Dear Editor
The DA will be filing a formal Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) request to the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development to obtain the reasons behind the Minister’s constitutionally alarming regulations which make the disclosure of race a requirement for property transfer.
The decision to PAIA the reason behind the regulations follows from the questionable response to a DA parliamentary question by the Minister on the compulsory disclosure of race and gender in the LLL property transfer forms.
The Minister justified the regulations, saying that “it must be known who owns what and where,” and that this is no different from disclosing whether one is “African, white or Indian” at a bank or Home Affairs, is both misleading and constitutionally shallow.
He further blurs the line between a constitutional democracy and racialised populism by eventually declaring that “this land remains the land of African people.” At no point did the Minister address how compelled racial disclosure, as a precondition to exercising one’s property rights, can be reconciled with the Constitution’s guarantees of privacy, dignity, and equality before the law.
This regulation is not a benign audit tool. It is a coercive mechanism that forces South Africans to racially classify themselves in order to access the deeds registration system. As DA rightly pointed out in Parliament, South Africa should never pass laws or regulations that weaponise race and identity ever again, if we are to learn the hard lessons from our past.
South Africa needs land reform rooted in justice, transparency, and redress – not racial bureaucracy. To ensure transparency, protect the rights of privacy, dignity and the constitutional vision of a non racial society, the DA will be submitting a PAIA to ascertain how these irrational regulations have been allowed in our constitutional democracy.
Regards
Mlindi Nhanha MP
DA Spokesperson on Land Reform and Rural Development