OPTIONS FOR THE CADASTRE IN THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA:
REPORT TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN COUNCIL FOR
PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL SURVEYORS
DR. CLARISSA FOURIE
April 1994.
The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect
the views of the President, Council or registered members of the South African
Council for Professional and Technical Surveyors.
With acknowledgements to: The financial sponsors of the research namely, THE SOUTH AFRICAN COUNCIL FOR PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL SURVEYORS, as well as all the private practices that made a contribution.
All the many people in the survey industry, both local and international, who made an input in written and\or interview and\or workshop form.
The committee set up by PLATO to oversee the research namely, Mr. O.Greene (Chairman), Mr.R.Buckley, Mr. J.C.Landman, Prof.H.van Gysen, Mr.D.Clegg (Treasurer) and Mr.P.Hoffmann. In different ways each of them contributed an enormous amount of time and input into the research.
My colleagues in the department, with whom most aspects of this research were discussed and debated, who read some earlier drafts.
Mr.A.Scott, a recent BSc (Land Surveying) graduate, who
worked with me and was funded by the profession. Thanks to his hard work and
ability, a much greater amount of ground was covered in a short time. His input
made it possible to teamwork with private practices to do some technical\administrative
experiments that could be useful in a future cadastre.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHECKLIST OF REQUIREMENTS WHEN MAKING ADAPTIONS TO THE CADASTRE
Scenario 2.What if the future government adopts the present survey and registration system
Scenario 3.What if the survey system is changed -fundamentally over time
A range of survey and registration systems
Different systems operating within accurately beaconed boundary outside figures
The role of the Surveyor General if there is a range of survey systems
Leaders in the land registration system and their link to politicians
Scenario 4.What if there is one Surveyor General's office for each of 9 provinces
Scenario 10.What if the rural and urban local authorities award the development contracts
Scenario 11.What if the survey system has to be made simpler
Scenario 14.What if the survey system is considered too expensive
Scenario 15.What if the White male elite profile of the cadastral survey industry is a problem
Scenario 17.What if the PAC's approach comes into fashion in the medium to long term
Scenario 19.What if a new government wanted to increase its revenue from land taxes
APPENDIX I - GLOSSARY OF TERMS
APPENDIX II - ORIGINAL RESEARCH BRIEF
APPENDIX III - COMPREHENSIVE LAND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
APPENDIX IV - LAND TAXES AND A FISCAL CADASTRE
The successful economic and social future of the new South Africa is dependent on many factors. One of the most important, we believe, is the CADASTRE.
In March this year Commission 7 of FIG, The International Federation of Surveyors, listed the benefits of a Cadastre as follows:
- secure land tenure
- access to long-term credits
- increased productivity of land
- lower transaction costs on the real property market
- cheaper information for land administration
- more fair and improved collection of land taxes
- better possibilities to implement land policies
Our present system meets most, if not all the requirements of a successful Cadastre and has been praised and admired by many authorities in this field throughout the world.
The question is whether it is suitable for the new South Africa? Is it too expensive for the masses? Is it too time consuming? Will it be accepted by the new Government? Will it benefit the people? Can it coexist with a new system?
Most of the research into Cadastral reform over the last 40 years has been conducted at the University of Natal. It is therefore fitting that the proposal for this research project came from Prof. van Gysen, the present Head of the Department.
This report by Dr. C. Fourie is the result of years of Surveying research and experience, and six months of intensive investigation on her part. It includes the thinking, strategies and ideals of political leaders in land reform. It embodies the writings and research of the top academics in the world and includes the practical experience of land surveyors and many people involved in property development and the Cadastre in South Africa.
A few years ago, the Institute of Professional Land Surveyors of the Western Cape made the headlines (when it was reported in the media) that they proposed that squatting be encouraged in Hout Bay. On closer analysis, what they had said was that "organized" squatting should be encouraged. Rapid urbanization and politics have prevented "organized" development in most parts of the country and it remains a challenge to the new government and the private sector to provide adequate housing for all.
Obviously the "high road" scenario is to plan development and survey townships as has been done in the past thus supplying the security of title that has been enjoyed by some to date. An enormous backlog in housing, time and money probably puts this scenario out of this country's reach in the short term. This report and the scenario sketched are options that may be applied to ensure the fundamentals of a Cadastre are maintained for the benefit of our country and its people.
Whether it be for the survey of townships, plots or farms, or for planning and evaluation or data capture and record keeping of information necessary for planners and authorities, or for analysis of historical records for restitution, Land Surveyors are the professionals to be consulted. Modern equipment and technology combined with the variety of skills, methods and personnel at our disposal are the tools to tackle this task.
Our profession's track record, the quality and diversity of our training and our willingness to serve the people of our country are the proof that we will be able to deliver, whatever the challenge.
The depth and quality of this report will only become evident in the next few months, as the political framework changes and the political process unfolds. Every conceivable situation, I believe, has been catered for by Dr. Fourie.
Dr. Fourie has gone further than her mandate and not only examined the scenarios but even suggested methods of ensuring that the integrity of the Cadastre is maintained. Even in the worst scenario, she has shown that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Our profession will however have to rise to the occasion, as it has done in the past, and meet the challenges thrown before it.
It has been an education to be part of this project and indeed and honour and privilege to be able to write the foreword to this report. I believe it will be of enormous benefit to Land Surveyors and indeed anyone involved in land registration and security of title.
ROBIN BUCKLEY
PRESIDENT SOUTH AFRICAN COUNCIL FOR PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL SURVEYORS
Aspects to remember when reading this report:
- This research initiative was to investigate the future of the CADASTRE in a new South Africa, not the future of the profession or the industry.
- This report has been written for S.A. surveyors, in that it is to the point and does not detail the type of background information that non-surveyors would need to be able to understand the surveying sections of the report.
- This report was written prior to the April, 1994 election.
- This report is composed of two aspects: First a description of the major aspects of each of the main political parties land policies. Secondly, the more likely scenarios to happen in a new S.A. in relation to survey and land registration.
- It is argued that when looking at cadastral reform (something that is being thrust upon the survey industry) it is important to have a VISION or MISSION STATEMENT about what is being attempted and why. The VISION which underlies this entire report is that THE LAND REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAMME HAS TO WORK AND PEOPLE HAVE TO BE HOUSED TO HAVE PEACE IN THIS COUNTRY; THE SURVEY INDUSTRY IS NECESSARY TO MAKE THESE PROGRAMMES WORK; WE NEED TO ADAPT OUR PRESENT CADASTRE TO SERVE THE NEEDS OF A DEVELOPING AFRICAN COUNTRY UNDERTAKING MASSIVE RECONSTRUCTION AND REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAMMES FOR A LARGELY BLACK AND POOR POPULATION. If the survey industry and the present cadastre do not serve these needs it will be increasingly sidelined in the medium to long term, and possibly even in the short term. On the other hand, these programmes offer enormous work opportunities to the industry.
The major aspects of the policy of the ANC extracted from their policy document 'Ready to Govern- ANC Policy Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa,' are itemised below. A more up to date ANC document is expected to be published, but it is not yet a public document.
- A new system of just and secure property rights must be created which is regarded as legitimate by the whole population.
- Land holders will be required by law to respect the human rights of people living on the land, the need for productive use of the land, and the need for the protection of land as a productive asset for the whole country.
- The state will play a key role in the acquisition and allocation of land and should have the power to acquire land in a variety of ways, including expropriation according to the provisions set out in the Bill of Rights.
- The taking of property shall be subject to just compensation that shall be decided by establishing an equitable balance between the public interest and the interest of those affected and will not be based solely on the market value of such property.
- Other land to be made available for redistribution should include: land held for speculation; under utilized land or unused land with a productive potential; land that is being degraded; hopelessly indebted land.
- South Africa's diversity of tenure forms, including public land ownership, shall be recognised and protected.
- Diverse forms of tenure should not prejudice the ability of people to have access to credit.
- Act 70 of 1970 will be reviewed.
- The ownership of more than one farm will not be allowed.
- A land reform priority is the need to address demands and grievances concerning the restoration of land rights, including ownership, by the creation of a land claims court through which competing claims to land can be resolved.
- Provisions in the Bill of Rights relating to property rights will have to be applied in such a way that they are not manipulated so as to frustrate a national land reform programme.
- The beneficiaries of the land claims procedure will be victims of forced removals; and labour tenants and share croppers and their families, who should have protected rights of occupation and use.
- Agriculture will be restructured to facilitate a move away from large-scale single crop agriculture to a more diversified combination of agricultural production systems, including family farms and cooperative farming systems.
- There will be programmes to promote infrastructural development in the rural areas, including roads, telecommunications, electricity, sanitation and water.
- The spatial geography of apartheid in urban areas will be fundamentally changed. Serviced land for housing will be made available for the needy close to urban areas and places of work.
- Each urban area will be unified under a single municipality, with a single non racial voter's roll and a single tax base.
- The boundaries of local authorities will be redrawn on a functional basis, incorporating industrial areas and artificially created Bantustans and commuter towns.
- People must be provided with homes, lights and water to give real meaning to the right to home and family life in the Bill of Rights.
- Community groups should participate in the design, implementation and management of their housing. Community control over and participation in the housing delivery process is of the utmost importance.
- It is the state's responsibility to ensure that low income households have easy access to well located, affordable land.
- Land speculation will be curbed by the application of high municipal rates on well located undeveloped land; a capital gains tax on land transactions; and the use of legal arrangements and tenure forms which take land (and housing) transactions out of the market.
- The private sector will be encouraged to move into lower cost housing, revise its product mix and increase the level of community participation in its projects.
- Strong local government will be complemented by regional government whose primary tasks will be to ensure local development planning, the provision of appropriate regional services and the provision of support to local authorities lacking resources, particularly in rural areas.
- The key issues facing our cities are disparities in services provision, rapid urban growth, the housing crisis and inefficient apartheid city structure.
- District Councils should be created within rural areas to enable rural communities to develop their own responses to local development challenges.
2. The CP/Volksfront/Freedom Front
No published land policy exists. Otherwise, the Volkstaat idea is the only aspect that is generally accepted as part of their policy.
The major aspects of the policy of the DP extracted from their policy documents 'Discussion Paper On the Land Issue -Provisional Proposals for DP Policy'; and 'The Democratic Party -Agricultural Policy' are itemised below.
- Security of tenure is essential for the productive use of the land and investment; is a basic human need; and a fundamental right, which should be protected.
- The rights which individuals and communities lost during forced removals should be restored. Land still held by the State should be returned to these people.
- Where direct restitution is impractical, similar rights in alternative land should be given.
- Land that is restored should be planned so it can be used and developed productively.
- Land should be more equitably distributed and access given to land by previously disadvantaged groups.
- State acquisition of privately owned land should be done on the basis of 'willing buyer/willing seller'. Dissatisfied sellers must have the right to arbitration and appeal to the court. A Bill of Rights should guarantee these provisions. The State should pay market-related prices.
- Agricultural production and the cost of supporting investment and service provision for new farmers should be considered when splitting up large estates.
- Sufficient good agricultural land is available on the market to satisfy the needs of all who are desirous of owning that land, if a satisfactory system of providing funding is devised. Leasehold or quitrent could be used.
- Soil and water conservation practices must be followed.
- Rural development must include making land available for residential purposes; the creation of infrastructure (electricity, water and roads); and the reallocation of funds for regional/ decentralised industrial development, in a planned and coordinated manner involving experts.
- Rural development programmes must provide for private ownership of land and commercial farming practices.
- The community must be involved at all levels and stages of development.
- Townships and informal settlements must be upgraded.
- Local authority property taxes must be retained using valuations as a common base. Valuation procedures must be amended and simplified. In informal settlements only site and service charges must be applied.
The major aspects of the policy of the IFP, extracted from an Interview given by Inkosi Gumede, a central committee executive of the IFP, in Barometer vol 5(1); and the KwaZulu Land Affairs Act No.11 of 1992 (not yet commenced), are itemised below.
- Want a market economy and private property ownership.
- Support the redistribution of land which should be done by using negotiation rather than decree.
- Compensation should be paid to people whose land is expropriated.
- A Land Commission should be established to settle disputes over land and to recompense people who have been forcibly removed and their land expropriated.
- Land in informal settlements should be formalised.
- Under utilised rural and urban land should be identified and made available for affordable farming and/or affordable housing.
- No limit on the amount of land that can be owned.
- Would over time move away from subsistence agriculture to peasant production of cash crops, which entails expanding freehold ownership of land.
- See "white" Natal and KwaZulu as one unit in a federation.
- Committed to a constitutionally non racial and non ethnic future. But in moving forward we must take account of racial/ethnic imbalances in land ownership, as well as in practices that are not necessarily "ethnic" in themselves, but which are expressed via sizeable groupings of people belonging to an "ethnic" group. Traditional tenure systems in KwaZulu constitute one such reality.
- A deed of grant can be upgraded to ownership. Permissions to occupy in tribal land may be upgraded to deeds of grant.
- A condition of title may be imposed by a tribal authority that the person acquiring a permission to occupy has to be approved by the tribal authority concerned. This condition of title has to form part of any upgraded titles to that parcel of land. A mortgagee may acquire land in a sale of execution, but a mortgagee who is not qualified to acquire land in terms of tribal authority approval shall within three years after an acquisition by him sell the land.
- An area can be declared a provisional survey area before the approval of the General Plan by the Surveyor General so that a deed of grant can be registered.
- The Minister may establish a registration office.
- Since March 1994 the IFP have indicated that they support the Zulu monarchy's call for a sovereign Zulu state composed of present KwaZulu and Natal.
The major aspects of the policy of the NP, extracted from the White Paper on Land Reform; and an Interview with the Deputy Minister of Land Affairs, Mr Johan Scheepers, Barometer, Vol.5 (1), are itemised below.
- The NP supports the protection of private property with ownership entrenched in a Bill of Human Rights.
- Race and population group should not be a qualification for the acquisition of land rights.
- Existing titles in Black areas should be upgraded to full ownership.
- There should be a single land registration system.
- Squatting and invasions will not be accepted.
- The NP recognises the need to deal with extensive landlessness and land hunger.
- High priority must be given to making urban land available to facilitate the process of urbanisation.
- Expropriation of property or other rights should only be possible in terms of legislation, in the public interest and subject to the payment of market related compensation.
- In a market driven land reform process, ownership of land will be determined by a willing buyer-willing seller market.
- Land rights should be restored to people, who have been removed from land, which is still in the possession of the State.
- The creation of new settlement opportunities should consider the size of existing land needs in our rural and urban areas, the ability of the economy to accommodate support measures, the rights of existing land owners and the potential contribution of support measures to growth and development.
- Beneficiaries of a land reform programme should be landless tribes and communities; and small and emergent farmers and labourers.
- The cost and complexity of our present land registration and surveying systems should be investigated on a continuous basis to ensure that those who do not have the financial ability can afford the lowest possible transaction costs for new land owners. This should be done without compromising the integrity of our present system. The opportunities offered by our legal system to enter appropriate contractual and legal agreements should be more fully explored and utilised.
The major aspects of the policy of the PAC extracted from their policy document, 'The Land Policy of the PAC of Azania - A discussion document,' are itemised below.
- The land belongs only to Africans and is a symbol of their nationhood and culture. An African is someone who only owes his/her loyalty to Africa.
- Every citizen will have a right to a plot of land.
- Radical redistribution of the land, both urban and rural, will take place and is nonnegotiable. This will involve the decolonisation of land via nationalisation, socialisation and the expropriation of the land and its redistribution to its rightful owners -namely Africans.
- Market forces will not be used in the land reform programme and the 'willing buyer -willing seller' formula is unacceptable.
- No compensation will be paid for the land. Compensation will be paid for developments on the land. The state will decide the amount of compensation to be paid.
- Existing property laws will be repealed. Private ownership of land and its transfer through private transactions will be abolished.
- All landholders will operate under a long term leasehold system. Leases will be transferable to descendants but not be saleable on the open market. Title deeds will have to be changed to certificates of occupation under the leasehold system. There will be provision for full ownership of residential structures by the families occupying them.
- All land controlled by Bantustan authorities will become part of the national land and will be administered by duly elected local authorities. Communal holdings will be converted to leasehold.
- An individual or family may only own one residential unit, which should stand on a site of prescribed size.
- The provision of housing will be handled by the state in liaison with municipal structures.
- State-owned houses will be provided in three forms: houses will be put on sale under a subsidized bond system; long-term leases will be provided which in time may be converted into certificates of full ownership; houses will be provided under a subsidized rental system. A moratorium will be imposed on further building of backyard rooms.
- The redistribution of land, entrenched in the constitution, will be mainly in the form of land grants of stipulated size, based on a long term lease. There will be a general limit to the size of land holding of any individual to 300 ha. Under utilised land will automatically be expropriated.
- The following are a basis for a land claim in a Land Court: birthright; possession of a title deed; historical claims; claims based on restitution.
- Beneficiaries of the land reform programme will be first residents of the Bantustans and squatters; then subsistence farmers followed by medium-scale farmers and then finally large-scale farmers. Migrant labourers must opt for one home; there will be affirmative action for women; labour tenants will get priority; as will the victims of forced removals. Both those with farming skills and the very needy will get priority.
7. The new South African constitution
The major aspects of the new South African constitution extracted from 'The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act No. 200 of 1993, Government Gazette No.15466, are itemised below.
- S.A. will be one sovereign state
- land that was expropriated under apartheid legislation will be restored
- market value will not necessarily be paid for land restored through a land claims court, i.e. restitution land
- there will be no expropriation of land for public interests (land redistribution), only for public use (roads, hospitals etc.)
- land restitution claims dating back before 19th June 1913 will not be accepted
- nine provinces will be established, with several of these provinces' boundaries still to be finalised
- land will be controlled nationally and its control will not be devolved to the provincial legislative authorities, although some functions could be interpreted as running concurrently at national and regional level
- traditional authorities and indigenous law will be recognized at the national, regional and local level
Checklist of requirements when making adaptions to the cadastre
Drawing generalisations from the policies of the parties, who are expected to be in power/ who are in power, described above, it seems that there are several important characteristics that would be required of a cadastre in the 'New South Africa.' It would have to be able to:
Only the most important scenarios are described, as far as survey is concerned, as it is impossible to cover every scenario. Many scenarios are interlinked and some scenarios contain subscenarios. The scenarios should be read from the beginning to the end, as, to understand any particular scenario the previous ones will have had to be read first.
1. There are several factors which could destroy the present cadastre in the short to medium term, with only a long term option if the country was resurveyed. Some of these factors are: if the land was nationalised and all land titles voided; if there was a medium to long term civil war that covers most of the country; if the offices of the Surveyor Generals and/or Registrars of Deeds are burnt; if the new government attempts to carry out major cadastral reform very quickly, without taking the necessary institutional changes into account; and if the legal land reform process is blocked leading to large scale invasions, both in the rural and urban areas.
2. In the medium to long term the cadastre could also wither if the people working in the survey industry - both professional and technical - moved to other vocations because of insufficient remuneration and/or dissatisfaction with their work environment.
3. If the present cadastral system breaks down entirely it is very likely that in the medium term, and possibly even the long term, people will solve their problems outside the survey industry. Any problems with their security of tenure will be solved through the law courts, with respect to high value land and wealthy clients, and through vigilante groups, with respect to low value land and the poor. However, less accurate coordinates for administration, planning and land management might always be needed.
Scenario 2. What if the future government adopts the present survey and registration system.
If this happens then the survey industry could retain the status quo. However, this is unlikely to happen because of the demand that is already being made for cheaper and simpler survey methods.
Scenario 3. What if the survey system is changed fundamentally over time.
Party policies suggest that there will be radical changes made to the land registration system and they expect survey to be made simpler and cheaper. Although they do not specify how this will be done, it is possible to make some predictions about what type of things could happen, based on what has happened elsewhere in Africa; the situation here; interviews with surveyors; and international reading.
1. A form of communal or group title could be used and no survey done of internal boundaries, of small holdings granted during the land reform programme (like in Zimbabwe) and/or of internal plots in urban areas.
2. General boundaries could be introduced either to replace accurately beaconed boundaries or to exist simultaneously (this type of boundary is being suggested by foreign advisers from the countries around us and by some foreigners advising the ANC).
3. Unregistered Black technicians could be given the work because: it would be difficult for a future government to justify giving large amounts of work to Whites and; there is only a handful of registered Black land surveyors, surveyors and survey technicians.
4. The budget presently available to the Surveyor General and Deeds Registry offices could be redirected into the land reform programme leading to less money being available for examinations. The offices of the various Surveyor Generals might become inadequately staffed. It will take time to adjust to institutional changes. The volume of land registrations might cause the system to lock up, nationally or in certain provinces. Underpaid and/or overtaxed Surveyor General's staff might compete directly with private practitioners. All this could fundamentally affect the country's present system of securing land rights. (All these examples are real situations).
5. Photogrammetric methods and other technology could have a much more important role in providing coordinates for boundaries (most people interviewed with experience in developing countries and international thinking suggest that this is the best option for developing areas).
6. The present Deeds Registry system, outside the homelands, might change to accommodate local government and/or district council held registers (popular in Africa -found in Rehoboth, Sudan, Kenya).
Although radical changes in the survey and registration system will probably be introduced over time, there is not much chance of it taking place quickly and in exactly the way the politicians are planning it.
1. D.C.North (1990:89-90) argues that institutional change within a property registration system does not take place very easily because of what he terms "path dependence" and all the vested interests linked into the land registration process.
2. He argues that even in revolutionary times it has not been possible to completely set aside the property registration system in place. What has happened is that, as the heat of revolutionary activity can only be maintained for a short period, in the end the new people in power make changes to the institutions that make up the land registration system, but these changes fall short of the party's original goals. Part of the reason for this is that the existing vested interests in the land registration process and the new people in power come to a new adapted range of compromises and trade offs.
3. It is likely that the South African cadastral system will change extensively over time, but it will not change as much or as speedily as the new government hopes.
One option of the industry is to resist change to the present cadastre, which although termed 'the best in the world' is not a mirror of rights on the ground for many people of the country (apart from claims linked to forced removals) -because of unregistered transfers, unregistered intestate succession and unregistered subdivisions. However instead of throwing out, ignoring or attempting to side line all radical suggestions made regarding the present land registration system, another approach is to make adaptions to the present cadastral system. This would better ensure the future of the integrity of the cadastre, both for high and low value land, and the medium to long term future of cadastral surveying in the country, as a new government could see that the surveying industry was trying to help them in their land programmes.
To constructively accommodate the policies that are being put forward within the present cadastral system several changes could be considered as and when the policies are motivated or introduced.
A range of survey and registration systems
The range of tenure types suggested by some parties allows for a variety of costs and survey and registration systems. This approach could successfully underpin institutional adaptions in a country undergoing radical restructuring and cater for the different requirements over time, and the ability of its citizens to pay. Various systems would create a range of 'paths' on which the property sector could become 'dependent' (the inherent behaviour in any property sector), with different paths becoming dominant or obsolete over time as the government and/or market chose.
A word of caution about this approach is that it is very important not to create systems that are seen by the population as superior or inferior systems. Blacks to date have generally only had access to second rate titles and are conscious of this aspect. The present system of survey is the superior system, and if the state is willing to pay for it in its future land reform programmes there is no problem about the future of the integrity of the South African cadastre, as far as boundaries are concerned.
However, if equality of survey systems was demanded so that there was no superior and inferior system, and there was insufficient state funding, which is quite possible in the short, medium and long term, it is likely that a lower level and cheaper system of survey would replace our present system. To what extent the state would fund survey at all is an open question, as is whether any funding for survey would go to the private practioners or be used to create government surveyors (either at regional/ district council/ local government level).
Therefore, to encourage a range of systems that will better fit the requirements of our cadastre, which must cater for the developed and developing areas, the rich and poor, the reformer and the investor, it is a good idea to avoid uniformity, but also not to create politically unacceptable A and B systems.
Currently most Blacks want to own their land in freehold, precisely because they have not been able to do this under apartheid. However, whether this desire will remain 'red hot' as it is now, whether they will be prepared to pay for the costly survey and registration procedures that are linked to freehold, or whether the state will be prepared to pay for freehold for all, are all variables that need to be assessed once a new government is in place.
A range of types would mean that the funding of survey and registration could be spread between the state and individuals depending on what type of title was required and the costs involved. Probably the state could pay the costs of the cheapest most reliable survey for everybody, or at least everybody entering the land reform and housing programme, to ensure the: integrity of the cadastre at the lowest level; security of tenure for all; and the ability to administer and plan for development in these newly settled areas. The individual could pay for a resurvey and registration to upgrade their rights to the present system if desired.
Different systems operating within accurately beaconed boundary outside figures
It would be possible to introduce a range of tenures and survey and registration systems - such as general boundaries, midpoints, group areas, different level registries - if they were identified administratively by accurately beaconed boundary outside figures held by the Surveyor General. This would allow the Surveyor General to treat the area inside the outside figures differently. Upgradability to accurately beaconed boundaries and/or freehold would also be possible.
These outside figures could be the only information held by the Surveyor General about an area, with land use within the area being held as a public record by a local government or district council.
Or an accurately beaconed boundary outside figure could be used to 'red line' an area, where the records held by the Surveyor General about the land use on the inside were not of the same type as other records held by the Surveyor General, i.e. they were descriptions of general boundaries or midpoint coordinates.
Another approach on its own, or with accurately beaconed boundary outside figures, would be that each General Plan and/or diagram was marked with a symbol that indicated what type of survey and registration system existed in that area. If the Surveyor General was not involved as the custodian, of correct checked information regarding the diagram and survey data, then it would not be cost effective for the Surveyor General to hold these records, other than the outside figure, as long as the records were held elsewhere properly.
There is a very good chance that general boundaries will be suggested as a way of making survey cheaper. In this country we already have general boundaries in operation, ie. a curvilinear (river) boundary is a general boundary. The difference between a general boundary and an accurately beaconed boundary is not that one is a coordinated boundary and the other is not.
Rather, a general boundary is one where boundaries are agreed boundaries between neighbours. The coordinates that are often linked to a general boundary generally are for land administration and planning purposes, but are also in some instances used as legal evidence. Often these coordinates are used to create a registry map (which is a registry map of owners in map form). This registry map is then generally used for management purposes, rather than as a legal document. Most of the time, but not always, general boundaries have a physical representation. The physical representation on the ground is then used as the legal evidence in the case of a dispute, with an aerial photo or orthophoto of the area being used as additional evidence in some cases.
In an accurately beaconed boundary system, such as in South Africa, boundaries are straight lines between physical marks, creating what is known as a 'physical cadastre.' A physical cadastre is evidenced on the ground and not held only as information in an office, as happens with a numerical cadastre.
In an accurately beaconed boundary system the beacon is the evidence that is used to indicate the position of a boundary. Coordinates and other evidence is only used to assist in reestablishing the boundary, which follows an imaginary line. This imaginary line often does not conform to any physical representation that can be seen by communities on the ground (besides the beacons themselves). If the beacon cannot be found, coordinates, and other evidence, is used to relocate the beacons and they serve as additional evidence of a boundary. Discussion and negotiation between neighbours, in an agreement to beacons exercise, is only to establish the evidence of the boundary for the courts, i.e. the beacon in the case of a future dispute.
The cost difference between beaconed and permanently marked general boundaries, if both are coordinated, is that accurately beaconed boundaries are much more expensive first, because of the time taken to relocate the existing beacons rather than just measuring a boundary. Secondly, they are more expensive because beaconed boundaries have strict accuracy requirements so that the legal evidence, i.e. beacons, can be found and/or replaced.
By comparison, the accuracy requirement for general boundaries is lower -coordinates used for administration and planning can be of a much lower order and still be reliable. Thirdly, as the legislation stands, only certain categories of surveyors can place beacons which makes this survey system costly. In other countries survey technicians, often working for a municipality, are used to survey the general boundaries making the coordination exercise possibly much cheaper.
However, a country must decide where the cost of security of tenure will lie. If in the insuring of title (as in the U.S.A.) or in the law courts (as in the U.K. or in India) or with government funds (as in Australia) or if the cost must be born by the poor in terms of vigilante groups (as in S.America) or in terms of speculators buying off coalitions (as in Ibadan -Nigeria) or in the system of accurately beaconed boundaries and the conveyancing system as in South Africa.
General boundaries do not work within and between hostile communities where boundary disputes between neighbours require clear objective evidence rather than a semi-flexible boundary. However, general boundaries work well in tolerant communities with good conflict resolution mechanisms, i.e. in some of our rural communities and possibly in urban areas among some communities. However the ability to resolve boundary disputes without creating costs for the community, over and above the costs created by fixing boundaries accurately, should be assessed.
On the other hand, in communities where conflicts over boundaries are being resolved without the aid of a surveyor, because the cost of surveying is too great - as is happening in many areas of S.A. - then general boundaries are more beneficial and cost effective. A general boundary system also allows local authorities to subdivide land in small villages easily and legally, merely by approving a physical representation of a subdivision on an existing property and surveying it without reference to beacons.
General boundaries are cheaper, simpler and can be upgraded to an accurate beaconed boundary. Certain regions/areas - such as local government areas - could use the general boundary system contained within an outside figure of an accurately beaconed boundary.
A novel concept is that of the use of a midpoint or centre-point (J.Jackson). It is suggested that some areas could benefit from having a midpoint registered to start with, against a group title, rather than the extent or boundaries of a property.
This approach could be used specifically for informal settlements, or where some kind of weaker individual right within a group right is required. The approach would involve: a coordinate (a unique identifier which dovetails with our present system), over a stake in the ground (the physical cadastre) next to a house, and linked to a paper record of who held that right (contained in a community register updated regularly by the local leadership). Each individual coordinated right (described by the coordinate-stake- record in community register) within the group title would hopefully be held by the Surveyor General's office, even though it is not a right with a precise dimension.
This approach could be done in terms of blocks or super blocks (see below). The block or super block, surveyed as an accurately beaconed boundary, would supply the outside figure held at the Surveyor General. The block or super block should also be a physical demarcation on the ground.
This system would simplify giving security of tenure to people immediately without having to wait for the area to be planned and developed -useful to give land to the landless. Secondly, it would bring stability to an area very quickly as people's land rights in those areas were secured. Thirdly, it would help later planning and development, as a record of land rights would exist in the community register and maps based on the coordinates would be available for planning purposes. Fourthly, by not initially surveying the extent of each plot and giving people land rights before planning, which is being done in some programmes in S.A. today, bad planning is not entrenched. This is dramatically pushing up development costs in informal settlements.
This midpoint approach is also easily upgradable. Any time after the midpoint has been put in place, if desired and when money is available, either from the state or through Non Government Organisations, commonly known as NGO's, or community initiative, plans and pegs could be workshopped. I.e. the area can be planned with the people and they can then adjust their boundaries according to the plans that the community wants, followed by the monumentation of their boundaries.
These locally monumented boundaries can be held at local government level in a descriptive form, as are PTO's in some areas of S.A. Or they could be surveyed by a community surveyor and be held at local government level and a registry map created. Or they could be surveyed under the management of a professional surveyor who could also create the registry map, which could be a legal document. The type of title, the extent to which the finance institutions will give money for bonds against the guarantee of the extent held at local government level, the accuracy of the survey, and the cost of the exercise, are all possible variables.
However, as far as survey is concerned, starting with a midpoint and then going on to 'extent' means that it is easy to upgrade, from a midpoint held in a community register, to a title to the 'extent' held at local government level, or at freehold level, where the Surveyor General is the custodian of the correctness or integrity of the data. There is one proviso in the upgrading, it probably can only be done in terms of blocks or super blocks and not at an individual level because of the planning and service provision that accompanies the giving of title to the 'extent'.
Using the midpoint system it is also possible to down grade title in that, if for example a freehold area is invaded by squatters, the freehold title can be cancelled and midpoints given to the new residents with relative ease, without a massive adjudication exercise.
The reason why the midpoint system can be used so easily in this country is because of the existing institutionalised survey system of coordinates linked into a national referencing system -in regard to individual's land rights and services.
The idea of blocks is not new. It was used in the land registration system of the Solomon Islands in the 1960s. It is gaining popularity in international thinking as it allows a range of tenure types, or paths to property, to operate within the same cadastral system.
"The principles underlying survey control and 'working from the whole to the part' can be applied to boundary surveys by accurately measuring the perimeter of blocks of parcels. Sub-division within blocks can then take place using cheap and simple survey methods as and when they are required. This is particularly appropriate in urban and suburban areas where the layout design approved by the planners may include a series of regular, equal-size rectangular-shaped plots surrounded by roads of standard widths.
In rural areas, the landscape can be 'polygonized', the subdivisions within each region or district being undertaken as and when there is demand. The broad outlines of the framework can be surveyed ..leaving internal subdivisions to be undertaken by ground-survey methods when resources are available." (U.N.:1990:31).
Using a similar approach, Jeyanandan and Williamson, in designing a cadastral model for developing countries suggest that:
"The basic land unit for the purpose of the cadastral map will be aggregates of proprietary land parcels. These aggregates, blocks, enclosures or tracts shall contain about one hundred to four hundred land parcels - lower figures for urban areas - bounded by permanent natural or artificial features. The delineation of blocks will be based on land value and use in urban areas, availability of infrastructure facilities and development needs in peri-urban areas, agricultural and social considerations in rural areas. Where possible state land should be separate blocks with any lease, vested or reserved land identified.
Cadastral maps will be prepared by recording the block boundaries on available large-scale topographic maps or maps derived from unrectified enlargements of aerial photographs. The accuracy and scale of the maps will correspond to block sizes and available survey and mapping resources.
All land registration records, land and building tax rolls and planning and development data available at present will be rearranged to accord with the block system. Land parcels without registration records will be identified. Each block shall be assigned a unique identifier. Every land parcel and corresponding record will be referenced to it.
Such an approach would allow subdivision to take place within each controlled framework, preventing errors in one part of the system adversely affecting the records of other areas and allowing priority areas to be addressed first." (Jeyanandan and Williamson:1990:5-6).
There is a strong call for some form of group rights - both for urban and rural areas - by some major parties. Some areas could have group rights where the title registered is described by an accurately beaconed boundary outside figure by the Surveyor General. These group rights could be held: as a farm (as presently constituted -examples of this already exist in S.A.); at local government level -this is a popular approach in Africa; at tribal level (this already exists in South Africa); in informal settlements -"individuals could be given rights of occupancy for a shorter or longer period, subject to improvement of their dwellings. The system may well give the occupier enough security to stimulate investment and even to obtain bank credit, especially if the rights are stated in writing and the dwellings are given a unique number on an aerial photograph" (Larsson: 1991:124-6), or by using the midpoint system described above.
The individual rights on the inside might never be registered (as in Zimbabwe); or they might later be registered only at a local government level (in parts of West Africa); or they might be midpoint rights linked to a community register that are later upgraded to a weak form of individual title held at local government level; or they might be upgraded to freehold (described above). The form and extent of survey would vary and depend on what aspects were required by the financial institutions, the Surveyor General, legislation in relation to titling etc.
Present legislation does not really fit with the requirements of group title as described above. The present system of undivided shares is very difficult to administer and can lead to lengthy delays for communities during the upgrading process. Sectional title has been found to be very difficult to negotiate and to administer in relation to common use areas where there are no rigid physical representations of boundaries.
International opinion shows that there are problems connected with group registration.
"The disadvantages of tying land to social groups greatly outweigh the advantages in most cases. Determining firstly who is, and who is not, a member of the group is a problem. In practice this is extremely difficult as a person may 'belong' by a number of criteria to various groups. And all criteria are negotiable and dependent on others.
Secondly, determining not only whether a person is a member of a group is a problem but also what kind of member they are is a more difficult problem. For example, the rights and obligations of a chief, an orphan, a wife, a son-in-law, a warrior, an absent sister, a talented cultivator, a refugee and various other statuses, has been shown in international literature to differ greatly, even though all may be 'members' of the same group. It is not possible to retain the notion that all members of a land holding group are equal.
Solomon Islands legislation provides for both joint and individual ownership in a procedure for systematic adjudication. Joint owners are trustees and act on behalf of others, usually a group. They are supposed to consult the group and seek its consent before carrying out any land transactions. No more than five joint owners could be listed for any parcel of land.
The basic pattern of registration seems to be to register group titles and make provision for the registered group to be able to grant rights of use in the form of registered occupation rights, leases and other subsidiary rights to individuals or sub-groups. The occupation right would be granted to the right holder for either a specific time or indefinitely, and normally be heritable. Certain rules must be followed, regulating time and conditions, heredity, whether or not rights can be granted to individuals outside the group or to absent members of the group, whether unused land shall revert to the group, maximum area, etc.
The registered primary unit of group registration will not be the parcel but rather the area referred to the group (or possibly a homogeneous sub-unit of it). Group registration can then radically diminish the number of registration units and thereby also the survey and registration costs. Rights of occupancy or leases to individuals can then be handled in an uncomplicated manner, perhaps by oral agreement according to customary rules, or by simple recording within the group. Such records may be successively improved, for example by sketching the individual parcels on an aerial photo. The important thing is that the system keeps initial investment costs low, while at the same time allowing for future improvements.
Introducing registration via group title in customary areas gives a unique opportunity to define rights even in those cases where registration is mainly a confirmation of earlier customary rules. Registration can thus provide a specific framework for existing rights and the future management of land, concerning both the physical boundaries of group or individual land and the rules governing the use of the land." (Larsson: 1991:124-126).
An internationally popular approach to group titles is the community land trust. This approach can also be found in some party platforms and will in all likelihood be tried in SA.
"A Community Land Trust is a democratically structured non profit organization with an open membership and an elected board of trustees. The elected board includes leaseholders of trust-owned lands, other community residents, and public interest representatives (government professionals or councillors, for example). The Trust acquires land through purchase or donation (by government or private landowners) with the explicit intention of retaining the title for perpetuity, thus removing the land from the speculative market. Appropriate uses for the land are determined through negotiation among members with their elected board and with outside legal bodies, if necessary. This process is comparable to land-use planning and zoning. The land is then leased by the Trust to individuals, families, cooperatives, or other kinds of businesses and for public purposes.
The Trust board offers a lifetime (or 99-year renewable) lease, which may be transferred to the leaseholder's heirs if they wish to continue the use of the land. Leases will only be given to those who will make use of the land (no absentee landlords are allowed, though leaseholders may be able to sub-let land and buildings for income as long as the original leaseholder is also using the land). Leaseholders pay a regular lease fee, but need no down payments, credit, or conventional financing to gain access to the land.
Leaseholders never own the land only their buildings and improvements. Should they leave the land and terminate the lease, they may sell or remove their possessions and improvements; they cannot sell the land itself. The Trust retains the first option to purchase improvements (a house for example), for resale to the next lessee member identified by the trust. Purchase is made at the owner's original invested cost, adjusted for inflation, depreciation or damage. The leaseholder/property owner is thus guaranteed a real Rand equity in the improvements but is prevented from making indirect speculative gains from the increased value of the land. The increased value of the land remains with all the members of the Trust. The Trust provides lifetime security of use equal to that of private ownership." (Extracted from: Community Land Trusts: Are They a Model for Local Control of Land and Community Economic Development in Communal Areas by James Hokans: 1993: 1-5).
This system is upgradable to freehold.
Some of the provincial ordinances, such as the Cape Ordinance (15/1985) on Home owners' associations, could be adapted to fit with group titles and with some issues dealt with by the community land trust. Such a home owners' association would have to be a separate legal person; allow a group to take responsibility for the maintenance and development of services in an area and for the joint payment for services, which the local authority is only responsible for providing up to the boundary of the group's area; and allow the group to decide on land use, membership and who should occupy the area.
In all these options outlined above the choice between group and individual registrations depends on the relative strength of group rights and individual rights. It also depends on political intentions and technical and economic considerations.
The most difficult problem faced by all cadastres in the developing world and in South Africa is to persuade people to reregister property in the event of a death or a sale. It is such a problem in South Africa that even in new developments there have been three or four sales to new owners within six months with no reregistration of the property. Given that the role of the cadastre is not just to supply security of tenure, but also to make it possible to administer, plan and manage land, the fact that our cadastre does not mirror the situation on the ground for large areas and numbers of people is a serious problem.
With respect to this, we need to distinguish between the reregistration of high value land and low value land. The reregistration of high value land does not appear to be a problem. The problem comes in with low value land where the motive to reregister the land is absent either for social reasons, or to avoid payment of fees.
A way of solving this problem is: First, to locate the registry closer to where people live. This would make it easier for them to register changes instead of having to travel vast distances. This implies that the present Deeds Registry office would have to hold originals, with duplicates being held by local offices all over the country. This is possible if time and money was allocated and a vast computer network and administrative structure set up that could handle this.
Another possible approach is for the central Deeds Register to hold only a group title/ outside figure of an area, such as a local government area. Then the local government or district council would hold the registry map. On this map subdivisions would be recorded and tied to titles issued at local government level (such as PTO's or some form of lease.) This registry map could be held by a local surveyor on behalf of a local government, and s/he would ensure that the records were complete, up to date, and that no conflicting rights were registered.
If a surveyor took responsibility like this it might persuade the financial institutions to accept the map and title being held at such a low level. In Africa there has been little success in persuading financial institutions to accept this approach, and in India 55% of all court cases are about land where the registry map is held at a low level. Therefore, to have a successful low level registry the profession would have to make an important input.
Another advantage of holding the registry map and records at the local level, besides making it accessible to people, is that subdivisional consents can be easily obtained, within and applicable to a local government or district council area. Given that subdivisions take place generally without permission in Black areas of South Africa, as people consider that they have a right to do what they like on their land, whether it be subdividing it for family members, putting up blocks of flats etc., it is better that as much as possible of the control and monitoring of subdivisions and the servicing requirements related to consents be held and decided upon at local level.
In this way public land records, in the form of the registry map, will be much more current. This would allow efficient land and resource management to take place. At present, where the consent procedure for Black areas is linked extensively to the regional level, no control or only sporadic control exists over land management at the local level. This often leads to complete break downs in the records about land use in these areas and very time-consuming service delivery, because of the problems relating to the identification of owners and in obtaining their consent. Surveyors could again make a major input into consent procedures at the local level.
For high value land and where people wanted to maintain particular standards, the present consent procedure could be followed.
Secondly, the whole registration procedure could be made more transparent and locally accountable if local personnel were used. This could mean that a local office acted as an agency on behalf of a central office, sending through all its work for final approval to a central office.
Alternatively, as in the Rehoboth case, most work could be done at the local level with only exceptional work being sent through to the central office.
In this situation, it is important that all the work is based on a set of forms that have to be completed and attested by the Deeds Registrar and the buyer and seller simultaneously. Also, the title must be endorsed and passed on to the new owner so that the cost of creating a new title is avoided, and mistakes in the creation of titles avoided, and the history of any particular parcel of land can be found easily by local personnel.
This approach also dispenses with the expensive role of the conveyancer. Instead the local level Deeds Registrar checks to see if any rights are infringed, and because s/he is a person who is part and parcel of the micro politics of a local community, s/he has additional insights into what is happening to different land parcels in the community, which insights s/he uses to check whether third party land rights are being infringed in a transaction.
A system that is not uniform must allow for the upgrading of rights and tenure types. The range of survey and registration systems described above could be upgraded to our present system. Our present system could be downgraded to these systems - as and where necessary. A system must have the type of linkages that allow both the survey systems and the legislation and administrative procedures linked to them, as well as the real rights linked to the parcels of surveyed land, to be upgraded and/or downgraded.
All the factors linked to a land registration system need to be considered and linked to any new system in an upgradable integrated way. These factors include: the politicians and the communities; the financial houses; the courts; the Deeds Registry; the Surveyor General as custodian of correct data; planning and resource (including land) management requirements; the surveyor and the conveyancer. For example, if the financial institutions agree to grant bonds to areas where a surveyor (and not just a local government) is responsible for the creation of a registry map, then locally held titles become far more useful and viable than they are at present in other parts of Africa.
If the midpoint idea is acceptable to informal settlement communities, as delivering security of tenure and bondability to the individual supported by the group, then this approach could immediately deliver legal land ownership to many millions of the legally landless. It would also significantly aid land administration and resource delivery to these areas.
If the Surveyor General could accept the midpoint coordinate as an adequate identifier of an individual's right to land within a group title, this might make it possible for the finance houses to bond these properties, with group responsibility for mortgage payments.
If all the above approaches use coordinates that are linked to the national system, then planning and land management and administration remain sound, and upgradability is made cheaper.
The role of the Surveyor General if there are a range of survey systems
The Surveyor General as record keeper is important for: the integrity of the whole system; and to obtain a large scale picture of the S.A. cadastre and where it is moving towards.
If the Surveyor General only held the outside figures of low value land (or was responsible for less accurate information within an outside figure) this would lower the cost of both the checking function of the Surveyor General and the costs related to holding the records. Low value land would not be examined except for outside figures.
The examination of accurate surveys done for high value freehold land could be done by privatising the examination function of the Surveyor General. This would mean that ALL the costs involved in examining could be recovered, i.e. both for actual examination and the cost of the establishment of the control network. Either present examinations done by Surveyor Generals could be done so that the cost is completely covered, which it is not currently; or certain approved surveyors could undertake to do the examination of other surveyors work, which would then be accepted without examination and stored by the Surveyor General.
Another alternative is that the professionalism of the land surveyor's work is accepted by the Surveyor General's office without examination; and/or certain approved 'quality assurance' (see appendix one -glossary of terms) surveyor's work is accepted and not examined. Regarding this, the industry would have to stop using the Surveyor General's office examination procedure as a back up and also take out professional indemnity insurance.
It is possible that unacceptable work could be handed in, and go on public record, in some provinces. However, for as long as the control network remains within present standards and all work is done relative to that network, then there is no technical knock on effect which would affect a whole area or the country and cause widespread survey problems. If survey problems were found, they could be rebeaconed relatively easily as they would be localised. However, if there were survey inaccuracies which went on public record and came to the view of the public in court cases, the market might realise that survey in a particular province was no longer supplying security of tenure.
In this situation the market, in relation to high value land, might turn to the law courts, insurance or another mechanism for protecting their land rights. If this happened the survey industry could educate the market to the fact that there were 'quality assurance surveyors' (who were considered by the industry to be able to do the job competently and professionally) and 'others'; and that a certificate of identity accompanied by a proper resurvey of land would ensure security of tenure for any particular property.
The market might find a similar situation in relation to having different levels of registries. The market might pick up that in high value land a local level deeds registry office was not sufficiently competent. In this situation the client would hire a conveyancer to check the rights within a title before taking transfer, just as they do now.
In low value land the local government or district council could be responsible for the land records of the area. The integrity of these records would be greatly increased if the surveyor had a role in overseeing their management and that of the registry map. Also, in this situation the community could play a much greater role in ensuring that the surveyor, be s/he a community and/or technical surveyor, puts a coordinate over their monumentation correctly; that their title deeds are current and mirror the real rights that they hold; and/or that the community register is correct; and that the registry map is correct.
In low value land; and where court cases and adjudication by using beacons as evidence is too expensive; and hostility is not a major factor in the community, the registry map and the records held at the local level would make it much easier for boundary disputes to be solved within terms of local community norms in conjunction with local government, district council and/or land board officials. The surveyor as adjudicator could also be very important.
Leaders in the land registration system and their link to politicians
It is the role of the senior administrators and leaders of the professions forming part of land registration, nationally and/or regionally, to serve as the link between the cadastre and the industries which serve it, and the politicians. This is so that the politicians can make informed decisions and so that the cadastre and the land registration industry can be made to better serve the wider society which the politicians represent.
If this can be done well in the future South Africa then the expected changes will be done much more efficiently and much less messily than has happened in other parts of Africa. If the link between the leaders, especially the senior administrators, and the politicians is poor, then the politicians, who have always been extremely active in land reforms in Africa, will undertake changes. These changes could be impractical, difficult to carry out, develop into an administrative nightmare, and affect the integrity of the cadastre.
Scenario 4. What if there is one Surveyor General's office for each of nine provinces.
1. As the powers of the regions are still being discussed it is not yet clear whether there will be a Surveyor General's office for each province. If the powers held at regional level are strengthened, it is possible that each province would demand its own land registration office\s, which would include the Survey General and Deeds Registrar functions. If most of the power is held at the centre, then it is likely that the status quo would remain.
The nine provinces envisaged for South Africa are shown on the map below. Many boundaries on this map have not yet been finalised, especially if one considers the present discussions about a Volkstaat centred on Pretoria. Therefore, any conclusions cannot be considered definitive.
3. If the offices of the Surveyor Generals had to be divided into nine provinces it would be a massive task. As far as administrative efficiency is concerned it would be better for the presently constituted offices of the Surveyor Generals to remain where they were and act on behalf of the various provinces. This is especially so because these offices are largely staffed by married women who are reluctant to take transfers. This would mean that the offices of the non traditional Surveyor Generals would be under staffed and staffed with less trained people. Also, in order to create nine Surveyor Generals all the paper work in the present offices would have to be divided and renumbered, a massive job that will take a large amount of staffing and budget and divert resources from the land reform programme of the new government.
However, given that land is a politically sensitive issue, if the provinces are given strong powers then it is likely that politicians will require that each province has its own office for land administration (including the functions of the Surveyor General and the Deeds Registrar).
4. Land legislation will be at a national level. However it is possible that each province, if there were strong regions, would have its own survey regulations board and its own regulations. South Africa is very regional and one area is often very different from another and consequently the regulations could diverge over time. For example, Bop wanted to register general boundaries because of the different thinking and requirements of that region.
The land use and needs of the Western Cape and the O.F.S. conform the closest, currently, with present cadastral arrangements; whereas areas like Natal and the Transvaal are finding that their cadastres, in some areas, are becoming more and more out of date and cumbersome to implement. Although uniformity of regulations is more efficient in terms of administration, it does not allow different areas to be creative and adapt their cadastres. If cadastres are not adapted to the needs of the society they become less and less current, especially in Africa.
5. If there are going to be offices for nine Surveyor Generals then the Surveyor General's office and Deeds Registry office for Province 8 will probably be Cape Town; for Province 5 Bloemfontein; for Province 6 Pretoria; for Province 4 Pietermaritzburg. No information has been received to date about where provinces 1,2,3,7,9 offices will be located. However, the one for province seven might be in King Williamstown because there is a Deeds Registry already there, but it could also be in Umtata. The present Pretoria office's records might have to be split between provinces 1,2,3 and 6.
6. If a Volkstaat is created it will require its own land registration offices and there might be less or more provinces than the present nine. If it is based on Pretoria, then the presently constituted Surveyor General's office in Pretoria might have to move lock, stock and barrel to another area, if the present Surveyor General structure of four offices remains. If nine provinces are created, including a Volkstaat, then the present Pretoria office's records would have to be split between the Volkstaat and the remaining provinces.
7. Given the fact that most of the homelands, both self governing and 'independent', have some sort of Surveyor General and Deeds Registry, their records will have to be incorporated into either the present offices of the Surveyor Generals or the nine offices which could be created. As their systems often differ not only from the present R.S.A. offices, but also from each other, it is suggested that they be kept inside outside figures of accurately beaconed boundaries until uniformity is either created, or their approach becomes integrated into the national cadastral system. The area most affected by the homeland registries are provinces 1,2,3 and 6, where the present Pretoria office's records will have to be split into four provinces, and possibly also a Volkstaat, while simultaneously being amalgamated with the records presently held in Bop and Venda.
8. All these aspects are bound to cause delays and inefficiencies in the offices of the Surveyor Generals, especially if they are regionalised. This will be worse in some provinces than others.
9. The present S.A. cadastre can continue to serve the country well: providing the national legislation facilitates a cadastre which upholds the integrity of the cadastre, while allowing regional variations within outside figures; the national geodetic network remains accurate; surveyors play more of an extensive role as custodians of the cadastre; and the examination functions of the Surveyor Generals are privatised, even if some regional and/or subregional cadastres lose their integrity and there is a divergence of administrative procedures in the various offices of the Surveyor Generals over time. However, the market might pick up that survey in different provinces was less reliable and turn to the law courts.
10. Another possible outcome of strong regions and regional survey boards would be that the present national body of PLATO would be regionalised. A major role of these boards would be to assess the education of foreign surveyors wanting to practice.
1. Several factors, both individually and in combination, could lead to a situation where the offices of the Surveyor Generals lock up namely:
- the administration problems created by incorporating homeland registries;
- the administration problems created if nine provinces and/or a Volkstaat with their own offices are required;
- the massive institutional changes required, if the land laws of the country are recodified, including the 1927 act;
- the vast number of land registrations which are going to have to be processed -200,000 houses in the urban areas a year, and vast numbers of rural land allocations;
- the demand for information from the Surveyor Generals and the Deeds Registrars to service the land claims procedure;
- the upgrading of titles.
2. Another aspect which could affect the efficient functioning of the Surveyor General is if insufficient funding is made available for the mammoth task required by the land reform programmes. If the role of administration in this process is little understood and is underfunded this could lead to further slowing of the offices of the Surveyor Generals.
3. Also, the extent to which staff in the Surveyor General's office consider themselves to be underpaid, and attempt to remedy this through private work, is an aspect which could affect the ability of a Surveyor General's office to deliver on the work produced by private surveyors.
4. To make the work of the Surveyor General run more smoothly, under the above conditions, as far as surveyors are concerned, some of the things that could be done are:
- surveyors could make no mistakes in the work they submit;
- the Surveyor General's office could do only random examinations of work, instead of all work being examined-i.e. surveyors' work could be audited by qualified land surveyors, at random, or when necessary, and if a problem came up all his/her survey records could be checked and the surveyor could be disciplined if necessary (Australia does this);
- the Surveyor General's office could do no examination, or much less examination than they do now;
- the Surveyor General's office could waive the examination of 'quality assured' surveyors work;
- the functions of the offices of the Surveyor Generals, as far as examinations are concerned, could be privatised either within the government or outside in surveying practices (this could probably only be done outside government once all the Surveyor General's records had been computerised).
- low value land could be registered at the local level and the Surveyor General only hold the outside figure;
- risks should be actively calculated to avoid unnecessary checks.
5. In some situations, where for instance the land surveyor knew that there were no conflicting rights which would prevent the opening of a township register ultimately, based on the land surveyor as professional and his/her insurance, title could be given with provisional rights, awaiting approval. Also, where the underlying title was ex-S.A.D.T. land, which had not been taken out of the farm register and a township title created, full ownership could be given without waiting for the administration to first take place, if the land surveyor, as professional backed up by insurance, or a government, or financial institution created fund, took responsibility. The administration linked to these two aspects could follow later. Both these approaches could not take place without the approval of the Surveyor General.
6. The registration and retrieval of data is costly and generally needs to be streamlined, however this should not take place at the cost of a loss of security of title.
7. If the land registration offices lock up seriously for any length of time, like a couple of years, more transactions will take place privately and informally leading to a decline in the economy and an increase in violence. Also, the new government will not be able to deliver on its land reform programme leading to political instability.
Both in the policies of the various major parties and from experience on the ground it seems that all 'experts' will be expected to work with the community. Often at present (and always in the past) the surveyor obtained his/her brief from an outside body and went in to do the work without checking with the people on the ground about the brief. This is set to change.
1. As envisaged in policy documents, the body awarding the brief and approving payment will be operating at a much lower level than has been the case for most jobs in the past. The district council, an elected body of part-time people, possibly helped by an NGO, could take responsibility in rural areas for land use, raising tax to pay for developments in an area, awarding contracts and appointing consultants. The surveyor would have to liaise directly with such a body and/or the NGO linked to it and have his/her work approved by the community they represent. The same goes for local governments in urban areas.
2. An approach that has been adopted in some countries is to workshop plans and pegs with a community, rather than produce them in an office outside of the community. This means that planning is done by people with planning skills talking to the community and reaching agreement about what services the community wants. Information about their formal land tenure situation is also given to the community to improve their decision making capacity.
Part of this process also includes discussion about (unregistered\informal) property boundaries, as these have to often move to make way for development. In this situation people negotiate their boundaries and may even monument them in some way. This monumentation then becomes accepted in the neighbourhood.
This workshopping is then followed by an engineering survey of the service areas, and a cadastral survey of the locally negotiated and monumented boundaries of individual plots. It would be important for the land surveyor to adapt the legislation and procedures as much as possible to the community's needs and ability to pay.
3. It is also possible that communities will have their own trained community surveyors. These community surveyors would hopefully have a low level of survey skill and the confidence of the community and local knowledge to help with the planning process and the demarcation/adjudication/workshopping of internal boundaries. The professional surveyor would then have to also know how to liaise creatively with such a community surveyor.
4. Working with communities in this way is a skill and communication art. Surveyors need to be trained in these skills to do this successfully and/or they need to take on partners, preferably Black, who can undertake this aspect of the job.
5. If surveyors can communicate successfully with communities and their elected representatives it will place them in a useful position by comparison to other experts and/or professionals. It will mean that the surveyor could put himself at the beginning of the process instead of at the end, as at the present. This could also mean that many of the inefficiencies and luxuries which have crept into the development delivery system could be eliminated, if the surveyor serves his/her client professionally.
6. If communication and negotiation took place in conjunction with a survey job it would take much longer to do. The client needs to be advised of this and tenders set up to accommodate this, and invoices drawn up appropriately.
Standard administrative procedures for the upgrading of these townships are already being set aside (for example the I.D.T. programmes) because the landless want title immediately and the administrative procedures take too long. Another approach to the problem is outlined below, which takes into account the immediate needs of the community; sound planning principles; the long term needs of the Surveyor General; the requirements of the finance houses; the needs of local authorities in relation to service provision; and makes it possible for individuals to upgrade their land rights over time.
This approach is described in terms of phases, with the progressive upgrading of an area taking place. Some phases can be skipped, and the pace of upgrading can vary enormously. Some areas might never go beyond certain levels of title and/or service upgrading. The ultimate goal of the process, if desired, is that a township register can be opened for an area which is already settled, but where the people initially have no legal title and no development has taken place.
The first phase gives permanency and stability to an area
Before an area can be considered for upgrading several aspects need to be checked to ensure that upgradability is possible.
1. The land surveyor would have to check the underlying titles of an earmarked area (right up to where a township register can be opened). S/he would then assess what steps would be required to clean up the underlying titles to the area and take a calculated risk (involving his/her knowledge and professional indemnity insurance) that a township register could be opened at some future date.
S\he may have to insist on a time period before the township register could be opened to allow for the administration and legal side of cleaning up the title to be done; for unregistered claims to be made public and be adjudicated; and for other claims to dissipate.
This step is necessary for two reasons, first to ensure that the area can by upgraded all the way to freehold; and secondly to attempt to satisfy the needs of the financial institutions, so that they will give bonds to these areas.
South Africa's cadastral records have never to date indicated conflicting rights. Normally a township register cannot be opened if there are conflicting rights, i.e. the underlying titles have not been cleaned up. The existence of a township register in new areas has therefore served as an index to the financial houses that there are no conflicting rights and that the land registration process can and will take place without prejudicing their claims if they have lent money against a property.
This new approach would mean that during the upgrading process conflicting rights would be kept on the cadastral records, until the underlying titles were sorted out. A financial institution would not be willing to bond properties in this situation, unless the professional surveyor took responsibility for ensuring that the area could be upgraded to the point when a township register could be opened; and ensured that the underlying titles were eventually cleaned up and the conflicting rights eliminated, so that the Surveyor General's records no longer reflected any conflicting rights in the area.
2. In addition to the underlying titles, a geological and environmental assessment would have to be made, to assess whether a high density residential area could be located, long term, in the area.
3. If an informal settlement has been in place for a long time period, say five years, then one should presume that the area had de facto been accepted by the regional and/or national authorities as a high density residential area (this could be linked to some kind of prescriptive law). Statutory consents for a township would not have to be first obtained, although the regional/national authorities would have to be informed if development of such an area went ahead.
4. Although the existing plans, as laid down by guide and structure plans, should not interfere with the upgrading of any particular area in principle, certain aspects of these plans, specifically planned national roads, should be taken into account.
5. Bulk service certificates for water and electricity must be obtained to ensure that these services can be supplied if requested. Sometimes, depending on the geology of the area, a bulk service certificate for sewerage disposal would also be needed.
If the above steps are all right then the exercise could go ahead.
6. An outside figure of the earmarked area could then be created. This outside figure should consist of a beaconed boundary. This boundary should: have been negotiated with the residents of an area; conform to a planned super block or block; be linked to a group title held by some form of body corporate; be a mirror of a physically demarcated boundary on the ground which has been pointed out to the residents of the area; contain between 100 and 200 plots (to encourage community consciousness and assist in boundary dispute resolution). This outside figure and group title should be held by the Surveyor General's office and Deeds Registry respectively. This exercise would imply the permanency of the settlement.
7. Each of the houses within the outside figure could be given a midpoint coordinate; a paper record tied to a community register; and a stake next to the house which is linked directly to the midpoint coordinate. This midpoint coordinate would indicate that a person had a right, albeit without an exact spatial dimension, to a place within a group title. This exercise would give the individual residents greater security and more rights, as individuals, in the area, without specifying the dimensions or extent of their land rights.
8. The object of the first phase would be to supply permanency and land rights as soon as possible and requires little finance. Settlement stability should result from this exercise.
9. The midpoint exercise can be entirely left out: if development is put in immediately; there is no delay for planning; and the money for a fuller survey is available etc.
10. On the other hand, a community might not be able to go beyond this level because they lack the financial resources.
11. Once the area has stabilised, this level can be easily upgraded to the next phase, with the existing land information acting as an important resource for the next level. The time taken between these phases is not important at all, as long as the people are satisfied with their existing level.
Before embarking on the next phase some sort of evaluation of the area should be made. The general stability of the area should be assessed. It might also be necessary to assess whether people have put money into housing in the area as a criteria of their commitment to the area and/or their plots. This assessment might be ad hoc or set up at the beginning of the exercise and discussed with the community. Whether the next phase was undertaken might depend on the community reaching a certain prearranged target.
1. Once it has been decided to upgrade the area inside an outside figure, either as far as land titles are concerned, or to service the area, the area should be mapped. This could be done by using sufficiently large scale aerial photography to ensure the adequate planning of roads, electricity, drainage etc. It would have to take into account the positions of existing buildings, topography, and allow for transport, access, storm water, sewers etc. The resulting map would be used to help: in designing services; the layout plan; and calculating the subdivisional layout.
2.All this information should then be taken to a workshopping exercise with the community living in the outside figure. The existing coordinate and community registry information could be verified, using the aerial photos and random checks on residents during the workshopping, and built into the exercise.
Plans and pegs for the area could be workshopped by either an NGO, a developer or a government agency. This is essentially an adjudication exercise aimed at obtaining consensus on land use, property rights including boundaries, and who holds (owns), what and where, without prejudicing the weak, poor and woman who have de facto rights in the area. Once consensus is reached and some sort of property right administration (see below) is put in place, then this could be seen as giving legal content to both the layout as well as the property rights.
This work must be done together with a professional land manager if the consent procedure approach is avoided (see below). All the documentation relating to this aspect must be kept in the custody of the land manager and handed over the local authorities as soon as they are constituted.
The Community Plan or Provisional General Plan resulting from this exercise could then be lodged with the Surveyor General, but not for his approval, only as a record.
The Community Plan could consist of the planned occupational boundaries and service corridors shown as an overlay on an orthophoto map of the area with only the outside figure surveyed and beaconed. The midpoint coordinate information could also be included as additional information.
A copy of the Community Plan should be handed over to the community's leaders or an independent Trust (a community corporate body), who will become the transferees of the property with certain conditions attached.
These attached conditions would be formulated by the community members themselves through their corporate body. However, the main constraints on these conditions will come from legislation, in terms of the operation of the trust exercising its options, in conveying personal and real rights; and how these individual rights relate to the group as a whole.
3. It is possible to avoid the local government consent procedures which can take an enormous amount of time. This avoidance is possible if the local authority and/or utility is only responsible for taking services up to the outside figure. From there on the group holding the title to the land must take responsibility, for ensuring that the services are put into their own area and for paying for these services as a group.
Presently the consent procedure is there to ensure that the planning of the bulk service supply is done correctly and that the service supplier is in a position to handle the requirements of the area. If the existing consent procedures are bypassed, by the group taking responsibility for their services, another mechanism would have to be introduced to ensure that correct planning decisions were being taken concerning the servicing of such a community.
This role could be done by any responsible land manager, such as a land surveyor. A surveyor in this role would mean that work could be done quicker. Also his/her professionalism as land manager would be important to ensure that the planning for the community was done correctly.
4. Once the planning is complete, service areas or corridors and super blocks and blocks within the outside figure could then be demarcated for engineering rather than cadastral purposes, relating it to the existing road network. In planning these super blocks, the more macro plans and infrastructure of an area would have to be considered to avoid bottle necks.
5. At this stage subdivisions could be undertaken without any consents required. Subdivisions could be done by the corporate body holding the group title together with the individual plot owners. Also, all the services could be put in without requiring any consents, providing the approach was followed as outlined in 3. above.
6. This could be followed by the pegging of the service areas and corridors.
7. The boundaries of the plots inside the blocks could then be monumented or demarcated by the people, as per their negotiations during the workshopping exercise. Each plot should be uniquely identifiable and therefore capable of some sort of registration.
8. The community register could then become part of the records of the newly created local government/ body corporate and a registry map could be created. This could be based on either: a map produced from an aerial photograph of the area showing the demarcated plots and service corridors; or be based on the information from the earlier midpoint survey; or use the surveyed general boundaries of the area. The type of title issued in this case might be some form of PTO or lease. Also, the registry map or layout of the area might also be based on accurately beaconed boundaries of the area. The choice of which type would be followed would depend on what the community and/or state was prepared to pay; at what level of upgrading they were at; and what the ultimate requirement of the Surveyor General's office would be to open a township register.
9. At this stage individuals would acquire more land rights than they had previously held, depending on whether it was a PTO, a lease or freehold.
10. At present the Surveyor General approves a General Plan and the buildings are built and the services put in place which accord with the beacons that are on the ground, which are depicted on the General Plan. In this way the Surveyor General's records mirror the land rights on the ground. What is being suggested here is that the area is settled and subdivisions undertaken and the area serviced without the Surveyor General's approval of a General Plan, or in this case the Community General Plan. Then once the area has stabilised and been upgraded the layout can be finalised and the usual General Plan framed, which will mirror WHAT IS ALREADY ON THE GROUND, which can then be handed to the Surveyor General for approval and for storing as a public record. In this way the Surveyor General's role, as a custodian of correct data about the land rights, can still maintained, because the result is the same.
11. By the time this General Plan is given to the Surveyor General the underlying titles have been cleaned up so he has no problem with that; and all the statutory consent procedures bypassed, but fulfilled through professional land management. The Surveyor General probably could allow a township register for the area to be opened and then freehold could be given to its residents on demand.
12. The role of the land surveyor is to ensure that the area goes through this process; that the final General Plan presented represents existing land rights, which are stable and planned; and that at all times it can be upgraded until the township register is opened and freehold title registered.
13. All upgrading during the process needs to be done within terms of a block rather than as individual plots, until the value of the land allows individual upgradings.
To conclude,
"(T)he main way to solve the problems connected with continued squatting is.. to reduce the amount of irregular occupation. An efficient title registration system will provide better prerequisites for control, a more highly developed land market and greater opportunities as well as incentives to acquire and develop land in a regularized fashion. But.. registration is only one means of preventing irregular occupation, and should be combined with other measures. Most important is that planned lots are available at a modest price or rent. The public sector should assume a certain amount of responsibility for land acquisition and for planning land development in advance before irregular occupation has begun to cause problems. It must also find ways to lower the costs of obtaining development and building permission. Low building standards may be accepted, at least in certain areas. If such measures are not taken, people with low incomes will not be able to afford the planned alternatives, and will still be forced to choose irregular occupation." (Larsson:1991:131).
A future government wants to build between 200,000 and 300,000 houses every year for the next five years. Speedy township establishment procedures are therefore extremely important.
1. The Less Formal Township Establishment Act 113 of 1991 was created to limit delays in establishing townships. However, a major bottle neck has arisen in the Administrator's office, which is not processing the approvals required quickly enough. This aspect could be made more speedy and/or devolved lower, otherwise site allocation by invasion will remain the dominant form of land allocation.
Apart from this, the act appears to have enormous potential in enabling the speedy establishment of townships, within terms of the limited experience, to date, of using this act.
2. It is also possible that new townships could be created with only engineering surveys being done and an outside figure being surveyed by land surveyors. All fenced plot boundaries could remain without being surveyed or described in any way unless individual owners paid for and commissioned such a survey.
Another approach is that the houses in these townships could be surveyed, not according to the present system of accurately beaconed boundaries, but that surveys of boundary features and monuments demarcating individual plots could be done instead, either using aerial photography or government employed technical surveyors.
It has already been said that the urban areas will be densified to lower the costs of transport for low income groups. Vacant land within the present cities has been identified for low income housing development.
1. This will mean that the subdivision of existing plots could take place. Also, if low income housing is located in areas of high value land this will probably lead to a fall in land values and owners might be keen to subdivide large plots.
Although the subdivision of these plots might follow existing survey methods of accurately beaconed boundaries, general boundaries using fences might also be introduced.
2. In small towns in rural areas a system of general boundaries, surveyed by local government technicians, with the land parcels registered only at municipal level, could be one possible approach. This approach facilitates quick and cheap subdivisions as it avoids the high cost of professional fees and complex consent procedures.
3. In order to effect densification, planning legislation, provincial planning ordinances and existing master, guide and structure plans and the zoning bylaws of the different local governments, will have to be changed to accommodate new planning approaches. Also, it is likely to involve changes in procedures to handle objections from adjacent property owners, whose land values will drop. Existing land parcels will have to be consolidated and their conditions of title changed to accommodate low income housing.
4. Land held for speculation within urban areas has specifically been targeted for low income housing. An approach might be that a municipality buys up land well before an area is developed and leases the vacant land until it is required. This keeps the cost of land low thus facilitating low income housing.
5. If formal densification is limited it is likely that there will be informal densification. This would be more costly to both the individual and the urban area in the end.
Scenario 10. What if the rural and urban local authorities award the development contracts.
Policy documents show that local authorities in the urban and rural areas will be awarding the project contracts.
1. At the present time these authorities are far less responsive and/or accountable to the residents in their areas than is envisaged in the party policies outlined above. That is, just because power will be devolved to the local level does not mean that the local authority official will have the last say, rather the community could well have the last say, as described above.
2. Aside from the larger metropolitan areas, all the other local authority structures are bound to have very few skilled staff. The NGOs have already identified this as a niche that they could fill. It is also a niche which surveyors could fill by becoming consultants to local authorities.
3. Especially in rural areas, surveyors could play a number of roles for a local authority, either in-house or as a consultant. These roles include: overseeing community surveyors -i.e. monitoring and/or managing them; undertaking the acquisition and/or storage of multipurpose land information; low level land use planning; creating and/or managing the local fiscal cadastre for tax purposes; managing a local registry; creating and/or managing the local GIS; managing and/or doing surveys at different levels; monitoring the use and/or abuse of development funds for local services, in regard to other consultants like planners, engineers, architects; and advising NGOs and Community Based Organisations, commonly known as CBOs.
Scenario 11. What if the survey system has to be made simpler.
The type of options discussed above could be suggested to make the system more simple and still retain the integrity of the system. Another approach is also to make the land registration system one and not two administrative systems (i.e. Surveyor General and Deeds Registrar).
Most of the political parties are supporting redistribution of rural land, with some talking about as much as 30-50 percent of the land in the next five years. This will probably be done through market economy forces, such as the foreclosure on technically insolvent farms and/or some form of land tax, but expropriation is also a possibility.
The redistribution of land is to quench the land hunger of Black people. Blacks have only been able to legally own or occupy, for permanent use, 13 percent of the land in this country, up until 1991. Changing the 13:87 ratio of land, in terms of racial land ownership, will mean that present land legislation, land tenure and allocation, land use planning and probably land registration procedures will change.
If the land redistribution programme does not significantly change the 13:87 ratio within a few years because of: administrative delays; time consuming legal proceedings relating to the property clauses in the Bill of Rights; insufficient land for redistribution coming onto the market; land registration costs significantly preventing the allocation of land, invasions will be very likely.
If this happens a formal survey and land registration system will go out of fashion, as people will protect their own land rights and security of tenure by using vigilante groups and the law courts, and the cadastre will over time become less and less current and therefore less useful.
1. Act 70 of 1970 has already been targeted for review at the least, and could well be abolished. The present income formula for subdivision, by assessing the net profit of a land parcel, might be lowered to a much, much smaller amount, but will probably be done away with altogether. Completely new criteria for the planning of rural areas will probably be drawn up, with environmental criteria probably being included. The densification of these rural areas will also require that the existing infrastructure, such as road networks, is upgraded so that people can get to market and obtain services etc.
Rural planning norms will have to be developed very quickly before planned settlement can take place. It is doubtful whether these norms exist at present.
Surveyors doing subdivisions of farms for Black small holders will have to familiarise themselves with these new planning norms. Perhaps surveyors could themselves undertake the planning simultaneously as they were surveying the area, especially as there will probably be different planning norms for different provinces. This would be extremely cost effective and is not unknown in rural Africa. This role could also be undertaken as a joint role between professionals and technicians, who have had special training in this aspect.
2. Possible first step in settlement. Often people involved with rural land reform are used to working in small societies where residents know who their neighbours are and their boundaries. Reformers with this kind of view of society do not always see the value of the cadastre and of keeping records of land rights.
Many farms will be subdivided under a future government and grants made to landless Black small holders. It is possible, for the reason given above, that land allocations in the rural areas, on these farms, will be made without reference to any land registration system. These farms could be bought, the internal diagrams cancelled, a group of farms consolidated, and people settled there without any formal planning or site allocation.
This approach will mean that there will be only limited security of tenure to the holders of these grants; their land rights will probably not be bondable; there will in effect be no record of addresses, i.e. land parcels, for administrative and land/ resource management; and there will be no records of people's land rights upon which planning can be based for infrastructural development in the area.
However,
"There is some evidence that, in the short term, adjudication of the ownership of parcels and the location of their boundaries, followed by suitable monumentation, provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for secure tenure. This is especially the case in rural areas where many disputes can be avoided if there is sufficient publicity accompanying the adjudication process and there is clear monumentation of points on the ground so that adjoining neighbours can see the agreed limits of their land." (U.N.: 1990:19).
The best that survey can offer at this level is that the outside figure (an accurately beaconed boundary) of the consolidated farms is maintained with integrity in the Surveyor General's office so that at least a hierarchy of administrative units exists, within which individual rights can be later surveyed and incorporated.
3. Scenario 7 approach. It is also possible that the approach outlined in no.2 might only be the first step and that after settlement the sites of the people in these areas would be surveyed and their land rights registered. This would also apply to areas that had been invaded.
The survey and registration of these sites could be done in several ways and using many different techniques. The way it could be done would be to follow similar phases and steps as outlined in Scenario 7 above, describing the upgrading of an informal settlement, this time with the district council being the local authority involved.
In a rural scenario only a few adaptions to Scenario 7 would have to be made namely:
- Supplying services in rural areas would need more of an incremental approach than in urban areas, because of increased costs. On the other hand, drains and sewerage would not be necessary. Also, additional services are required in rural areas to stimulate agricultural production.
- The area of a rural outside figure will be much greater than in an urban area. In practice this will create more boundary area for disputes with surrounding areas, especially if a linear type of figure rather than a broad, squarish circular area is chosen. The linear option might be chosen to facilitate access to rivers. The squarish circular area would encourage a more closely knit society.
- In assessing the extent to which a group was committed to a particular rural area, land use could be assessed. For example, a criteria could be, whether the group was generally using its arable land productively, both in relation to family requirements, as well as for food for the market place.
The sites could be surveyed using several different techniques such as: present EDM methods; GPS; and photogrammetry. If GPS and/or photogrammetry was used to survey these areas the cost of survey could be decreased and in this way survey, land registration and the existence of the cadastre in these areas would be encouraged.
4. An attempt was made to understand the real costs, advantages and disadvantages, of using different survey techniques for farm surveys. This was done by doing team research with some private practices on simulated exercises using GPS and photogrammetry respectively. The experiments were intended to point the way to possible future approaches. In some countries governments use private practices to run experiments during times of cadastral reform.
These exercises were an experiment, in which a range of assumptions were made, to find out the costs of each technique, its advantages and disadvantages. Although it was possible to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the new techniques, it was not possible to come up with comparative costs at this stage. Work is however continuing within the profession to find out these costs, so that the survey industry is in a better position to discuss its range of products with the future government.
The major assumption used in the exercises was that the average size of a farm in South Africa is 1200ha. Under the land reform programme of the future government many of these farms will be subdivided into smallholdings. The size of these will range from 10 to 80ha, depending on the region. 20ha is used as an average figure of these small holdings. Therefore an average 1200ha farm, subdivided into 20ha units, will create 60 small holdings to be surveyed per farm.
GPS.
Using GPS to survey accurately beaconed boundaries for rural farms could reduce survey costs significantly. Besides this, if some of the legislation, specifically in relation to personal supervision, and some survey regulations concerning GPS, were changed, it would cost approximately 20% less per plot to do the same job. The same reliability and repeatability would be maintained, even if these changes were made to the legislation and regulations. Most of the cost savings are made due to better risk calculation and the reapportionment of responsibility for the different components of the planning, survey, office work, preparation and final examination.
If mass surveys of farms were undertaken using GPS under new legislation and survey regulations it would cost even less a plot: the internal boundaries from contiguous farms would probably be cancelled, meaning that less verification and surveying of beacons on line would be required; the surveyor/planner would have more freedom in getting subdivisions to conform to geographical features; GPS is negligibly affected if baseline lengths have to be increased, unlike conventional methods, especially in dual frequency receivers.
The advantages and disadvantages of GPS.
The advantage of GPS is that it allows surveys to be done more cheaply, yet still conforms to the present South African system of survey. This means that it is readily acceptable to the Surveyor General, the finance houses etc.
Other advantages of using GPS are:
- it is less bound by distance, topography, weather and time of day than other techniques;
- it is flexible in accuracy determination;
- technique can be varied to suite different situations;
- there is a possibility for real-time coordination;
- there is short point occupation time which can be as little as a few seconds;
- no concentration is needed while observing;
- receivers can be used independently within the same locality;
- less skilled labour can operate equipment;
- minimum reconnaissance survey is required (only need to consider sky obstructions);
- time spent in the office planning field work is reduced, especially for large area surveys;
- there is no need for intervisibility, so minimum line clearing is required;
- automated post mission processing, with checking from at least two baselines to specified criteria;
- that local transformation parameters derived once can be used for all further surveys within an area;
- that by using Trig Survey transformations for certain surveys further time and money will be saved;
- that a combination of navigational and high precision GPS survey observations can be processed together introducing flexibility and a possibility for sharing data collected in the same observation periods;
- that any platform can be used, eg. vehicle or person, to capture general boundary data;
- that in combination with photogrammetry, GPS could put land onto registers faster and reliably, with much reduced cost
- that it is suited for integration in a GIS, as a dedicated input subsystem but also in combination with other multiple data sources
The following disadvantages of using GPS have been identified:
- high equipment cost
- high utilisation is required for cost-effective use
- local transformations need to be calculated
- there is a lack of experienced use for cadastral surveys
- lack of regulations to effectively exploit the advantages of GPS
- pilot projects may be required to demonstrate suitability of methodology for delivering security in different land tenure systems.
- more research and development may cause receivers and software to become cheaper and more powerful, affecting the competitiveness of early buyers
- although not as costly as an EDM survey, it is still a lot more costly than photogrammetry, as far as general boundary surveys are concerned
- as most practices do not use GPS now, it is not readily available for use throughout South Africa
Photogrammetry.
If an average farm of 1200 hectares was to be surveyed into 60 small holdings of 20ha each, using photogrammetry, under a variation of the Bophuthatswana survey regulations currently being applied to urban areas, to produce general boundaries and coordinated general boundaries, then the cost of cadastral surveys could be significantly reduced.
If mass rural farm surveys were done using new survey regulations and/or legislation, then the cost could be reduced much further again. In this approach reliability and repeatability would be maintained by using the additional data supplied by the photograph, rather than accurate coordinates supplying this.
The advantages and disadvantages of Photogrammetry
The following advantages have been identified:
- this technique is the most cost effective by far for general boundaries
- for beaconed boundaries this technique is much cheaper than an EDM, under certain conditions, such as if boundaries are well monumented or pre-marked
- for beaconed boundaries this technique will have similar costs to GPS, given the same conditions implied above
- it is a popular, well known and widely used technique in developing countries
- it supplies data which can be used for other purposes, such as a multipurpose cadastre
- it is a highly flexible method which can be adapted to meet widely varying requirements for accuracy, cost, and type of product
- it supplies a product which can be widely understood, even by illiterate people, and is an aid to low level land administration
- it is suited for integration in a GIS, as a dedicated input subsystem, but also in combination with other multiple data sources
- S.A. has several private practices doing photogrammetry so it is readily available
Disadvantages of photogrammetric methods:
- photogrammetry usually requires a large investment in photogrammetric instruments and cameras
- initial flying costs per unit area of land will be high for small survey areas
- aerial surveys must also be supplemented by field investigations and ground surveys, and this may increase costs dramatically if skilled surveyors are required, as in the present South African cadastral system
- legislation and survey regulations would have to change dramatically to accommodate general boundaries in order to fully utilise photogrammetric methods in the cadastral system
- the use of aerial photography for cadastral surveys is not popular in this country
- there has to be a physical demarcation of the boundary on the ground, such as for example a fence
- if aerial photographs are used to create registry maps, it can be a costly exercise to update such a registry map if the area has to be reflown to do this.
EDM
No changes in present costs or in the regulations is suggested, unless the midpoint system and/or general boundaries are introduced. A new set of legislation, regulations and costs would have to be created both for the midpoint system and general boundaries. Also, if technical surveyors were allowed by legislation to do unsupervised cadastral surveys, the cost of using EDMs would come down.
This method is the most expensive of the three, but is the one most widely used and is the only one readily available throughout the country. Also, the regulations have been tailored over the years to suit this method and therefore it can be considered the most reliable of the three. The advantages and disadvantages of EDMs are well known.
5. Greenfields approach. If surveys were to be done before settlement took place either EDMs or GPS could be used. Beaconing would be done after the area was planned and follow the layout plan. This would be followed by infrastructural development and then by settlement, with the surveyor maybe having to rebeacon because of a loss of pegs during development.
Alternatively, the surveyor could do rudimentary planning from an aerial photograph, beacon the area, and produce a layout plan at the end of this exercise. Then the people could be settled inside the beaconed plots, and the beacons pointed out to them during this exercise. They would then undertake to protect these beacons during the development process, which could take place a long time after settlement. The surveyor should do a random check of beacons once the development was finalised.
Scenario 14. What if the survey system is considered too expensive.
Survey work is usually undertaken in conjunction with development and in this context it is only a very small proportion of the total bill, something like .6% of the total development. Despite this, most policy documents suggest that survey should be made cheaper. A range of options which could possibly make the survey side cheaper are:
1. Do a cost benefit analysis of the cadastral system and legislation and administrative procedures linked to it.
2. Do a risk analysis of the cadastral system and take more calculated risks and spread the risk more.
3. Privatise the offices of the Surveyor Generals.
4. Convert low value land into a single land registration system where no conveyancing is done and the conveyancer's role is undertaken by the community and the local Deeds Registrar.
5. If the Surveyor General only holds the outside figure and a local authority the inside information, for low value property, this will make land registration cheaper.
6. Instead of doing the measurement himself, the land surveyor could manage the measurement done by many others whose hourly rate is much less. The land surveyor should not have to be on site to supervise, but improve his/her checking techniques as part of a new management style.
7. Surveyors with diplomas should be able to do cadastral surveys, or at the least the new work coming up, without on site supervision. They could take co-responsibility for a job by co-signing for it and taking some of the risk which the land surveyor carries for the job.
8. Survey technicians -registered and/or unregistered - should be able to do cadastral work with/without supervision, -especially new work or surveys of general boundaries.
9. By using general boundaries against physical features for low value land, where the community can solve boundary disputes without taking it to court.
10. By using photogrammetry for general boundaries against physical features.
11. Planning to avoid having to replace beacons in an area, because of the effects of construction work.
12. If the state pays for only the first step into the cadastre -not full freehold rights - and any upgrading of rights is paid for by the individual.
13. In general, changing accuracies will not lead to massive cost savings, basically because, unlike other developing countries, S.A. has an excellent national control network. However, savings could probably be made in rural areas if accuracy was lowered and a 'D' class created. Also, the accuracies set up for accurately beaconed (fixed) boundaries should not be used as a standard for general boundaries, if they were to become part of the S.A. cadastre. Rather, specific accuracies for general boundaries could be set. These accuracies should deliver reliable coordinates for planning etc., rather than solely for the replacement of beacons. These accuracies would be lower than those set for accurately beaconed (fixed) boundaries and would therefore be relatively cheaper to deliver.
14. By using the midpoint and one coordinate approach instead of surveying the extent of the plot.
15. By allowing the land surveyor and/or surveyor to carry the risk through private indemnity insurance, rather than the Surveyor General's office check the work.
16. By using the endorsement of titles rather than the creation of new titles. Rule out clauses where possible rather than write them in.
17. By using engineering type - less aesthetic and more straight line boundary - planning for low value urban and rural land, land surveyors optimise plans allowing cheaper surveys.
18. By creating an administration system for monitoring infringements rather than for controlling developments.
19. By settling people between pegs - pointed out to them - before services are put in. The people take responsibility for the pegs not being lost or bulldozed.
20. By devolving consent procedures as much as possible. If titles are held at local authority level this is facilitated.
21. By accepting, in terms of a calculated risk, that there will be court cases about boundaries. The law courts are one of the custodians of the cadastre which has been under utilised to date.
22. By allowing the community to take some of the risk - by workshopping pegs and plans - by their monitoring the surveying of their boundaries by a community surveyor or technical surveyor.
23. By teaching communities about beacons and their location in an area, so that the knowledge can be used later if beacons need to be found by a surveyor.
24. By using GPS and other technologies.
25. By changing legislation and regulations to suit GPS technology without affecting reliability.
26. By creating 'quality assurance' firms for those who can pay and want the best job, i.e. ensured security of tenure, and allowing some surveyors to charge less. People who are not prepared to pay the present tariff and accept survey work at cut rate prices must be prepared to carry the risk for their choice.
27. By changing the legislation and the regulations to allow photogrammetry and general boundaries, while still maintaining reliability.
28. In the whole land registration process the cost of conveyancing is a much larger cost than that of surveying, especially as the surveyor charges a fixed hourly rate. If the land surveyor was paid to summarise the deed before the conveyancer does his/her work, the cost of conveyancing and land registration would drop extensively. It would also make for easier and more transparent administration.
Survey is considered too expensive because there have been no highly publicised boundary disputes because of poor surveying, which means that people do not realise the protection they are getting through the work of the surveyor. Also, surveyors have not been very good at communicating to their clients, how they are providing security of tenure, and how much additional work they do on behalf of the client, besides placing pegs and\or replacing beacons.
As technology and cadastral reform could drive the price of beaconing down, so people doing land surveying need to inform their clients about all the extra things that they are doing, besides beaconing. They also need to start invoicing for all these different things. In this way the client will come to understand the present land management role played by the cadastral surveyor and give him/her more work and the land surveyor will start to think of more useful things he/she can do in terms of land management because it brings in an income.
Areas where costs should not be cut is in land management, which is a highly skilled job requiring years of training; the accuracy of the geodetic network; the filing and retrieval system of the offices of the Surveyor Generals and the maintenance of the 'map of outside figures'. If the integrity of the national system is not retained it could lead to a very costly resurvey of the whole country at some later date, as has happened in other countries.
Scenario 15. What if the White male elite profile of the cadastral survey industry is a problem.
That the entire registered survey industry practically consists of White men could present a number of problems.
1. Government at all levels, be it central, regional, local, or district council, will be dominated by Blacks and they will be the people awarding contracts. To obviate this problem surveyors need to embark on a very serious affirmative action programme at every level. Surveyors possibly need to take as partners Blacks who are not surveyors or Blacks who have not yet registered as survey technicians, who can undertake some of the new roles expected of people working in the area of land management.
2. Whether White surveyors will happily be able to work in Black areas after the election is an issue. It seems that, although skin colour will be noticed, if the individual is good on community relations and negotiations and listens to what the people want, skin colour will not be a serious issue.
3. The survey industry, because they are working on the ground, are in a unique position to get to know their clients. It is being suggested that in the future the various communities will be responsible for deciding on their service requirements and workshopping plans and pegs. This opportunity can be used to listen to what the people want; to inform them of their options in relation to land legislation and administrative procedures; and to train local people in the use of maps, aerial photos etc. and low level land administration. This approach could improve communication and the profile of the profession. In the end communities would like experts to not only make money out of them, but also make an input into them, apart from what they are being paid to do.
4. If on the other hand the profession is seen as not working with the community and behaving like 'White conservative elitists,' it is likely that foreigners could be employed to do the work, as they are perceived as not being racist and also being in sympathy with the community.
5. In order to improve the profile of the profession (and for other reasons outlined above) the number of survey technicians to professional surveyors could be increased. This will also mean that a large number of people are employed, which is something which the new government wants to encourage. In addition to this, a formula by which as many local people as possible are employed on site for daily or piece work could be considered.
6. The management approach embodied in 'personal supervision' is outdated and will probably not be acceptable to a new government. It should be replaced in the industry with a more democratic style of participatory management.
1. If the industry cannot do the work required, even if they gear up, then it is very likely that foreigners will be brought in to do the work. Even if the S.A. industry can do all the work, it is still very likely that foreigners will be brought in to do survey work. This is because a lot of foreign aid will be made available to the country in the future; and this aid is generally accompanied by skilled personal being seconded free as part of the aid package to the country. However, if the local industry can do the work this will limit the input of foreigners.
2. In order to expand the number of people who can do cadastral surveys, present surveyors and survey technicians, including presently unregistered survey technicians, could be allowed to do all or some of the cadastral work.
3. Special training facilities could be opened to train people just to do the new work which is envisaged in the rural land reform programme, or for the one million houses.
4. This would not necessarily affect the integrity of the cadastre at the national or regional level. However, it could affect the present survey industry's job reservation structure and the income of the different levels.
Scenario 17. What if the PAC's approach comes into fashion in the medium to long term.
1. The PAC's approach to land tenure is very similar to the rest of Africa, and especially West Africa. Its approach, though radical, is coherent. For these reasons their approach should be weighed seriously when assessing how the cadastre might be changed in the future.
2. In particular, leasehold is a very popular tenure form in Africa and often indigenous land tenure has been converted to a form of leasehold. The reason for this is that: it accommodates the group rights approach, in that the nation rather than the individual owns the land; and it allows the state to raise money from individuals through the payment of land rentals -it has been found that if people own the land in freehold they are reluctant to pay any form of land taxes. People will convert their freehold titles to leasehold, if it is only possible to obtain a bond on leasehold.
3. Leasehold is also popular because it limits speculation in land and prevents individuals cashing in when land values increase once an area has been serviced, generally with finance from the state. Consequently it is considered the title to use with community land trusts.
4. Leasehold has a particular legacy in this country, i.e. the 99-year leasehold system, and therefore is not very popular with the Black population who see it as an inferior title. However, because of its popularity in Africa this form of title is still a real possibility.
It is quite possible that the rates for measuring and/or placing beacons are going to decrease in the future. However, land surveyors are going to be needed more than ever: to manage measurement; protect the integrity of the cadastre; keep costs down yet retain reliability; and to fulfil the land reform and restitution programmes of a future government efficiently and cost effectively. I.e. land surveyors are going to have to move more and more into land management and the management of information about land (see appendix three for a description of land management and land information management).
Land managers are people who make informed decisions about the allocation, use and development of the earth's natural and built resources. Land managers can have a variety of roles and skills which can take many forms. Land surveyors, by adding these skills to their present education, could therefore move in several directions.
It is important that land surveyors fill this role as firstly, no-one else could fill this role at present. Secondly, "the single most important factor in the success or failure of.. cadastral systems.. has been the quality of their managers and their skills in management." (U.N.:1990:41-2).
Land "management is concerned with organization and methods, with policy and planning, with monitoring, modelling and motivating. It is concerned with listening, with analysing, with decision-making and with communicating. Managers must address matters of politics, of institutional arrangements and the consequences of reorganization and change.. They must set reasonable targets for the performance of their staff and be able to monitor their success. They must understand the processes of marketing so that they can persuade their political and financial masters of the need to invest in and sustain the new techniques and technologies that are available. They must further recognize that personal power and status result from the control of information. They must understand that management is not only about how to do the job but more importantly, about how to get the job done." (U.N.:1990:41-2).
1. Many opportunities for land surveyors- as- land managers exist currently and even more could exist in the future. Some of these opportunities have been identified above namely:
- the land surveyor as maintainer of a local government/district council registry map
- land surveyor as land manager ensuring that a settled area - both urban and rural - can be, and is, upgraded from no land rights to full land rights
- management of mass survey measurement done by survey technicians
- choosing technologies and techniques, to underpin a range of land tenure options, which are cost effective but deliver reliability
- maintaining the integrity of the cadastral system, in terms of the geodetic network, the outside figures, the administrative records of the Surveyor General and the role of custodian of the cadastre
- assessing the upgradability of blocks, super blocks and individual titles, managing the upgrading and downgrading of land rights in different areas
- using cadastral and other land information for new planning and administrative purposes
- creating fiscal cadastres, either nationally, regionally, locally, both rural and urban
- adjudication and/or workshopping pegs and plans
- planning rural areas for subdivision
- assisting small local governments/district councils by: formulating land use policies; overseeing their community surveyors -i.e. monitoring and/or managing them; undertaking the acquisition and/or storage of multipurpose land information; low level land use planning; creating and/or managing the local fiscal cadastre for tax purposes; creating and/or managing the local GIS; managing and/or doing surveys at different levels; monitoring the use and/or abuse of development funds for local services, in regard to other consultants like planners, engineers, architects; and advising NGOs and CBOs.
2. Additional roles:
- property assessment and valuation
- environmental impact assessment
- development management of housing and infrastructural projects
- land information management, i.e. identifying what land managers need to have on their GIS/LIS systems (see below)
- managing GIS/LIS systems (see below)
3. Land surveyors have often played an important role in land reform programmes, for instance in Germany they undertook the consolidation of small uneconomic parcels. To do this they had to consider a range of other non cadastral factors which influenced the land. These included irrigation, soils, houses, infrastructure, legislation, local land tenure practices, social processes, the environment, as well as the usual factors dealt with by surveyors. A South African surveyor-as-land manager, working on the land reform programme, would have to take these same factors into account to redistribute the land. The professional would be able to ensure efficient and effective planning, regulatory control and administration of the land.
4. A land claims court would need land information to undertake its work. This information can be easily supplied by a surveyor, who could help in managing the whole procedure for awarding land.
5. A future government intends to first use state land for the land redistribution programme. Central government hopes to have this information available soon. However, as there are numerous claims already on this land, both real and personal, there is a lot of scope for adjudicating these claims.
6. Risk calculation and management are integral in making a cadastral system more affordable. The surveyor as land manager, whether s/he be a professional under the employ of the state or in a private company, is well placed to be able to do this.
7. To set up the envisaged block system would require a range of land management skills. In a block system of land registration and survey, the negotiations which allow boundary determination, the suitability of the terrain for the proposed land use, the minimum standards of infrastructural development needed, the distribution and control of costs, the payment for the development and the securing of credit for groups or individuals in the group, the administration requirements such as consents, can all be handled by a professional land surveyor having the legal status and knowledge to manage such responsibilities.
The professional (probably through an NGO representing the community), would need to take a key role in understanding the group's perceptions of their land tenure and boundaries. This would have to be conveyed to the state departments concerned, in a way that would facilitate orderly and community approved development.
The professional would need to be able to manage the technical surveyors or chosen community surveyors, to fulfil the requirements for land registration at the different levels of survey; and their costs to the state and/or the individual.
8. A fundamental question that needs to be answered in terms of a future South Africa is, is personal supervision an acceptable and cost effective management style? The quick answer is that this style of management is often perceived as very authoritarian and that some form of participatory management style would be far more acceptable.
Besides this, if present surveyors and technical surveyors were allowed to do some cadastral surveying with no on-site supervision, then a more co-responsible management style would develop between them and the existing professionals.
If professionals expect to receive incomes commensurate with their qualifications in future they will have to manage measurement rather than do it themselves. The professional would supervise the demarcation of boundaries more indirectly and his/her management style would have to incorporate adequate checks and balances, to ensure the integrity of the cadastral surveys done by the technicians working with him.
The land manager as personnel manager. The professional would have to:
- train his/her staff better so that s/he could be confident that they could carry out their tasks when s/he was not on site
- see that the necessary equipment was available for the designated operation
- communicate with the technical staff to eradicate problem areas and streamline operations in line with skill levels
- devise appropriate methods for the range of work
- keep up to date with new innovations/techniques, and convey these methods as procedures to field staff
- create adequate checks and balances for the methods used
Given the volume and backlog of work to be done, higher technician/assistant to professional ratios should be permissible, than the current 1:3 in the case of land surveyors. There could be one land manager to 14 people, 7 technicians and 7 in-house trained people. This would allow the professional to take on more work and maintain profit margins, while simultaneously giving employment.
9. Office management. Better systems, both computerized and organisational, need to be put in place. This will mean that offices would be upgraded to small businesses specialising in land. This would not only facilitate better use of existing land information to generate income, but also service the client better, and reorient private practices towards a more business like role. Practices that have made this step have benefited financially.
10. The auditing, instead of examining, of surveyor's work in the Surveyor General's office would require management skills.
11. During and after the changes which a future government is going to make to the survey and land registration systems, a thorough review of the whole flow line for managing cadastral and land-registration information needs to be undertaken. This land management role is needed to ensure the integrity of the system, to calculate the risks involved and to make the system simpler and less costly if possible. (U.N.: 1990:35).
12. Land surveyors as planners. In low cost operations in rural areas surveyors could do the planning and the surveying thereby dramatically reducing costs. They could advise communities, NGOs and developers on locations for land uses and therefore the most desirable layout for an affordable price.
13. Communication and negotiation are management skills. In a changing society like South Africa development is no longer primarily about overcoming technological problems. Construction professionals must add to their technological skills other skills such as political sensitivity and communication skills.
Professionals in the past generally received their briefs from people of similar culture and education to themselves. This will change in the future and they will need to adjust in communicating with potential clients by being politically sensitive. When dealing with these new clients the professionals could be less authoritarian and 'all-knowing' in their approach. This is because the clients will still be conscious of the ills of the past and will also want to put forward their ideas, rather than being told what to do. If communication between land surveyors and these new clients does not take off, the clients may find alternative methods to satisfy their needs. Other disciplines and foreign surveyors will be eager to accommodate them.
14. Underlying the land reform programme of a future government is the need for more data about the land. Better land information management, including monitoring and modelling such matters as land use and land value, will definitely be required. For example good quality agricultural land is often used for housing, thus destroying its productive capacity, when lower grade land was available. Also, variations in the value of land are poorly recorded, both in terms of space and time.
15. GPS and GIS has generally been accepted in South Africa and the potential expertise exists in these areas among land surveyors, especially among the younger generation. For land managers to effectively use these technologies, especially GIS, they will need to familiarise themselves with: what is available; what can be achieved; and with what advantages by comparison to the old systems; and how these could be best implemented in the short to long term, to minimize cost and still deliver what is required for managing land.
16. "Most.. (cadastral) systems that have failed (or been less effective than they should) have done so because of a failure to address.. management problems.. There must be integration between the surveying activities, the legal processes of recording landownership, the management of land in economic terms (rents, leases, taxes, acquisitions etc.), and in environmental terms (urban and rural planning and development control), and in terms of land information management." (U.N.:1990:38). Knowledge of how the cadastre works allows a surveyor as land manager to move into many other areas which are linked to the cadastral system.
To follow these avenues land surveyors would have to acquire additional skills and continue to upgrade these skills throughout their working lives. Depending upon which area the surveyor moved into, some additional range of skills required would be:
- enhanced general computer knowledge, including CAD, GIS and desktop publishing
- business and financial management and accounting skills, as well as an understanding of the link between time and money
- cartography
- planning
- valuation
- political knowledge and sensitivity
- communication skills - negotiation, facilitation, community development, participatory management and cross-cultural communication techniques
SOUTH AFRICA HAS AN EXCELLENT SYSTEM OF NATIONAL COORDINATES TO WHICH MOST PARCELS OF LAND AND SERVICES ARE TIED. THIS SYSTEM COULD BE EXTENDED AND ENRICHED SO THAT MORE VALUE FOR THE COORDINATES COULD BE OBTAINED. A fiscal cadastre and GIS would benefit politicians, administrators and poor communities.
Scenario 19. What if a new government wanted to increase its revenue from land taxes.
Currently tax on land is raised only in urban areas as municipal rates. The systems used vary from municipality to municipality. It is possible that a future government would use land taxes in the rural areas to force land into the marketplace so that it can be redistributed in terms of the land reform programme. It is also possible that land taxes, in the form of urban rates, will be used to encourage the densification of the present urban areas. It is also likely that land taxes will be used to finance the development which district councils will undertake.
"Two different methods are used for raising revenue from land: property rating systems and land value taxation. With a property-rating system governments raise revenue by assessing and taxing improvements, such as buildings and the uses to which they are put. Thus a property used as a shop will be taxed differently from one used solely for residential purposes. With land-value taxation.. the tax is based on the value of the land itself as determined from either its improved or its unimproved state. Both systems become instruments of land policy, inevitably influencing the manner in which the land is used." (Dale and McLaughlin: 1988:47). (See appendix four for a longer description of a fiscal cadastre).
1. Usually countries wanting to introduce land taxes have to first improve their cadastral systems. In South Africa it would be relatively easy to introduce land taxes because of the strength of the cadastre. However it would require using our present legal cadastre also as a fiscal cadastre.
2. Over the next few years there could be a large fluctuation of land values and land uses nationally, regionally and locally. If land taxes were introduced then these fluctuations would have to be accommodated in the fiscal cadastre. If this was held at the local level land surveyors could make a major input in monitoring these spatially related fluctuations.
The land reform programme, both for the rural and urban areas, will require enormous amounts of land information to be processed fairly quickly and at several levels. Much of this information will be new and is not presently held within the cadastral system. Also, some of this information is held within the cadastral system but cannot be easily retrieved. Much of this information will be required by non experts, i.e. people who are not familiar with computers and/or with analysing spatial relationships.
GIS allows the rapid retrieval and use of spatially related land information. The strong, coordinate based, South African cadastre makes it much easier to move into GIS, to take advantage of the market opportunities opening up in terms of the requirements of a future government's land reform programmes.
1. "To satisfy the personnel requirements for typical GIS applications in developing countries the following skills must be available:
- application specialists who have a working knowledge of GIS as a tool in their own disciplines
- managers who have a conceptual knowledge of GIS, and have personnel management skills and an appreciation of the personnel requirements for GIS
- GIS specialists who have a thorough computer science or information systems background and understand GIS
- a comprehensive range of technical people for hardware and network installation and maintenance." (Computer Graphics: 1993). All the above skill requirements are within reach of land surveyors moving into an information management position, where GIS will be used as the tool for achieving management objectives.
2. There are a range of markets for GIS products. Certain of these products could be supplied by a separate paper based system, where resources are not available. However, generally, a GIS approach has many more advantages in terms of delivery of a better product, as well as a wider range of products:
- "In terms of the land reform programme, individuals (or groups) that wish to gain access to land have three choices: (i) seek land through the restoration process; (ii) acquire land through the redistribution channel; or (iii) purchase land without the assistance from the program. The criteria for participation in the restoration process will be well-known, and any individuals (or groups) that qualify would submit an application to the appropriate institution (eg. land claims court commission or land committee)." (LAPC:1993:39). Making land available and monitoring where land is coming available will be important in this programme. Surveyors must demonstrate to leading politicians that GIS can deliver land to the landless in the above programme and that surveyors have the expertise to carry out and manage such a system. The benefits to individual claimants should be clear in terms of the cost and time savings which could be made.
- There is potential for the consolidation of existing cadastral information and its restructuring in such a way that GIS could serve the needs of the land reform programme at the regional and local level. A body of surveyors from each province, or locality, could make it their responsibility to investigate the needs for which a GIS was required, for the land reform programme. They could then set up a GIS specifically for this purpose. They would have to have cooperation from the state regarding the information held in the offices of the Surveyor Generals, Deeds Registries and the NLIS. There will also have to be some cooperation in regard to the sharing of information subsets by different suppliers.
- GIS can be used, in terms of the land reform programme, in identifying and assessing, under utilised land suitable for redistribution, as well as for indicating suitable land use options. Here GIS would need to cope with the claims granted and the updating of the registers so that consolidation, subdivision, etc. are accurately reflected.
- The effect and implications of changes in the land distribution on the country's food supply and economy could be accessed by government departments, who had access to the same GIS or GISs linked over a network, as with the NLIS. The data collected from the updating of a GIS could later be linked with systems concerned with land valuation and taxation and/or data sets exchanged between them.
- There will be a range of administrative structures in rural areas including "township authorities, existing rural settlements, existing tribal groups, and new rural or urban settlements arising from the redistribution and restoration of land. All these would require access and representation at the district level." (LAPC:1993:47). Rural practices could develop GIS systems which were compatible with local administrative structures and work closely with them in the development of these systems. They could do this on behalf of a local authority or as a private enterprise venture.
- Such a low level GIS would make it easy to introduce local land taxes within specific areas, as the data required could be clearly identified and regulated within a GIS. It would be possible to introduce any kind of taxation on a particular land use or on other criteria, merely by setting new parameters within the system. This could also allow budget forecasting to be more accurately calculated. The boundaries for such areas must be up to date, and reliable. All cadastral and other information (weighted if soft data is also included) of each land parcel would need to be stored in the GIS and well referenced in relation to other parcels and attributes. The latter could be designed by surveyors who have had experience from LIS systems implemented in the homelands (Bop, Ciskei), together with GIS vendors.
- A future government intends to create district level land committees who would "through a process of fact finding,.. document land claims and compile details on land records." These committees "..would allocate land and grant resources at the local level.. maintain local records of the land transactions which it administered and transmit records of transactions to national level." (LAPC:1993:53). Surveyors could offer their services to these committees, as they would know where and how to find the relevant information and manage the compilation of relevant details. These records could be designed to be made suitable for computerisation at the same time. The above describes the functions of a competent surveyor as land manager supported by a GIS at municipal level. If these records are held in a local level GIS then the task of transmitting these to national level could be fast and cheap, while maintaining a current reflection of what is recorded at local level, providing a national exchange standard is in place.
- Central government holds very little data on land use, as the custodian of this data is the local authority or the R.S.C. at present. This is a niche which GIS owners could exploit, especially in rural areas. Surveyors could form a hierarchy of GIS subsystem component managers, from managing the input of data into the system, to operating as land managers working with the end products of the system. Their skills can range from technical to administrative.
"The list of areas where cadastral survey and land information can help the urban community is extensive:
- Billing customers and ensuring that no address is missed
- Building permit allocation, control and monitoring
- Central government reporting, supplying data and maps
- Communication through maps and graphics with decision makers and the public
- Competitive tendering
- Demographic analysis including socioeconomic data
- Development control, planning and implementing enforcement
- Emergency planning
- Emergency services management on a routine basis or in times of crisis
- Environmental control and endorsement of regulations
- Environmental impact assessment for proposed development
- Financial control
- Finding sites for new developments
- Health and safety analysis and control
- Highway and footpath maintenance
- Land searches for local land charges
- Monitoring of present land use
- Managing building assets, ensuring their efficient use and maintenance
- Management of mineral resources
- Monitoring contracts that have been let to the private sector
- Monitoring energy use
- Monitoring the land market over space and time
- Physical planning, identifying resources and constraints
- Pollution control, identifying sources and monitoring effects
- Resource optimization in general
- Route planning, optimizing services such as refuse collection
- Street light maintenance
- Targeting mail shots for more efficient mail distribution
- Transport planning
- Utility management (water, sewerage, gas, electricity, telephones)" (U.N.:1990:46-48).
- GIS could aid in the identification and registration of customary land tenures, as well as existing rural settlements.
- The land reform programme, in both the urban and rural areas, is going to introduce conflicting claims for land into the administrative system. Ambiguities, conflicting claims and contradictory information can be easily flagged and kept within a GIS without corrupting the integrity of the system.
- To deliver on the land reform programme South Africa's cadastre will have to be able to supply information on the areas identified below, which could be done on a GIS
- produce information on the behaviour of property markets, monitor fluctuations in land prices
- provide clear information for tax gatherers
- indicate the availability of land for development
- determine the existing use of the land
- identify the potential for alternative forms of land use, reveal areas of dereliction of the land
- indicate costs for land acquisition (Dale:1990:6).
This information could be supplied nationally, regionally and/or locally depending on the motivation and preparedness of different people and areas. Before this could be done successfully some arrangement might have to be reached regarding both the national exchange standard, as well as the state's copyright on data. Institutional networks under memoranda of understanding would have to be established and managed by steering committees. Network linkages through the nodal and hub systems would have to be created. Guidelines would be needed on copyright and the ownership of data, pricing policies, cost sharing and cost recovery, who may have access to government held data sets and legal liability for the data (U.N.:1990: 38,53-4).
Other opportunities for using GIS, or other systems, to market survey products are:
- Land-use maps, especially in the urban areas. "Land is often planned without a knowledge of the uses to which it is currently being put or of its potential for development." (U.N.:1990:11).
- "The mapping of facilities provided by the public utilities such as water, sewerage, electricity and telephone supplies are often totally inadequate for effective and efficient management, especially in urban areas." (U.N.:1990:11)
- Land-value mapping at a level of discrimination that can help those responsible for the valuation of assets.
Finally, "information recognised as a national resource is moving away from discipline specific departmental level development, for example: land registration, forestry inventory, property assessment: to functional groupings such as land administration, environmental protection, local government administration, facilities management, to name a few. However there is appreciation of the considerable overlap in the functional groupings; for example the impact of environmental concerns on land administration, and the importance of land registration data for local government administration." (Jeyanandan, Williamson, Hunter:1990).
That is, the markets for surveyors' information are not only increasing, but also the range of people from whom they can obtain data and with whom they can work is increasing.
3. Are LIM and LIS/GIS systems, regional or local, useful for a developing country.
"There is a failure to have positive and proactive policies both about land and about information.. the proper management of which is essential to the well-being of any society. Consequently there is a lack of awareness of the value of land information as a resource and wholly inadequate policies for pricing and marketing such information." (U.N.:1990:12).
Having said that however, "Developing countries, which cannot hope to reach, within the foreseeable time, a capital supply equal per head to that of the developed countries, will obviously not use their limited resources on information products that have low utility or consumption value." (Jeyanandan, Williamson, Hunter:1990:320).
We should therefore seek to create appropriate LIM (land information management) technology in order to deliver 'appropriate information' to a future South Africa.
In other words, "appropriateness ..(should).. be considered in the context of identifying the particular land based information required.. This involves identification of casual factors and assigning weights to them. For example socio-economic and environmental information have spatial characteristics as much as the cadastral. It may be more appropriate to devote resources to focus on one or more of these categories of information. Therefore appropriate LI (land information).." within the future South African context should probably "..be viewed in the context of available LIM technology, data and nature of use of the information for the purpose of land acquisition projects.." (Jeyanandan, Williamson, Hunter:1990:320).
With respect to this, "There are steady improvements being made to the technology and a growing understanding of the institutional issues that arise when operating.. LIS/GIS. In the longer term, the use of information technology will grow as the value of information becomes more clearly recognized. In the short term, the impact of fully integrated LIS/GIS will be marginal on the less developed countries since the cost of data acquisition or conversion is so high. Developments in LIS/GIS should, however, be anticipated so that data structures and management flow lines can be created that will, in due course, take advantage of the new technology." (U.N.:1990:55).
"While computerization of land information is desirable and recommended, it should be embarked upon gradually and with very careful planning and forethought for the data format, programmes adopted, equipment and its compatibility, as well as its ease of management and maintenance." (U.N.:1990:57).
"It is the manner in which the responsibility for land data is allocated and distributed between institutions, how records are maintained and administered, and the experience and education of the people who run these systems that determines their success or failure, not the technology used." (U.N.:1990:12).
"The time to decide as to whether to use computer based schemes is when.. organizational and management reforms are in place. They need not.. go hand in hand. By reforming your existing land information management (LIM) before introducing the computer, you will have taken the major step to secure success. You will also have minimised the risks and gained most of the benefits." (U.N.:1990:36).
The ANC in an April draft copy of their Reconstruction and Development Programme are saying that they will recodify all the country's land laws, and change the land registration system and make the survey system cheaper and simpler within one year. If they do it in this time period, which goes against North's (1990) analysis of change, the cadastre could easily enter its worst case scenario.
To avoid this scenario the survey industry needs to make
a concerted effort immediately to communicate with those who are making and
implementing the policies that will affect the cadastre.
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GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Adjudication- "is the process whereby existing rights in a particular parcel of land are finally and authoritatively ascertained. It is a prerequisite to registration of title and to land consolidation and redistribution. ...the process does not alter existing rights or create new ones." (Dale and McLaughlin: 1988:31).
Affirmative action- "We call for a conscious implementation of affirmative action aimed at addressing the imbalance in relation to the rural/urban divide, gender equality, racial discrimination and class inequalities." (Prodder Newsletter:1993).
Bundle of rights or bundle of sticks- "Land rights have been described as a bundle of sticks, each stick representing something which may be done with the land. Each individual stick defines a way in which the land may be used, the profit which may be derived from it or the manner in which some or all of the rights may be disposed of to other people or to organizations. For each right there will be an owner, be that an individual, group or organization. Thus one owner may hold the overall rights but may lease the land to someone else who may use it for a defined period. Another person may be allowed to take fish from the stream which passes through it, while people in general may be allowed to walk over it by a right of way." (Habitat:1990:4).
Cadastre- "A cadastre is a type of land information system in which the data is related to land parcels" (Urban Edge:1985). Also, it is "an official register of the location, boundaries, ownership, value, and other attributes of land. All the information is tied to identifiable land parcels. A cadastre must systematically cover all parcels within the defined area and be regularly updated. A cadastral survey is the demarcation of parcel boundaries; it may involve ground surveys, aerial photography, and data from existing maps. A cadastral map is based on the survey findings." (Dunkerly:1985).
Deed system - Under this system the state grants rights to a parcel of land to an individual and then all subsequent transfers are done along a chain of individuals. These transfers are registered in the Deeds Registry. The deed is based on the name of the individual. In poor deed systems a search must be made right back to the original grant to ensure that there are no other claims. Our system is so good in practice that this does not have to be done in most cases. The deed is not inviolate and a previous claim can prevail over the present deed. Because our system is so good it is as good as a title, but it is not a title system. South Africa is one of the few countries where the deed is as good as a title.
Expropriation- "It is important to make a distinction between expropriation of property (with or without compensation) in furtherance of a public purpose (eg. for a public use such as constructing a road or a hospital), and expropriation of property in the public interest (eg. acquiring land for redistribution)." (LAPC:1993:5).
Fiscal cadastre- is a "..record of the information necessary for levying property taxes, including parcel location and value. Often the information is not as precise as that required for a legal cadastre. Frequently, the occupant of the parcel is identified for tax purposes, and no effort is made to determine the legal owner." (Urban Edge:1985:2).
Fixed boundaries- "When a plot is originally demarcated it is marked by pegs and, once these pegs are emplaced in the ground, then the position established on the ground at that point in time is the fixed position. This gives rise to the well-known expression 'pegs are paramount to plans' or 'marks before measurements'. The boundaries are fixed regardless of any survey; indeed there is theoretically no need for measurement although in practice it is desirable to have some survey evidence of the boundaries." (Dale:1976:25). Coordinates supply extra evidence over and above the beacon for the courts, and allow beacons to be accurately replaced. In this report I use the term 'accurately beaconed boundaries' to refer to the 'fixed' boundaries of the S.A. cadastre to avoid confusion with other countries.
Fixed boundaries "..which ha(ve) been accurately surveyed so that a surveyor can, from the survey measurements, accurately replace any corner monuments that might get lost.. (are)..used to describe a boundary corner point that becomes fixed in space when agreement is reached at the time of alienation of the land; the location of the legal boundary cannot then change without some document of transfer." (Dale and McLaughlin:1988:29).
General boundaries- are "..applied to the as built situation in which the boundaries of parcels are identified on the ground, generally prior to the property being brought on to the register." (Dale:1976:29). "There is in effect a strip of unspecified width and uncertain ownership left between each parcel.." The meaning of a 'general boundary' varies according to the society in which it is applied. "Provided that there is good monumentation.. then the parcels define themselves on the ground." (Dale and McLaughlin:1988:30). In many fixed boundary systems there is provision for such boundaries, for instance along a water's edge or where a road or rail servitude passes through rural areas" (Dale:1976:29).
Land- "is 'space' with ..resource content, natural or built. It is three dimensional and therefore the attributes of location and distance are implicitly introduced. Interaction with land involves the dimension of time as well, in so far as the interaction is confined to humans, the dimension of time may be associated with 'decision making'. Decisions whether sequential, in parallel, coordinated, integrated or a combination of these, where more than one entity is involved in the process, are in the context of time and therefore, correspond to the dimension of time. Consequently, land may be seen as space, its contents and human decisions. The space units are fixed in location, whereas their shape, size, contents (whether tangible or intangible), change with human decisions." (Jeyanandan, Williamson and Hunter: 1990:314).
Land administration (including survey, registration and information management)- "..is an instrument for implementing and monitoring specific policies with regard to land. It has also been described as the operational component of land tenure which provides the mechanisms for allocating and enforcing rights and restrictions concerning land" (Dale and McLaughlin:1988).
Land information- "is to be understood in a broad sense: it can refer to any data on either physical terrain features (e.g. topography, soil composition, geology, hydrology, vegetation density and species, climate), human aspects (e.g. population, land use, animal density, urban development, land productivity, erosion risks), or legal factors (e.g. use rights, ownership rights)." (Falloux:1989:2).
Land information management- "..is directed at the effective use of information to achieve an objective or set of objectives. These objectives may include improvements to the coverage, content, compatibility, and reliability of information, of access to it, and the possibility of integrating it with other data." (Dale and McLaughlin:1988:14).
Land information system-- "LIS is.. concerned with organisation among users as well as producers of land information. It is concerned with customary institutional and legal frameworks and procedures, as well as with the technical aspects of assembly of data and other information and their presentation in register, cartographic or digital form." (Dunkerley:1985). LIS is also a "system that consists of a data base containing land related information and the procedure and techniques for systematically collecting, updating, processing, and distributing the information." (Urban Edge:1985:2). It may formally be defined as "...a combination of human and technical resources, together with a set of organising procedures, that produces information in support of some managerial requirement."(Dale and McLaughlin:1988:8).
Land management- "is the art or science of making informed decisions about the allocation, use and development of the earth's natural and built resources. Land management includes resource management, land administration arrangements, land policy and land information management." (Jeyanandan, Williamson and Hunter:1990:315). "It extends from the making of fundamental policy decisions by politicians and governments to routine operational decisions made each day by land administrators such as land surveyors, valuers and land registrars." Land management "..is both the science and art that is concerned with technology, the people who use it, and the organizational and administrative structures that support them." (Dale and McLaughlin:1988:237).
Land parcel- The basic spatial unit of the cadastral record is the land parcel, sometimes known as a lot, or plot. The parcel is an area, or more strictly a volume, of space recognized for recording purposes that may cover many square kilometres in the case of a farm or ranch, or may be as small as 1 square metre for land used as an electricity sub-station. (Habitat:1990:4).
Land tenure- It is about the man-man-land relationship. It is concerned with the individual, collective and societal interests in land and its resource content. It is about the relationships among individuals, and their behaviour relative to one another, in relation to their interests in land, to space units and to the resources they contain. A land tenure system does not have to be legal and/or contain real registered rights or be written and official. "Land registration, conveyancing and cadastral surveying are procedures for defining the interests of individuals in specific parcels of land." (Jeyanandan and Williamson:1990). Following this procedure would mean that a particular land tenure system was a legal system.
Legal cadastre- "A register identifying the legal owner and precise boundaries of each land parcel. Establishing a legal cadastre requires both fixing parcel boundaries through surveying and mapping, and fixing legal rights, which may involve negotiations among involved parties and a judicial determination of ownership." (Urban Edge:1985:2).
Multipurpose cadastre- "A relatively new development that incorporates in one source the legal and fiscal cadastre plus information on land use, infrastructure, buildings, soil, and other factors. Each parcel must be assigned a unique identifier, so that all the information can be related to the same plot." (Urban Edge:1985:2).
Quality assurance- "For this there are a number of models such as the British Standard BS.5750 or the European Standard ISO-9000. To obtain quality assurance an individual or organization must be able to demonstrate competence through the professional qualifications or abilities of the senior staff and the implementation of detailed and documented procedures that will ensure the quality of the end-products, such as maps a surveys." (Habitat:1990:37). Quality assurance surveyors would be a category of surveyors who were considered by the industry to be able to do a job competently and in a professional manner.
Restoration/restitution- "The land restoration (or land claims) process involves the return -by means of an administrative or adjudicative process -of specific parcels of land to individuals or communities who were unjustly removed in pursuance of racially based land legislation or policies. This process has the benefit of expediting the restoration of specific land; however it raises important gender and class issues which will need to be addressed. Restoring the status quo could reimpose the original patterns of land holding, including in some cases a patriarchal ownership structure to the exclusion of women and in some cases tenants."(LAPC:1993:30).
Surveyor- "a professional person with the academic qualifications and technical expertise:
- to practise the science of measurement;
- to assemble and assess land and geographic related information;
- to use that information for the purpose of planning and implementing the efficient administration of the land, the sea and structures thereon; and
- to instigate the advancement and development of such practices." (FIG:1991:6).
Sustainable development -"The new challenge is to find integrated development strategies that will balance human needs with the 'needs' of ..environmental resources -how they can be maintained,.. and thereby promote a more sustainable use of the land" (Barnes:1993:11).
Title system - Under this system a certain parcel
of land is registered, ie. the land parcel is the focus of the information on
the title, rather than the individual owner of the parcel. Our sectional title
register follows this system. Once all the claims to a certain parcel - either
through the chain of individuals or from the original grant - have been finalised
the title is established. Once the title is established it is inviolate and
unimpeachable. That is, a prior claim cannot override a title. This means that
with a title no search backwards is required. Also, it is easier for a state
to guarantee a title, which is why a conveyancer is not needed in a title system.
ORIGINAL RESEARCH BRIEF
Not Published here
COMPREHENSIVE LAND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
A comprehensive land management system is composed of several separate, but linked, functions. Some of these functions are:
- land information system/s
- land information management system/s
- land management
Often these different functions have been treated as one system, yet the international community are arguing that these different functions must be treated as separate systems that have their own dynamics, although they ultimately form part of the larger system. If they are treated separately then the role and\or potential role of the land surveyor becomes clearer and more marketable.
Land Management (LM)
Land management is the art or science of making informed decisions about the allocation, use and development of the earth's natural and built resources. Land management includes resource management, land administration arrangements, land policy and land information management. It extends from the making of fundamental policy decisions by politicians and governments to routine operational decisions made each day by land administrators such as land surveyors, valuers and land registrars. Land management also includes:
A)Property conveyancing, including decisions on mortgages and investment;
B)Property assessment and valuation;
C)The development and management of utilities and services;
D)The management of land resources such as forestry, soils or agriculture
E)The formation and implementation of land use policies;
F)Environmental impact assessments;
G)The monitoring of all land based activities in so far as they affect the best use of the land
Management requires the identification and ranking of goals, the cataloguing of alternative methods for achieving them, and an investigation of the consequences of each alternative.
The role of land information systems in land management. Computerisation has improved the record keeping of data, enhanced efficiency, accuracy, speed and limited manipulation to support operational activities or well structured or routine decision problems. However, a highly sophisticated 'knowledge base' is needed as an interface between land information in general (including that on an LIS or GIS) and successful decision-making. This knowledge base has to be so sophisticated that now it only exists in the form of humans.
Land Information Management (LIM)
As with other resources, land information needs to be carefully managed to maximize its potential benefits. When land information is collected and used a number of questions need to be asked. Firstly is the procedural problem of how information can be collected and stored, processed and disseminated in the best possible way. Secondly, is the question of why it is collected the way it is. Thirdly, what value it has in the advancement of a government/ organisation/ local government/ private practice progress and mission or that of the users.
Land information management requires the development of strategies. Such strategies are concerned with the effective organisation of resources in order to achieve one's goals. These goals may include improvements to the coverage, content compatibility and reliability of information, access to it, and the possibility of integrating it with other data. The ultimate goal is to meet the needs of users more efficiently, effectively and equitably.
LIM techniques to improve efficiency include: regrouping government departments, rationalising land data responsibilities, arranging for institutional networks under memorandum of understandings and managed steering committees, network linkages through nodal and hub systems, education, training and research.
Land Information Systems (LIS/GIS)
Land information has been collected for decades and recorded on maps, charts etc and more recently on electronic media (the computer). With the computer has come a 'Systems' approach. That is, technology has made it possible to coordinate and link information about land so that the flow of information can be facilitated and other goals achieved (such as land management goals). Thus the development of the LIS and/or GIS.
Often the effect of computer technology has led to an automation of existing manual methods, rather than exploring new ways of handling spatial data. Also, the LIS/GIS needs of developing countries are increasingly found to be different to those of developed countries. International reports emphasise the inadequacy of information about land to support planning and policy formulation; administration; and the design, implementation and maintenance of development projects. They also identify the lack of inter-sectoral coordination in respect of the multitude of agencies involved -leading to many examples of ad hoc arrangements to apply information technology to the problems of land resource management.
Developing countries do not generally use their limited resources on information products that have low utility or consumption value. Part of a land information management procedure therefore could involve assessing what is appropriate information to capture -this exercise includes a cost-benefit analysis if being done by the private sector. This will be more likely to lead to a LIS/GIS delivering appropriate information which can be sold to the public or utilities or agencies etc. (Dale and McLaughlin: 1988 and Jeynanandan, Williamson and Hunter:1990).
LAND TAXES AND A FISCAL CADASTRE
Extracts from Dale and McLaughlin:1988:47-59; 228-9)
"Land and property taxation
Two different methods are used for raising revenue from land: property rating systems and land value taxation. With a property-rating system governments raise revenue by assessing and taxing improvements, such as buildings and the uses to which they are put. Thus a property used as a shop will be taxed differently from one used solely for residential purposes. With land-value taxation, on the other hand, the tax is based on the value of the land itself as determined from either its improved or its unimproved state. Both systems become instruments of land policy, inevitably influencing the manner in which the land is used.
Taxation objectives
Some authorities have expressed concern about the efficiency and effectiveness of land value and property taxes and have advocated the greater use of value-added taxes, poll taxes, or local sales and local income taxes. The concerns have revolved around the basic principles of taxation, as well as the
Objectives of a taxation system
- Meet social objectives
- Produce significant revenue
- Be under full governmental control
- Be simple, easy to understand, and efficient to collect
- Make tax evasion difficult
- Be equitable, sharing the tax burden fairly
- Give incentive to employment
- Make best use of resources
The objectives of any taxation system are partly political and partly administrative. As matters of general principle (above), the tax should:
(1)be seen either to serve clearly identifiable social objectives or else to produce significant sums of revenue;
(2)be exclusively controlled by the political authority imposing the tax (unlike India, for example, in the early days of the British administration when the local tax collectors, called Zamindars, often collected excessive amounts of tax and retained the surplus for their personal use);
(3)b administered in a way that is understood both by the taxpayers and by their political representatives;
(4)be relatively simple and cheap to collect;
(5)be designed so that it is difficult to avoid payment;
(6)distribute the tax burs seen titable (for example by relating the tax to what the individual can afford);
7)encourg andtable levels of employment;
8)ensure the best allocation and use of resources.
Property tax
Some criticconsider tat property taxes are not
necessarily related to the ability of the taxpayer to pay, since the occupation
of a property does not necessarily affect the income that is derived from it.
Som consider that the tax has a depressing effect on incentives and productivity
and that it can be relatively expensive to collect. (In parts of the Indian
subcontinent t cost of administering the fiscal cadastre can exceed the revenue
collected.) On the other hand, property tax can be a productive tax, capable
of generatin a significant amount of revenue. In many countries it is already
well established as a system and the taxpayers have become accustomed to it.
It broadens the tax base so that the majority of people have to pay at least
some tax. When it is properly administered, there is little opportunity for
tax evasion, since property and land, unlike income, are difficult to hide.
Property taxes can also play an important role in controlling the use and development of the land, since they provide a stimulus to landowners to use their land optimally. If the land istaxed on the basis of a more profitable use, then the taxpayer has an incentive to use the land that way. The property tax can also be related to the benefits received. These benefits may be in the form of services or of an increase in the land value resulting from action taken by the community rather than by the landowner. The tax can thus be usd to recapture for the community some of the windfall profits that can accrue from land use planning decisions. This is sometimes referred to as 'betterment'. For example, land valued at $1000 per hectare as agricultura land may suddenly become worth $50 000 per hectare to the owner if he or she is granted permission to build houses upon it. The increased value is created by the community, but unless it is subject to specific taxes the benefit will all go to the landowner.
Property and land value taxes are of course only two ways to collect revenue. As McGlade comments:
" more enlightened approach to funding of local revenue involves the whole basket of taxes available and certainly involves the continuance of the property tax system in coordination with wider use of other taxes such as sales, income and poll taxes. If valuation administration were strengthened together with the enlightened use of a minimum number of differential rates, a greater equity in tax treatment amongst taxpaying groups would result."
In Singapore the property tax is the second largest source of tax revenue. In 1979, it contributed 15.5 per cent of the tax and 11.3 per cent of the total government revenue. 3 In general, however, the importance of property taxation has declined in comparison with taxes on income (both of individuals and corporations), on capital transfer, on capital gains, and on sales and expenditure. In the United States, property taxes yield a sum equal to 3.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (G D P); in Britain local rates account for 3.3 per cent; in New Zealand the figure is 2.27 per cent. In Australia, local rates and state land tax yield 1.46 per cent of the G D P. In Germany, the property tax levied by municipalities accounts for 12.6 per cent of their revenue but represents only 0.37 per cent of GDP.
Land tax
Whereas property taxes are essentially concerned with improvements to the land, land taxes are generally based upon a valuation of the productive capacity of the land itself. For agricultural land, for example, this would require a direct survey of a farm at harvest time, or an indirect assessment based upon the area and estimated yield. The latter has been the case on the Indian subcontinent, where only income above a certain threshold is now subject to tax. Estimates of yield can be obtained from past experience or, increasingly, from aerial photography or remotely sensed imagery.
Land taxes based upon estimates of productive capacity have at one time or another been imposed in Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, South Africa and East Africa, Jamaica, Barbados, Hawaii, and western Canada. In New Zealand, the taxation of land was introduced in 1878, with the aim of breaking up the large individual holdings of agricultural landowners. Many countries still retain some variant of a land tax, though most now tax both the land and the improvements to it. Less developed countries tend to tax agricultural land, while developed countries often concentrate on the taxation of urban land.
Administrative matters
In many countries there is a central valuation authority responsible for administering government valuations and, where such exists, the fiscal cadastre. Such an authority may, as in England and Wales, provide a comprehensive land valuation service both to departments of central government and to local authorities. The valuation department has to advise government on matters affecting the value of land, and to carry out valuations where appropriate. Valuations may be required, for instance, for taxation, for calculating the compensation to be paid where land is acquired for public purposes (either by compulsory purchase or by agreement), for determining compensation for any adverse consequences of planning decisions, and for such purposes as fixing the rent on government-owned property.
Central valuation authorities
Many developing countries, however, do not yet have a central valuation authority. In Malaysia, for example, the National Valuation Division carries out valuations for such matters as stamp duty and estate duty and provides advice to government, but about 300 local authorities are responsible for valuations for ratings. They have, in the past, carried out their respective functions without any common form of standards, control, or coordination.
In the view of Dass, who was formerly the Director-General of Valuations for Malaysia, a central valuing authority provides:
(1)a uniform application of laws and standards;
(2)greater economy, by reducing the duplication of records, staff, and effort and by greatly improving the capacity to employ specialist valuation expertise;
(3)an opportunity to introduce advanced office or mapping techniques, including computers for analysis, recording, and valuation;
(4)better research facilities;
(5)greater independence for authority;
(6)a more adequately staffed service;
(7)better property management -a central valuation organization can achieve considerable savings in national expenditure by providing proper property management services to the government;
(8)greater potential for specialization in such areas as plant and machinery, agricultural, mining, and goodwill valuations, where small organizations cannot afford to train and employ specialists;
(9)overall coordination of land sales data.
As Dass has observed:
"In many developed and developing countries, Valuation Courts and other appellate bodies appear to strongly support the comparable sales approach method of valuation. In order to be able to defend such valuations in Court, organizations should be able to collect, analyze and store effectively all available sales data. .. Such projects can only be undertaken by large centralized organizations. Land sales data collection and storage into a National Land Sales Data Bank can be established to function effectively, provided there are proper legislations and qualified staff to handle such projects. Such a bank, in addition to its obvious functions, can also help in the monitoring of land speculation trends and changes in patterns of ownership. This form of information could prove extremely useful to national policy makers in formulating sound land taxation and land ownership policies.
Fiscal cadastres
The most immediate benefits from a land information system often arise when it is linked to taxation and revenue recovery. Often the cost of improving land record management can be more than offset by the increased revenue raised as a result of the greater efficiencies. The use of the land records in this way raises political issues that essentially are not the concern of the land information manager. They are, however, often the concern of those who must pay for the improvements that the manager seeks.
The fiscal cadastre is less dependent on property delimitation than that concerned with land ownership and property boundaries. It should, however, be linked to the latter as the name of the property owner is an integral part of the record, as is the parcel identifier. The levels of information that should be held within the fiscal cadastre need not be sophisticated. The records should, however, be complete in terms of spatial cover.
The data that are held may be of particular value and significance to property agents who are concerned with the buying and selling of land. As such there can be additional benefit if the information stored within the cadastre can be made publicly available for a fee. A land agent advertising a property would then have access to details such as the number of floor levels, square metres of floor space, and rateable value readily to hand." (Dale and McLaughlin:1988:47-59; 228-9).
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