[imagesource:creativecommon/getty]

The Freemarket Foundation’s Khaya Lam project, spearheaded by billionaire Johann Rupert and his wife Gaynor, has given 10,000 disadvantaged South Africans titles to land and homes.

The Free Market Foundation launched the project in collaboration with First National Bank (FNB) to provide title deeds and create wealth in underserved areas.

With the goal of assisting communities in transforming their leasehold titles from the apartheid era to freehold titles, it underwent a name change to become the Khaya Lam Land Reform Project. These legitimate owners are often unable to relocate for employment reasons without running the danger of losing their property or being able to take out a loan against their home to launch a business.

Khaya Lam, isiXhosa for “My Home”, hopes that by ensuring that people become land and homeowners, they are able to use their titles and property to build a better future.

The Rupert family is the biggest contributor to the Khaya Lam project and has sponsored thousands of title deeds.

Free Market Foundation CEO David Ansara said there are between five and seven million homes in South Africa owned by municipalities and at least 20 million South Africans live insecurely in them. Many of these properties were built by the apartheid government in dormitory townships across the country.

Although many of these families have built their homes on the properties, they are merely regarded as tenants without title deeds.

One of the major obstacles to transferring the title deeds has always been the cost which is often beyond the rightful owner of the properties. A simple home with an average value of R100,000 can be titled for roughly R6,500, according to service advertisers.

Elderly people, pensioners, families with only one parent, and unemployed people cannot pay the normal expenses of the title process, which makes it even more important for wealthy benefactors like the Rupert’s to assist the less fortunate where they can.

A little Ubuntu in action on a Monday morning!

[source:dailyinvestor]