The Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) has described the more than R4 million that it has to spend to reimburse homeowners who, from 2007, paid rental fees to occupy traditional land in KwaZulu-Natal as a drop in the ocean.

The board, whose sole trustee is Zulu King Misuzulu, succumbed to the Pietermaritzburg High Court and Constitutional Court pressure to reimburse all those who were charged rent for living on their ancestral land after their permission to occupy land were converted to lease agreements. 

Those who obtain the right to occupy the traditional land through paying the khonza fees to traditional leaders will not be refunded.

During a press briefing held at the board’s headquarters in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday, ITB acting chief executive officer, Siyamdumisa Vilakazi, said there were 2.4 million people who would be refunded.

Vilakazi said the reimbursement would not affect the operations of the trust as it makes about R100 million a year via various sources of income. 

“We are looking at a period that is about close to 20 years now, from 2007, and we are looking at a total accumulation of R4 million.

“You can imagine that it is a drop in the ocean according to the revenue that we make on an annual basis,” said Vilakazi.

He said besides leasing the land for residential purposes, which had not come to a stop, the trust has other forms of revenue generation, such as commercial rights on its land.

“The infrastructure that gets built provides the lease holding for that, which is the main source of income. The other sizable source of income that we have is our interest, royalties, dividends from investments, because we collect money on behalf of communities.

“We end up with a substantial cash reserve, which we reinvest in the market. The board also gets a grant from the government, which on average is about R24 million, and that grant is solely so that the board can function and board members can be paid,” said Vilakazi. 

He said that the fact that the trust would have to trace all those who were due to be refunded added to the administrative burden, as some of the beneficiaries had since passed away.

“It is also compounded by the fact that these are rural people we generally deal with and infrastructure for telecommunication is a new phenomenon, so there is a struggle in getting [hold of] them,” said Vilakazi. 

 He said there were expectations that the board would spend more than R100 million refunding those who leased the land for residential purposes.

“We are refunding not more than R4.2 million in total because what we generally refund were people who had already existed when the conversions happened and some of them continue sitting and staying without making those rental payments,” said Vilakazi. 

The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) had taken the board to the high court, which in 2021 ruled that it was wrong that people of the province’s rural areas be charged rents for the land they occupied for residential purposes. 

The court had ruled that the people residing on trust-held land were the true beneficiaries and that they should not be required to pay lease fees for land they already own under customary law. 

The trust applied to appeal the high court ruling at the Supreme Court of Appeal, which also dismissed the application for leave to appeal because there are no reasonable prospects of success.

It also failed to fight this at the Constitutional Court. 

Vilakazi said at present, the board was actively working to honour the court orders and was currently contacting or tracing approximately 1 620 people who made payments under the leases from around 2008 until the date of the court order. 

“So far, approximately 208 individuals have been traced and refunded, and we have given ourselves a period of 18 months to finilise contact tracing, payment and lease cancellation,” said Vilakazi. 

He said those who were charged rents paid various amounts, but on average it was about R1 200 per year. But this amount varied according to areas they lived in, and their age. 

 bongani.hans@inl.co.za

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