Ingonyama Trust: Didiza says govt will address communal land issues
Land Reform Minister Thoko Didiza says she's taken to heart the criticism over her office's failure to protect residents living on communal land in KwaZulu-Natal.
She has reacted to the Ingonyama Trust Board judgment handed down by the Pietermaritzburg High Court last week.
The court found that the trust had acted unlawfully when it made rural communities sign leases for ancestral land.
It ordered the trust to refund millions of rands it received under these agreements.
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The court ordered Didiza to give an update, in three months' time, on how she plans on reinstating the Permission to Occupy permits.
The minister says she'll be engaging Treasury and Public Service and Administration on strengthening the department's capacity to deal with the administrative processes of communal land.
"This will require, in my view, that we must be able to actually have a programme where we call upon those who have been affected to come forth so that they can claim their monies back."
