Hon Chair, the biggest thing that we as the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform learned from the petition from the Western Cape land claimants, individually and/or collectively, is that when this House passes a Bill into law, we, the legislators, the executive, and the judiciary should insist that the law should not have a double meaning, or should not put the stakeholders up against one another.
We say this because we have discovered that there is no distinction in the restitution Act between those people who historically owned the land and those who historically used the land. In the restitution Act, these are the same. We gained an understanding of this and thought that the legislation needed to be revised to fix this problem.
The second thing that we have learned from this petition, and thanks to these claimants, is that when citizens who, in this case, have waited for 17 years for the finalisation of their claims are standing up to demand their rights, it will result in action. This is why we now believe that it is not the state alone that can resolve problems in society, but citizens must participate actively in the realisation of their own rights.
The third thing that we have learned is that even though Batho Pele principles and the code of conduct of administrators exist, because of a lack of supervision and management in various departments, citizens are bound to suffer the abuse of their rights at the hands of these officials, especially in regard to the basic services that they deserve from the state.
The fourth thing that we have learned - more than any of the aforementioned things - is that the petition from the Western Cape claimants categorically demonstrated that the five years that were prescribed for land claims in respect of land lost between 1652 and 31 December 1998 was inadequate. It goes back to the actual fundamentals of the restitution Act. You can't say that the people who lost land from 1652 to December 1998 must reclaim that land within five years. After five years, they have no right to claim the land. We believe that this is wrong and the Act must therefore be amended.
The substance of the petition is that all rights to land by all claimants anywhere in the country in general and in the Western Cape in particular are protected in the Constitution of South Africa and the Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994. They can therefore not be curtailed by any official or individual, nor by any politician.
The progress report received by the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform indicated that we were on course to meet the target within the two financial years that were prescribed by the portfolio committee, recommended to this House and agreed upon by the House, especially in Claremont, Newlands, Strand, Milnerton, Paternoster, Klawer, Goodwood and Paarl.
Therefore we bring this report to the House and recommend that it be adopted. [Applause.]
There was no debate.