Nkwinti spells out SA’S land reform target
Landreform Minister Gugile Nkwinti spelt out the government’s 2014 land reform target in black and white yesterday. He said this was necessary to dispel “confusion” around the figures.
The briefing, by ministers from the government’s economic sectors and employment cluster, follows President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation address last month, during which he said the pace of land redistribution was “slow and tedious”.
Nkwinti said there were 82 million hectares of agricultural land in SA “presumed to be in the hands of white commercial farmers”.
The government aimed to transfer 30 percent of this to black farmers by 2014, a total of 24.5 million hectares. When Zuma had referred in his address to a figure of only 8.2 percent of this land having been transferred to date, he was talking about 8.2 percent of the 82 million hectares.
To date, a total of 6.7 million hectares of land – including land transferred in terms of redistribution and restitution – had actually been transferred.
“Often, we say 30 percent by 2014, without specifying what we’re talking about. That’s really (what is causing) the confusion around this,” Nkwinti said. On land claims, he said there were close to 9 000 of these outstanding.
“We have 8 770 land claims that we are working on right now, that are outstanding.”
Explaining how this figure was arrived at, he said land claim commissioners had to date examined records in seven of the country’s nine provinces. “Of the nine provinces, we’ve finished seven, and we’ve got 6 000 (claims), based on scanning-in and manually counting.
“We’re moving towards certainty now ... we’re much closer to the real figure now, close to the 8 770 figure, and will complete the process at the end of this month.”
On completing a land audit he said the audit currently under way would identify only state and public-owned land.
This would be completed by June this year.
“We have a team of 228 people working on the land audit. By end of June, we could be somewhere ... I think they’ve done (to date) about five or so provinces.” How- ever, this audit would not reveal the extent of private transactions involving the sale of white-owned land to black people, which would take much longer.
“There is a question about how much land is in the hands of the state in the form of communal areas and other forms. And, therefore, how much land still needs to be transferred from the 82 million hectares of land in the hands of white commercial farmers.
“That is the question. (But) when we say audit of land, we mean state and public land, because there’s no register now. “But having done that, it (will) not tell you how much land transacts between persons in the private market, and therefore you could then add that to the amount of land that is transferred between white commercial farmers to black people in terms of (the) 82 million hectares of agricultural land,” Nkwinti said.
To identify who owned what land required further work. It would also be necessary to work with the Department of Trade and Industry to identify land owned by companies. And… to determine what land was held by trusts.
He said the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle was not the “worst impediment” to land reform. “The worst impediment is... if land is sold to the state as opposed to a private sale, the price kicks up immediately. This is a problem because the state is not a willing buyer, it’s a compelled buyer.”