Report by the Chief Surveyor-General for the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, as presented to parliamentary committee, March 31 2011

REPORT

PHASE ONE: DESKTOP ANALYSIS ON STATE LAND

1. PURPOSE

The purpose of the project is to compile a comprehensive, accurate, complete and reliable database of all land parcels registered in the name the Government of the Republic of South Africa.

2. BACKGROUND

In December 2009 the Office of the Chief Surveyor-General (CSG) was tasked by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform (RDLR) to compile a comprehensive, accurate, complete and reliable database of all land parcels registered in the name of the Government of the Republic of South Africa.

In order to properly present the outcome of the project and to have statistical information that may inform other decisions pertaining to land ownership in South Africa, it was decided that this project include information relating to privately owned land parcels. This report provides information and findings about all provinces completed including.

3. PROJECT PLAN

3.1. Resources Utilization

3.1.1. Human Resource

The CSG allocated 7 in-house personnel to work on this project. Such personnel comprised the following:

1 × Project Manager
1 × GIS Specialist
4 × Data Processors
1 × Database administrator

3.1.2. Equipment

In order to avoid additional costs, existing computers within the office of the CSG were used for this project.

3.1.3. Datasets

The following datasets were used for the desktop analysis:

Deeds Registration Data - this is a register of all land parcels and owner information registered at the Deeds offices throughout the country. The data is maintained by deeds offices using the Deeds Registration System.

Cadastral Alphanumeric Data - this is a register of all surveyed land parcels approved by Surveyors-General (SG) who are charged with capturing, archiving and maintenance of cadastral information.

Cadastral Spatial Data - this is a digital continuous map showing all surveyed and approved land parcels for the whole country maintained by the SG.

3.2. Project Overview

The main objective of the project was to create a comprehensive and re-usable Database of all land parcels relating to state land including municipalities, former TBVC states, Provinces as well as Parastatals.

3.2.1. Project Deliverables

At the end of this project the CSG delivered the following-:

A comprehensive database of all land parcels registered in the name of the State as well as privately owned land.

Digital Maps of all land parcels registered in the name of the State in ESRI Shape file and Google Earth KML files format.

Statistical report regarding the number and extent of land parcel.

3.2.2. Methodology

The CSG obtained deeds registration information from the branch Deeds registration relating to all registered land parcels. The data supplied by CRD was in flat file format,*.txt. This data was imported to Microsoft Access database to provide flexibility to perform queries and updating of additional information. SG supplied cadastral datasets for all the nine provinces.

3.2.2.1. Database preparation

Microsoft access database was designed using the deeds database structure as the base and to accommodate additional information such as SG reference information (SG number, surveyed extent).

The database provided a user-friendly interface to allow easy access to perform desktop analysis. The database was populated with additional information, SG Numbers and Extents from cadastral records kept in the SG offices.

3.2.2.2. Process

The desktop analysis involved identifying and classifying all state and privately owned land. This involved the updating and correction of incomplete and incorrect cadastral information.

The method employed was by identifying and classifying registered owners field in the database. It was easy to identify and classify most of the records. Some of the records required thorough investigation, translation of names from Afrikaans to English and reference to other sources. All land parcels registered in the name of natural persons, private companies and trusts were classified as "Private". National government, provincial government, municipalities, former homelands, parastatals and the Development Corporations were all classified as "State".

3.2.2.3. Database and Spatial Cadastral data Linkage(Mapping)

Having prepared a database with non spatial reference, the next aim was to link the final state land database with spatial cadastral data. This process facilitated the geo-referencing of state land. Spatial cadastral data was requested from each SG office throughout the country which included Erf, Parent Farm, Farm Portion, Parks, Holding and Street data. The database and the spatial Cadastral datasets were linked together. The process was repeated for each of the data sets named above. The resultant spatial cadastral data linked to state land database was then exported to Google Earth format (KML file). This information can be accessed using Google Earth.

It was determined, however, that not all of the records in the state land database could be reconciled with spatial cadastral data. Of the total deeds data of 5,972,949 land parcels, 1,016,390 were spatially unmatched against 7 560 616 spatial data units, which constituted 24% on state land and 17% on private land. The tables below list the number of unmatched distinct parcels per province:

Table 1: Unmatched State Land

Table 2: Unmatched Private Land

4. FINDINGS

During the project execution it was realised that different registered names were used to register properties for the Republic of South Africa and lots of unmatched deeds records in the cadastral spatial data. The above observations were made due to the following:

a) There are properties registered in the names of entities that no longer exist e.g. Government of Gazankulu, Bophuthatswana government, QwaQwa government, Bantu trust etc. See Annexure A for a list of names used for registering state land.

b) One entity uses various names when registering land parcels belonging to the state e.g. Department of Land affairs, Land Affairs, Minister of Land Affairs etc.

c) Not all approved survey diagrams (diagrams and general plans) are registered in the deeds offices. This creates confusion in that, information relating to surveyed land parcels will not always correspond to the registered land parcels.

d) Incorrect Land Parcel Indicator (LPI), used in the linking process had deficiencies. Some records contained in the Deeds Registration System (DRS) display incorrect LPI that are used to link information between deeds and cadastral surveys.

e) Most of the state land parcels in urban areas are land parcels registered in the name of a municipality for housing purposes where transfers have not yet taken place.

f) Removal of registered land parcels from the SG spatial cadastral data on approval of amending general plans due to re-layout of townships and consolidations.

4.1. Analysis of Results

4.1.1. National State Land

A total of 1,155,508 land parcels in the Deeds Registration System were identified to be state land, of which 1,085,084 are urban, 64,976 are farms and 5,448 are agricultural holdings. The data has been tabulated categorically according to provinces, in number of parcels and extent. See tables below for details.

Table 3: National State land

Table 4: National State land grouped by parcel type

4.1.2. Private Land

A total of 4,817,441 land parcels were identified as privately owned in Deeds Registration System of which 4,441,745 are Urban, 332,908 are Farms and 42,788 are Agricultural Holdings. The data has been tabulated per province according to the number of parcels and extent. The tables below explain the details:

Table 5: National Private land

Table 6: National Private land grouped by parcel type

4.1.3. State land vs. Private land

Further analysis of comparing State land against Private owned land was performed. In total State land constitute 19% of land parcels.

Table 7: State land vs. Private land - Number of land parcels

5. RECOMMENDATIONS

a) There should be a verification of this data against datasets managed by other government departments, namely the Department of Public Works' REGISTER OF STATE PROPERTIES as well as PUBLIC LAND REGISTER maintained by DRDLR through Public Land Support Services (PLSS).

b) Investigation should be conducted to identify the current names of departments responsible for properties that are still registered under former homelands, transitional municipalities etc. That information will be utilised to make amendments to the deeds information, in order to achieve an up-to-date and user friendly database.

c) It is also recommended that this State Land Database be accessible to all government departments, municipalities and public entities and be managed and maintained by DRDLR.

d) The deeds registration office should introduce a process of classify state property ownership during the registration or transfer of land. This information is very important to the government for assessing ownership of land.

e) Even though the implementation of the e-Cadastre would solve some of the data problems as a result of consolidation of data stores, further investigation should be conducted in order to verify whether the identified state land is still used for the purpose of state functions.

f) It is critical for both Deeds Registration and Cadastral Surveys to embark on

A data cleansing project to address data challenges and to eliminate the problem of incorrect, incomplete and unmatched datasets.

A project to capture all registered land parcels that are not in the cadastral spatial database (unmatched land parcels).

6. CONCLUSION

The objective of this project has been to develop a comprehensive database of both State land and Privately owned land parcels. Data was sourced from the Chief Surveyor-General and the Chief Registrar of Deeds. Pain-staking classification of State Land from Privately owned Land was embarked upon. The final database was then linked to the spatial cadastral database during the mapping process. The mapped product was finally converted to Google Earth files (KML) for viewing purposes.

However, there were challenges experienced during project execution which made it difficult to populate some of the records with Surveyor-General information as well as mapping of some of the land parcels. As a result recommendations have been made to address these challenges. The department is embarking on a project to survey and register all un-surveyed state land and all state domestic facilities; once these surveys are approved by the Surveyor General and registered at the Deeds office they will be incorporated into this database.

This project has proved that there is a need for a properly managed State Land Information System that should form part of the National Cadastre that is managed and maintained by both Cadastral Surveys Management and Deeds Registration.

Source: www.pmg.org.za

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