RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND LAND REFORM GENERAL AMENDMEND BILL [B33 - 2010]	

	

Land and rural development is like heart and soul very difficult to define or describe without prioritizing well-being of the human condition. Thank you once again for giving us an opportunity as S.African citizens to participate in this important process.
The purpose of my submission is to provide alternative solutions on how can that be achieved based on my 5yrs experience of research and implementation within the field of rural community development. I think government must contract people like me and utilize my research findings concerning my following comments to improve the quality of people participation in Land Reform and Rural Development issues.
Kingdom/Traditional community philosophy vs Government legal policy land approach

•	The government philosophy should be to restore true sense of our people’s understanding on what is the real value of land.
 
•	This can be achieved by first incorporating the indigenous systems when engaging in land disputes as a result making the process to be more understood by our mostly illiterate rural communities.
 
•	The process of claiming the land must not be restricted to certain date as stipulated by our constitution because the colonizers didn’t have that particular limitation as they were stealing our land. This must be quickly reviewed to ensure stability because our people are beginning to get blasphemy remarks from whites who claim they got the full right over our land. This if not addressed can lead to major distraction of our rural development initiatives 

•	South African traditional leaders have greater influence in our society and 70% of our black people still have families left to survive in these largely neglected rural areas. Statutory legal linguistic terms are the greatest limitation for our people to understand the meaning of first the monetary value of compensation they must get during land claim negotiations, secondly once they secure the land, developers also fluctuate the prices for developing the land and eventually most land end up in the hands of these private developers.

•	These above recommendations can only protect our majority black people if the interpretation part of the land reform and rural development laws and modified to pro-actively protect our people as opposed to reaction approach. 

•	For more detailed inputs on the linkages between rural development and land reform kindly check my submission-written submissions on the Social Assistance Amendment Bill [B5 - 2010]

•	This is a sensitive matte which mostly affects the grass root communities more outreach programs must be established to ensure effective participation of our grass root communities.
•	The bill must also consider be relevant to MPRDA conditions of ownership in terms of minerals under the ground because our people are still very much challenged to quantify value of the land in such situations.

   
Submitted by:
Mr. Sibongiseni Mdlalose ( Graduate IDASA, Erasmus Rotterdam Univ & Pretoria Tech)
Founder: World Civilization Youth Association (World CYA), Royal MAP School of Excellence, Talking Image 
Certificate graduate Palama Regional Capacity Building Project (Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and Canadian Dev. Agency)
Sakhisizwe Business Association: Director for  Policy, Research and development in Art, Culture and Heritage 
South Africa youth delegate: United Nations Educational Science and Cultural Organisation-2006/7 East Africa 
Contacts: 
Email: mdlalose.s@gmail.com
Cell: (27)073 931 2083