supporting claimant communities to make their land productive, rather than paying huge compensation to the beneficiaries of apartheid.

17. Indigenous peoples’ right to the land must be recognised. Communities must be able to make claims to land that was taken from them as far back as 1652.

18. Women’s land rights must be protected and they must have security of tenure. Their rights to land must be registered in their own name. In the case of married couples, the man and the woman should both have their names on the title deed.

19. Communities should be compensated for damages and losses suffered due to their forced removal.

20. When land is restored to a community, it must be shared fairly within a community. There must be no discrimination as to who has access to land - especially not against women.

21. All black people in South Africa who need land must have a right to land reform, because we all lost land through colonialism and apartheid.

22. All vacant state land held by the national, provincial and municipal governments must be urgently transferred at no cost to landless communities. Poor landless women must be prioritised in this programme of redistribution.

23. The state must become an active player in the land market, making land available for land reform through a supply-led land reform programme.

24. The land that is chosen for redistribution must be fertile and we must be able to use it productively.

25. All unproductive, unused, vacant or indebted private land should be targeted for redistribution to poor landless people.

26. A land ceiling and land tax should be imposed to reduce large white landholdings.

27. The government must actively utilize its powers to expropriate land for land reform.

28. No landowner should be allowed to hold land reform to ransom to demand huge compensation.

29. The compensation formula paid to existing landowners should be based on the productive value of the land, less apartheid state benefits received.

30. The government must make land reform a priority and should allocate at least 10 percent of its annual budget to bring about rapid land reform.

31. Government must scrap the property rights clause and replace it with a "social obligations" clause imposing a "use-it-or-lose-it" condition on land ownership to make land that is under-utilised, unused or unproductive, or owned by absentee landlords available for land reform. This will enable landless people to bring about productive land reform through their own self-reliance, rather than forcing us to wait another seven years for the bureaucracy to complete its paperwork.

Farm Dwellets

We, the farm workers and labour tenants, demand access to land and security of tenure. Laws and practices which victimize us must be scrapped, and institutions which fail to serve our needs must be transformed

1. Farm workers and labour tenants should be given land of their own.

2. The government must declare a moratorium on all evictions until a new law is adopted to protect farm dwellers.

3. Farm owners who abuse and exploit their workers must be prosecuted and must forfeit their land for land reform.

4. We demand a halt to all evictions of labour tenants and farm workers. The Extension of Security of Tenure Act and the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act must be amended to stop evictions and give farm dwellers real land rights. We want legal protection and security of tenure.

5. Women demand security of tenure which is not tied to a man (husband, father, brother or uncle).

6. We should not lose our homes if we do not continue working on the farm, or if we are disabled or pensioned. The wives and widows of farm workers must not be thrown off the land because of the circumstances of their husbands.

7. Laws must be passed to protect people working on farms from abuse and exploitation. These laws must include minimum wages and regular hours of work. Male and female farm workers must receive a full package of benefits, including unemployment insurance, pension fund and medical aid. Firm steps must be taken to ensure that labour laws on farms are implemented.

8. Farm workers must be informed of their new rights, and provided with adequate legal support to enforce them. Farm workers should also be involved in making laws.

9. Women farm workers specifically demand information on women’s rights.

10. Farm workers should be paid the same rates as other workers in towns because they work equally hard.

11. Women farm workers demand equal pay for equal work.

12. Women farm workers demand childcare, and easy access to education and health facilities.

13. A fair share of the rural policing budget should be spent protecting our rights

14. Rural police, magistrates and prosecutors who fail to protect our rights must be fired and prosecuted.

15. Farm workers and tenants must be given secure rights to plough and graze their cattle. These rights should be protected when a farm changes hands.

16. Farmers must be responsible for supporting orphaned children of deceased workers.

17. We want an end to child labour on farms. People breaking this law must be severely punished.

18. Farm evictees, tenants and other landless people should be given top priority in any land reform programme.

19. Groups who can service and assist farm dwellers should immediately have free access to the farms. Farm worker unions should be legally entitled to organize workers on farms.

20. Special pieces of land should be set aside for farm worker villages.

21. We must be able to bury our loved ones on the farms where we live.

22. The government should take ownership of portions of land on farms for the use of the people living on the farms. This land can be used for schools, sports fields and clinics, for example, and must be owned and run by the state instead of the farmers.

23. Farm workers must be provided with safe transportation to and from towns. In addition, transport for learners who stay far from school must be provided for.

24. Farmers must not be allowed to employ immigrant workers on three-month contracts. The rights of immigrant workers should be protected so that their labour does not undermine farm workers’ rights and wage levels.

25. Farm workers demand basic facilities: housing, electricity, running water, toilets.

Women

Women must be able to own land, and have equal rights in all areas of their lives.

1. Women should be able to own land whether they are married or single. Women and men should have the same rights to land. Married couples should have their land and houses registered in the names of both spouses.

2. Women should have equal representation on local government and other decision-making structures, such as traditional authorities. Women should be appointed as headmen.

3. There should be no discrimination against women in terms of inheritance.

4. Women should benefit from development programmes and be targeted for training. There should be special training centres and adult education courses geared to meet women’s particular needs and interests.

5. Women living on farms must have secure tenure over land and housing.

6. There should be special housing subsidies for women who cannot afford to buy houses or pay rent. Housing subsidies must be introduced to assist women who are single parents.

7. Land should be set aside for community facilities that benefit women, such as crèches, community gardens and women’s training centres.

8. Women and children must have places to go if they are abused.

9. Rural development plans, especially job creation and skills development programmes, must prioritise the needs of women and must include adequate means to monitor their actual impact on women.

10. A quota system should be imposed in tribal authorities and other rural structures, and tribal laws and practices that oppress rural women should be reviewed.

11. Women demand adult basic education and access to information on many matters which affect them such as marriage and succession laws, HIV/Aids and domestic violence.

Beyond land

There must be democratic, non-racial, non-sexist local government in all our communities.

There must be affordable houses for all.

There must be affordable and accessible services for all our people.

There must be participatory rural development.

Our environment must be protected and resources used in a sustainable way.

The way forward

Landless people must organise or starve

1. We, as the landless people of South Africa, must get organised!

2. We must form local structures in all our communities to take forward our demands!

3. We must build unity in our communities to strengthen our hand in negotiations!

4. We, as the farm workers of South Africa, must get organised!

5. We, as the landless women of South Africa, must build women’s forums in our regions to discuss land, and organise ourselves at a local, regional and national level to make sure our concerns are addressed

6. We must build the Landless People’s Movement to ensure that our voices are heard and our demands met.

7. We must build solidarity with other landless people throughout the world.

8. We must organise local and regional actions to support our demands.

9. If our demands are not met, we will launch a campaign to occupy vacant land and state land, and return to our land.

These demands we will fight for, side by side throughout our lives, until we have won our land!