John Hlophe, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party’s parliamentary leader, said state ownership of land in South Africa would be no different from England, where “all land belongs to the queen”. He’s wrong, and not just about the late queen.
MARY ALEXANDER • 22 JULY 2024
Does the British monarch own all the land in England?
John Hlophe, the parliamentary leader of South Africa’s new opposition uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), made the claim after being sworn in at the national assembly on 25 June. He was arguing for his party’s policy of land expropriation and nationalisation.
“The land in Africa can never be the subject of private ownership. The land belongs to the nation. It doesn’t form part of private ownership,” he told journalists.
He added: “And we are not alone in that regard. Look at the UK. The land in England, the land belongs to the queen. Everybody else has a 99-year lease.”
England is one of the countries of the United Kingdom, also known as Britain. The others are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
By “the queen”, Hlophe meant the British monarch, currently king Charles III since the death of his mother, queen Elizabeth II, in 2022. The monarch is the UK’s head of state.
The election manifesto of Hlophe’s MKP lists eight “pillars” – things the party hopes to do. Its second pillar is to “expropriate all land without compensation, transferring ownership to the people under the state and traditional leaders”.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), another South African opposition party, has a similar stance on land.
‘They’re all on 99yr lease. Are they poor?’
The claim that the British monarch owns all the land in England – or in Britain as a whole – has been circulating on social media since before Hlophe’s press conference.
“The Queen of England owns Britain, Canada and Australia and the land in Britain belongs to her,” reads a 24 June post on Facebook.*
An X post reads:
I support the idea of gvmnt becoming a custodian of all land. If you have no use for the land, you must relinquish it to the state to distribute it to those who need to use it.
This is happening in economy jurisdictions that we admire. In England, the land belongs to the queen.
— Mduh (@ThisIsMduh) July 2, 2024
Other versions include:
- “I think the model the EFF is advocating for is similar to one used in England where all the land belongs to the Queen – in our case I guess it would belong to Government.”
- “English law […] states all land in England belongs to the Queen.”
- “In UK the King Charles owns all the land and everyone has 99 year leases and it works very well. No one complains.”
- “No one owns the land in England, it is owned by the King/Queen. They’re all on 99yr lease. Are they poor?”
Is any of this true?
The monarch is not the crown
A 2022 UK house of commons research briefing reads:
Land ownership in England and Wales is based on historical feudal principles. The Crown owns all land in England and Wales; people own estates in land either directly or indirectly from the Crown (for example, a freehold estate or a leasehold estate).
There are two important points here. First, “the crown” is not the same as the monarch. Second, a “freehold estate” is privately owned land.
Another briefing defines the crown:
The Crown encompasses both the monarch and the government. It is vested in the King, but in general its functions are exercised by Ministers of the Crown accountable to the UK Parliament or the three devolved legislatures.
The crown is equivalent to the state in other countries.
And the crown “owns” the land in the sense that it has sovereignty over the land, giving legal weight to private land ownership.
Freehold and leasehold land
In the UK, a freehold estate is land freely and privately owned. It does not belong to the monarch. Freehold land ownership has been a principle of British law for centuries.
“The term freehold property ownership refers to the ownership of both the land and the building on it for an indefinite period of time,” says one UK property expert.
In fact, the HM Land Registry, a government department created in 1862, exists to “register the ownership of land and property in England and Wales”.
King Charles himself privately owns an extensive portfolio of freehold property – but not “all the land”.
Leasehold property, by contrast, is owned only for a fixed period of time. It is leased from the landowner – also called the freeholder. Leases have no specific timeframe. They can be as short as a day or as long as 999 years.
Land is also privately owned in Scotland, where there are concerns about the small number of landowners who hold huge swathes of the country’s rural areas. Northern Ireland also has private land ownership.
The question of land ownership is complex. But the claim that the British monarch owns all the land in England, or the UK as a whole, is false.
* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.
Edited version published by Africa Check on 13 August 2024