• Client:
  Msunduzi Municipality
• Appointment:
  2000 and ongoing
• Scope of Work:
  Identifying land for housing development. Investigating the status and type of tenure of the land, and then implementing steps to get the land to a state where development can take place.
• Cost of Project:
  R24m to date

Edendale is a vast a populous area situated to the north west of Pietermaritzburg. The area was established as a "black" town in the pre-apartheid days. Several thousand residential erven were surveyed starting in the early 1960's. Various forms of title were granted to occupants of the houses which were mainly built using state funds. The state's infrastructure for granting and managing title was not well managed in the past, nor was it controlled effectively.

This resulted in the creation of "layers" of overlapping titles established under several old township establishment acts.

The objectives of this project are to upgrade tenure to freehold title in terms of Act 112 of 1991 and to acquire private land that is settled on informally and develop formalised housing projects.

To date 80% of the old titles have been unravelled and new titles granted. GIS technology has been used extensively in this project to record and manage the state of legal ownership, land use, and valuation attributes of land. The technology is also used to identify private land that meets certain defined criteria.

KEY RESULTS:

The unravelling of tenure problems in Edendale has given confidence to the private sector to invest in the area.

The land market is now formalised and several thousand households are now able to use their properties as collateral to raise mortgage loans.

The new security of tenure has provided a secure foundation for the Msunduzi Municipality to plan for growth and collect revenue.