As South Africa commemorates Human Rights Month in March, Vuk’uzenzele spoke to Commissioner Philile Ntuli of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) about land rights and food security. She said it is impossible to speak about any of the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights without speaking about access to land. “If you talk about food, it is a matter of land. If I do not have land to plant food it means I cannot have food unless I have a job that gives me an income so that I can buy food,” she said.
Similarly, if one has no land it becomes difficult to have access to other resources including water and housing among others. Therefore, she believes that land is a central component of the attainment of socio-economic rights, including the right to a clean environment. The commission is in an ongoing conversation about accountability with other institutions of State including the National Executive, the Judiciary, Parliament, and also the media and civil society, to ensure that the State delivers on its land reform mandate.
“We also look at the gaps and challenges that hinders the State from fulfilling its obligations. We have often neglected the local government space. Local municipalities own a lot of land, including farms, as a matter of history particularly pre-1994, many of the farms that were owned by local government were issued very cheaply on 99-year leases.
Therefore, the commission is interested in investigating people who have leases pre-1994 who are enjoying these privileges to date, how much land municipalities have and how much of that land is leased out, who it is leased out to, what are the demographics of those who the land is leased out to.
“We recently issued a correspondence with the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs regarding these questions, for all of the 144 municipalities across the country, so that we can have a land audit of sorts,” she said.
Food Security
Ntuli said food security and the provision of food remains an issue of race and class in South Africa because a particular racial demographic still dominates the agricultural sector in a very imbalanced way. “Less than 15 or 20 percent of the agricultural industry is owned by people of African descent in South Africa. These are challenging realities in the country,” she said.
The State has an obligation to ensure that on one is deprived of their right to food. Ntuli's office raises key questions about not only access to food, but also the quality of the food that citizens are exposed to.
For more information, visit: www.sahrc.org.za
Email
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp