Time is up for KZN’s Ingonyama Trust

Our constitutional democracy must deal with the anomaly of the Ingonyama Trust, which controls 2.8 million hectares of KwaZulu-Natal communal land. People there are not allowed to own property.

The death of sole trustee King Goodwill Zwelithini provides an opportunity to rein in the Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB), whose members imagine they are above the law.

Ingonyama was a last-minute compromise exacted in 1994 by Mangosuthu Buthulezi, who had been reluctant to participate in South Africa’s first democratic elections.

In 2018, City Press editor Mondli Makanya said this “corrupt deal between the National Party and its surrogate Inkatha Freedom Party … deprives South Africans living in its lands of rights enjoyed by other citizens of the republic”.

Indeed, rural women have taken the trust to court, claiming it stripped their property rights. Only males were allowed to sign leases.

Widows were reportedly “evicted from family homes by their sons, and women were forced to apply for leases through boyfriends who had no stake in the land”, according to Sandisiwe Shoba in Maverick Citizen.

Judgment on this was reserved last December in the Pietermaritzburg High Court. Last month the auditor-general issued adverse findings against the Ingonyama Trust.

In response the ITB said it does not have to comply with the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) nor explain itself to parliament.

However, in October last year, Zwelivelile Mandela, chair of parliament’s portfolio committee on agriculture, land reform and rural development said: “All recipients of public funds have a moral obligation to ensure compliance with the provisions for good governance, accountability and transparency.”

He said such funding “to the tune of R29 million per annum is intended to benefit the traditional leaders and their communities on tribal lands in KwaZulu-Natal”.

In the last financial year, Zwelithini and the Zulu royal house received a R71 million allocation from the KwaZulu-Natal provincial treasury. Taxpayers’ money.

Mandela is on record calling for a review of ITB funding to assess whether it reaches intended beneficiaries. Investigation into alleged breaches of governance and violations of the PFMA is underway.

In 2019 a high-level panel appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa said the Ingonyama Trust should be scrapped. Ramaphosa’s failure to act on this recommendation has been interpreted as weakness.

Another sop to traditional authority is the Traditional Courts Bill. If this is signed into law, “it will mean that everyone living in rural areas will be under the geographical jurisdiction of traditional leaders presiding over traditional courts, meaning there will be no voluntary affiliation”, according to Zukiswa Pikoli in Daily Maverick.

“This not only contravenes customary law, but also enforces a parallel legal system which is unconstitutional.”

Urbanisation seems unstoppable. According to the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG), 63% of South Africans are already living in urban areas and this will rise to 71% by 2030. By 2050, eight in 10 people will be living in urban areas.

How long will taxpayers be willing to fund a 2.8-million hectare mainly rural fiefdom which scorns our constitution?

Williams is a DA city councillor in Johannesburg

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