Campaigners
say oil company is paying just 192 rand (£13.75) annual rent for two filling
stations in impoverished KwaZulu-Natal
The Guardian, David Smith in Johannesburg, Thursday 21 March 2013
 |
| Shell says it paid a substantial sum upfront when it signed a 50-year contract for the sites. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters |
Remote and
unspoiled, Umgababa is a small but aspirational South African beach resort
washed by the warm Indian ocean. Tourists who veer off the beaten track to get
there might feel somewhat isolated, but for the reassuring presence of two
Shell service stations along the way.
The oil
giant is not so welcome, however, to a community where land ownership remains a
highly inflammatory subject. Shell stands accused of paying rent of just 192
rand (£13.75) a year for each of the two stations – barely enough to buy enough
petrol for a 100km journey. The company strongly denies the claim.
The dispute
comes against the backdrop of widespread poverty in KwaZulu-Natal province and
the imminent centenary of the 1913 Natives' Land Act, which resulted in the
systematic dispossession of black South Africans. Even under democracy,
millions of hectares of state-owned land have still not been transferred to
those who live on it.
The Shell
anomaly is being investigated by South Africa's parliamentary oversight
committee on rural development and land reform. Stone Sizani, its chairman,
said: "It's a huge unfairness on the part of Shell to the community there.
They're making huge sums of money from those filling stations and what they're
paying is the equivalent of an indigent family for a piece of land."
He added:
"Nobody can explain how Shell got such a piece of land. Even if it was
done during apartheid, Shell should be feeling ashamed."
Shell
obtained permission to occupy (PTO) during the apartheid era, when black people
were not permitted to obtain title deeds to land. A PTO holder once paid a token
rent to the government; now it pays it to the Ingonyama Trust Board, which
administers about 2.8m hectares of land in KwaZulu-Natal. The board says the
agreement legally cannot be changed, despite the stations' profitability.
Shell
denies the 192-rand claim, saying that when it signed a 50-year contract with a
body called the Ithala Development Finance Corporation, it was required to pay
a significant sum upfront. "Shell paid total costs of approximately 29m
rand [£2m] by 2000," spokeswoman Jackie Maitland said on Wednesday.
"Umnini
tribal land is now administered by the Ingonyama Trust, who are deemed to be
the landlord of these sites. The PTO remains held by Ithala, who Shell signed
the lease agreement with in 1988. All rentals have been paid in full for the
duration of the 50-year lease."
She added:
"We are aware that nominal amounts can be paid on an annual basis by
individuals to local chiefs for permission to occupy land. This process does
not apply to Shell, as we entered a prepaid rental agreement with Ithala."
Informed of
Shell's response, Sizani stuck to his guns, saying he had asked the Ingonyama
Trust board to check its records and "the outcome is still the same".
His message to Shell was: "Are you aware that, in South Africa, old age
pensioners get 1,000-plus rand per month individually? What can 192 rand per
year for the whole community do?"
The way the
land was assigned also highlights a tension between longstanding traditions in
rural areas, where a local chief still wields power, and the letter of the law
in a 21st century constitutional democracy.
Athol Trollip, shadow minister of rural development and land reform, who has visited
one of the stations, said: "The problem with these Shell filling stations
is that this land would have been granted through a traditional leader."
He added:
"It is a crazy situation because they have this arbitrariness in the way
they allocate land. There's no lease held, there's no formal transfer of
ownership."
The South
African government recently claimed it has completed an audit of state-owned
land, but Trollip and others are sceptical.
Johan
Kruger, director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, said: "One of
the biggest concerns is that we just don't know what's out there. We don't know
how much the government owns and how much has been redistributed or on a long
lease.
"It is
a responsibility the government has not fulfilled yet. There is a huge amount
of land in government hands that could be transferred to black ownership."
An annual
rental fee of 192 rand "can't be right", he added.
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