Africa-Press – Eswatini. I am premising my thoughts on the ongoing feud between residents in Mbondzela and a farm owner.
This ongoing story has brough to mind a thought and a recollection of the multitudes of emaSwati who have been evicted from the land of their fathers as they are deemed to be squatters on a farm. I am not in any way going to be commenting on this specific issue, but my comments are broad comments on the issues of land we have observed as a country. This affects the dignity of our people and also degrades their human rights.
Dignity
As a liSwati, access to land is paramount to one’s dignity. Woven in our social fabric is inheritance of the land of our forefathers and being able to stay close to our ancestors. We are emaSwati and siyaphahla, when things are not going alright we need to be able to speak to our ancestors. Some of these rituals are done on the land and the grave sites, moving one from the land means they must divorce with their cultural being, stripping our citizens off their dignity. Furthermore, homelessness is a foreign concept to Emaswati, the one thing we pride ourselves in as a nation is the fact that all our citizens have a home and shelter. This fundamental human right has been a flagship of our Swazi Nation Land management system. Our people regardless of social status have always had access to land and a plot to till for the basic nourishment of their families. It is through this subsistence means on SNL that our people escape food poverty and are able to weather supply shocks and food inflation pressures. Taking land from our people is not just a proposition of shelter, it also speaks to nourishment, dignity and loss of private household investments.
Investments
The people invest a lot in building their homes, some plant their life time saving’s into building a home for themselves and their children. In the obtaining economic environment, given that 58 per cent of our people live below the poverty line, one can only wonder how the residents whose home’s are demolished recover from this economic shock. The honest truth is most of them are not able to come back from this eviction without compensation. In essence if we allow this to continue we are essentially pushing our people into extreme poverty and insecurity.
These actions have negative impacts on the standard of living of our people. Imagine moving from a brick and corrugated iron house, back to a stick and mud house that is a huge down grade on one’s standard of living. Furthermore, accessing new land requires a cow which if one is lucky will be able to source for E6,000.00. This is a new investment that is required of evicted people, when one’s forefathers have paid the same or that individual had paid the same. It is imperative that we improve on land management as a country, since land is a factor of production and a source of dignity for our people.
Factor of production
Land is one of the main factors of production, be it for household production-consumption decisions or for commercial purposes. Land forms a mainstay of any economy since it is the basis of sustenance for the nation and nourishment for her citizens. Agriculture is the mainstay of our economy and therefore, it is imperative that we get our land affairs into place. It is incumbent on the land management board to ensure that all land is allocated to the right uses and the owners of the land are clearly demarcated. The encroachment of citizens on titled land presents hurdles for commerce since potential investors may be discourage for purchase and utilization of the land since it would mean having to deal with squatters. Worth noting is the fact that squatters do not exist in a vacuum but rather exist within a community. Also, an enterprise is not just set on the farm, but the farm exists within a community. If the relations between the enterprise and the community are not cordial this culminates into a hostile environment for the business to operate.
Land management
It is my strongest conviction that the main cause of our land troubles is ineffective land management. This emanates from a couple of sources, being encroachment between SNL and titled land. SNL is managed by traditional authorities who may or may not have information on the boundaries of titled land within the SNL sphere of confluence. This want of understanding results in settling emaSwati on titled land by the traditional authorities. Also, compounding this issue is the fact that owners of titled land can leave it lying fallow for a long time. Also, title can be transferred from generation to generation while it is not being used at all, resulting in settlements mushrooming within titled land. Problem only arises when the owner’s want to use the land. I contend that we need to improve our land management, oversight and control of settlements to avoid these occurrences in the future. We must safeguard the dignity of our people.
Source: times
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