Racism in land leases

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION: BLACK APPLICANTS CONSISTENTLY SIDELINED >>> Legal avenues must be used to evict unlawful occupiers.

- Sipho Mabena

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has made damning provisional findings confirming systemic racial discrimination and administrative failures in the allocation of state-owned land along the North West's Hartbeespoort Dam shoreline.

The report found that black applicants were consistently sidelined for more than a decade while white occupants retained and, in some cases expanded, access to prime land.

The investigation was launched following a 2023 complaint by resident Mmeli Mdluli on behalf of the Hartbeespoort Community Development Initiative, following simmering racial tensions.

He lodged the complaint on 16 August, 2023, alleging that the department of water and sanitation was unfairly discriminating against black people who applied to lease state land along the dam shoreline.

In October last year, Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation David Mahlobo visited the area to intervene, following violent clashes between white and black business people along the dam.

In September last year, Thabiso Mathibedi's Bubbles Champagne Garden Restaurant was burnt to the ground after he was allegedly threatened on social media.

The provisional investigative report, dated 27 August, reveal the department of water and sanitation received 120 lease applications since 2012 - 78 of them from black applicants.