The Right to Own Bill drafted by the Institute of Race Relations to show how legal reform that strengthens property rights can benefit all South Africans “provides clear mandates for eliminating bureaucracy that stalls action, and sets clear timelines within which all title deeds backlogs must be eradicated”.
For this reason, says IRR Strategic Engagements Manager Makone Maja, the draft should be taken seriously by Minister of Human Settlements Thembi Simelane, particularly in pursuing the government’s stated objective of empowering women.
Maja says the Bill has been shared with Simelane as part of the IRR’s Women’s Month initiative to urge the Minister to prioritise distributing title deeds, along with speeding up housing projects, to ensure that women’s property rights are advanced.
Maja notes in a statement that the Department of Human Settlements’ own data shows that over the past two decades, women have formed the majority of government housing beneficiaries.
“The proportion of women among the beneficiaries of government-subsidised housing has been rising steady. Figures from the Department of Human Settlements show that in 2023 roughly 68% of government housing beneficiaries were women, up from less than half 20 years ago.
“It is reasonable to infer from this that backlogs in issuing title deeds and building houses likely disproportionately affect women.”
Says Maja: “South Africans are tired of empty platitudes about women’s empowerment of which there has been no shortage this Women’s Month. We need more action and fewer empty promises about how government aims to clear the backlog of over 1 million title deeds, especially when the likelihood of the backlog mostly affecting women is so high.
“Minister Simelane often reminds us that title deeds are more than ‘just a document’.
“No one knows this better than South Africa’s women, especially in light of research showing that 42%, or nearly half, of all households in the country are led by women. Surely there are many among these mothers, grandmothers, daughters and aunts who have waited decades for their title deeds to be issued, and today live with the distress of being uncertain about whether they’ll be able to secure their children’s inheritances, or even their own financial security.”
According to the Department’s data, some 31,000 title deeds going back to before 1994 have yet to be legally assigned a full 30 years later.
“This,” Maja notes, “is despite the government’s repeat commitments to correcting historical spatial injustices. How much more of the apartheid blame game – which this administration, through President Ramaphosa, enjoys deploying whenever it is confronted with its own failure to act – must South Africans endure? Historical injustices are real but they do not excuse any lack of present-day accountability, particularly when the President’s party enjoyed thirty uninterrupted years in government, elected by citizens who trusted them to resolve issues emerging from apartheid.”
Maja concludes: “The IRR’s Right to Own Bill, which we have shared with Minister Simelane, should set the Minister and her department to work as it provides clear mandates for eliminating bureaucracy that stalls action and sets clear timelines within which all title deeds backlogs must be eradicated. Key to the Right to Own Bill is consequence management. Getting away scot-free, as Ministers often do for their poor performance, would be a thing of the past under this Bill.”
[Image: by Daenin]