Background
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History of colonial and apartheid era land dispossession.
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1955 Freedom Charter: “The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It!”
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The Surplus People’s Project found in 1983 that 3.5 million people had been forcibly removed in the previous 23 years (1960 – 1983). Of these the largest group, 1.1 million, were removed from white farms.
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Today millions (2.9 million in census 2001) of Black South Africans still live on farms owned by other, mostly white, owners and face human rights abuses including evictions, but there has been no information on how many evictions.
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Land reforms since 1994 aimed to deal with the land issue and included new legislation to deal with farm tenure (ESTA,LTA). Amendments are pending to this legislation.
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Programmes are being implemented by DLA and NGOs (e.g. Rural Legal Trust, National Farm Dweller Programme).
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But it is impossible to properly assess the impact of these interventions as there has been no adequate data available.
“It is nearly impossible to attach a figure to the total number of evictions taking place” Parliamentary Portfolio Committee, 2000
“There are very few statistics available to assess the advancement and protection of human rights in farming communities” SAHRC, 2003
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