Encouraging to see land reform put into action

I WAS happy to read that the government’s talk about radical economic transformation wasn’t mere rhetoric.

I was also pleased to learn that Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti published the Regulation of Agricultural Land Holdings Bill last Friday, giving stakeholders until April 16 to submit comments.

If promulgated, the law will ban foreigners from buying agricultural land and require them to enter into longterm leases.

It’s about time we took our country and its sovereignty seriously. Land is a national asset and it needs to be treated as such.

In terms of the bill, foreigners selling land would also have to offer the minister “the right of first refusal” to acquire ownership. The bill will see the creation of a Land Commission which will oversee the collection and dissemination of all information regarding public agricultural land.

The reason for this is because “the nature, extent, trends and impact of land acquisition, land use and investment in the country’s land by foreign persons remains unknown”.

There’s also an absence of reliable information on agricultural land owned by South Africans in terms of race and gender as well as the use and size of the land in question.

Once the act commences, every owner of a private agricultural land holding must lodge a notification of ownership with the commission within 12 months.

Black people must be offered the right of first refusal. If no black person acquires the redistribution agricultural land within the prescribed period, the land will be acquired by the minister.

If the owner of the redistribution agricultural land and the minister are unable to reach an agreement on the purchase price, the minister may, subject to legislation regulating expropriation, expropriate the land. Pretoria