Pretoria - The Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Agrarian Reform will on Monday, May 13, embark on a series of public hearings on the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Bill (SPLUMB).
The SPLUMB emerged through the Green Paper (1990) and White Paper (2001) processes to replace the Development Facilitation Act (DFA) as the legislative instrument to regulate spatial planning land use management in the country.
The first public hearings will be held on Monday at Matatiele town hall and Aliwal North, Greenslade hall at 10am.
Another public hearing will be held in Mthatha’s OR Tambo mayor’s council chamber, Southernwood on Wednesday also at 10am, while two more will be held on May 17 at Queenstown town hall and East London Orient Theatre at 10am.
Government’s intended remedy is to repeal the DFA in its entirety and replace it with the Spatial Planning Land Use Management Act, which is currently still a bill.
The objectives of the bill are to:
- Provide for a uniform, effective and comprehensive system of spatial planning and land management for South Africa;
- Ensure that the system of spatial planning and land use management promotes social and economic inclusion;
- Provide for development principles and norms and standards; provide for the sustainable and efficient use of land;
- Provide for cooperative government and intergovernmental relations amongst the national, provincial and local spheres of government and;
- Redress the imbalances of the past and to ensure that there is equity in the application of spatial development planning and land use management system.
Before 1994, planning was designed to serve different political ideas, segregation, differentiation and privilege. Multiple laws, multiple institutions and parallel processes were instituted by the pre-1994 pieces of legislation.
Planning laws were fragmented across the old boundaries of the then four provincial administrations, homelands and self-governing territories.
In 1994, South Africa inherited complex and disjointed planning system, which manifested in unequal, incoherent and efficient settlement patterns.
The DFA was promulgated as an interim measure to deal with this legacy. - SAnews.gov.za
