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& IZWE LAMI
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IZWE LAMI - My Land
Izwe Lami means "my land." Right now, close to eight million South Africans live in homes they do not officially own. That is eight million people locked out of the ability to borrow against their homes, invest in them, or pass them on with certainty, and it's the single largest untapped opportunity for economic freedom in South Africa today.
This is not a new problem waiting on a new solution. The fixes were set out decades ago and are still sitting there, hiding in plain sight: register the title, remove the laws that keep tenants from becoming owners, and let ownership do what it always does, turn a house into an asset instead of a liability. What's been missing isn't the answer. It's the scale of implementation.
We know this works because we've already done it. Through Khaya Lam, over 100,000 title deeds were issued, real people, real ownership, real proof that the model holds. It made a genuine dent, although 100,000 against eight million is a start, not a finish line, and that gap is where Izwe Lami is focused now.
(a) We register land titles so tenants can become owners.
(b) We advocate for reform of the laws that keep the poor locked out of the right to improve where they live.
Unlocking those titles doesn't just change individual lives, it unlocks trillions back into South Africa's economy. We know the issue. We know how to solve it. The work now is doing it at the scale the country actually needs.
First Full Titles
Missing from the falsified Khaya Lam story as told to the de Klerk Foundation and others is that the first full freehold titles for black people were in traditional or ‘tribal’ areas in two of the old ‘homelands’, Ciskei and Bophuthatswana. The irony is that it started there despite the ‘leftist’ myth that ‘chiefs would never allow private ownership’.
During the 70s and 80s, I was honored to address many ‘tribal’ meetings. About half, with the full support of chiefs and headmen (village leaders), agreed to full titles. Through the growing FMF, we were, under my direction, instrumental to the registration of thousands of titles.
Fort Hare University academics noted that villages with titles were obvious from planes that flew over the old Ciskei. Those with titles had trees and brick houses instead of barren mud huts.
The second big Khaya Lam titling accomplishment was also in a traditional area, Bakgatla ba Mocha, north-east of Pretoria, during the early 2000s. Under Chief Mokgoko, we issued deeds to all villagers.
Khaya Lam in ‘Locations’
My next action was to extend Khaya Lam, not yet known by that name, to ‘locations’ in ‘white group areas’, now called ‘townships’. The first were the ‘conversion to freehold’ of thousands of ’99-year leaseholds’ in Soweto and elsewhere, followed by titling of ‘proclaimed’ properties.
Only what followed this advanced stage is admitted by my successors because they have a cancel culture whereby they are censoring my life’s work from the record. Nothing of substance remains on their website since virtually everything was produced by or through me, including thousands of articles, papers, submissions, analyses, videos and more. All has been deleted, and none of my copyright has been returned.
A seminal moment was around 2011 when the late Perry Feldman became involved after asking me what he might do for the ‘black’ communities in his retirement town, Ngwathe (Parys), where he had farmed and traded. Since he was politically well-connected, I suggested land titling. Many visits and meetings later, the Council and Province agreed to full titling under our direction.
We named the project ‘Khaya Lam’ (my home) in 2012 after consultation with Perry Feldman and my former colleague, Temba Nolutshungu. Perry and I travelled far and wide with his wife Veronica to introduce Khaya Lam to many communities.
Sadly, all that Khaya Lam could achieve until now was the titling of ‘low hanging fruit’ properties, that is ones that had been ‘proclaimed’ with ‘township registers’.
The greater need now being addressed by me is the vast majority of ‘black’ land with registrable ‘layout plans’ and semi-formal ‘pegging’. The government had to be persuaded to proclaim more land, which is now well under way so that thousands of extra deeds can be registered. It must now be persuaded to reform dinosaur apartheid laws that make it impossible to register ‘full title’ for most land.
I worked with the Johannesburg Council, for instance, to proclaim land and register deeds. Over two thousand titles in Alexandra township alone, and thousands more in other parts of the city such as in Soweto and Cosmo City.
Perry and I worked with the Cape Town Council, which needed much persuasion before adopting titling. In all, we worked with about 60 councils and traditional communities.
Although much has been and is being achieved, Khaya Lam’s scope has been multiplied through its successor, Izwe Lami (my land). This exciting new project has added law reform to enable titling of the vast majority of ‘black’ properties which had been excluded.
