BRANCH: LAND AND TENURE REFORM
PRESENTATION TO PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE 8 FEBRUARY 2005
Presentation outline
Chief Directorate: Land Reform Implementation and Management Coordination (CD: LRIMC)
Manages the implementation of land at provincial level through 9 Provincial Land Reform Offices (PLRO's) and District Level Delivery (DLD) offices:
- Manage and co-ordinate land reform implementation programmes according to Social Cluster/ Government priorities
- Manage and co-ordinate budget planning and expenditure
- Provide information on and implementation support to all land reform projects
Chief Directorate: Land Reform Systems and Support Services (CD:LRSSS)
Core Business of Land and Tenure Reform Branch
To provide access to and rights in land to the previously disadvantaged individuals, groups or communities within a well-planned environment
Strategic context
- Land reform: contribution to economic development & poverty eradication
- Substantial increase of black ownership of commercial agriculture
- Integrated approach to implementation of land reform: close collaboration with other departments & spheres of government.
- Building capacity of Provincial Governments and District Councils in undertaking some aspects of land reform (and land development planning)
- Implementation of land reform within a national spatial planning framework
- Land reform: government priority and priority No.1 in the DLA
Government Policy Context
Three pillars of land and delivery
- Agrarian reform,
- Housing, and
- Tenure security
Key elements of the land reform policy
Why land reform is important:
- To redress the injustices and dispossession of the past
- To foster reconciliation and stability
- To improve household welfare and alleviate absolute poverty
- To underpin economic growth
Thus, land reform is about legal, social and economic tenure security
Land reform programmes
Tenure
Redistribution
State land management and administration
Support for Land Reform Programmes
Programme |
Dept. and Spheres |
Partnerships |
|
|
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Land & Agrarian Reform |
DoA, DLA, DoH, DPLG, local spheres of government |
AgriSA, NAFU, NGO's |
Land Tenure legislation
- Extension of Security of Tenure Ad (ESTA)
- The Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act
- The Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act
- Communal Land Rights Act recognises the de facto tenure rights of people living primarily in the former homelands/self-governing territories
Status of Tenure legislation
- The President has signed the CLRA.
- The DLA is finalising the implementation plan for the Act.
- The DLA awaits the publication of a proclamation which will announce the effective date for the Act.
- The DLA expects to finalise the process of Consolidating the ESTA and LIA by the end of this year (2005).
The key aim and principles underlying these Acts
- To provide vulnerable people with a basic level of tenure security while balancing this with the rights of owners
- To provide vulnerable people with protection against arbitrary evictions
- To confirm the rights people have on the ground which are not recognised in law
- To build a unitary system of land rights for all South Africans
- To recognise that people who are not owners also have land rights
The Redistribution programme
· Key aspects of the programme:
- Based on demand-driven approach
- Market assisted land reform
- Grants to assist beneficiaries to acquire land through willing buyer-willing seller principles
- Land to be bought at market related prices
Redistribution: Purpose
· Provision of land to the poor
- Settlement / Residential
- Agricultural production
- Improving their livelihoods
· Poor, landless, farm dwellers, women, emerging farmers
Redistribution legislation
· The Provision of Land and Assistance Act 126 of 1993, allows the Minister to designate land for residential and productive purpose.
· It provides for the rendering of financial assistance for acquisition of land and secure tenure rights.
· It allows the Minister under certain circumstances to expropriate land for purpose of redistribution.
Shift towards agrarian reform
· During 1999 the programme was revamped and LRAD (Land Redistribution for Agricultural development) was developed.
· The goal of the new Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) sub-programme was to contribute more significantly to agricultural development and to extend the target group beyond the poor to also include emerging black farmers.
· The grants are disbursed on a sliding scale from R20,OOO to R100,000, depending on the applicant's own contribution in kind, labour and/or cash.
· LRAD grant is used for land acquisition and buying shares (Share equity) in a farming enterprise.
· Production support and training provided by Agriculture
State Land management
· Compile. maintain and disseminate State & Public land related information
· Vesting of state land to constitution, 1996, section 28(1) –National Provincial ownership
· Maintenance of state land:
- Asset maintenance
- Lease and caretaker agreements (Option to purchase)
- Optimise income potential (leases, share cropping agreements. etc)
- Natural resource management (e.g. Overgrazing, fire breaks)
- Land use control
- Payments of taxes, levies etc.
State Land in RSA
EXTENT OF STATE LAND IN RSA:
121 208 793 ha (RSA area)
23 997 970 ha (State land)
19.8% of surface
National State land - 19 682 745 ha (82.02 %)
DLA 53.8%
PWD 28.22%
Other 17.98%
Provincial State land - 4315225 ha (17,92%)
Land Delivery:
Amount of land to be delivered
- The total of land in South Africa = 122 m (ha)
- Total farmland = 100 million ha
- Total white owned agricultural farmland = 82 million ha
- The Government has set itself the target of delivering 30% of commercial agricultural land by 2015
- 24 million ha of agricultural land must have been delivered by 2015
- Therefore 20.6 million hectares must still be delivered
- On average 1.87 million ha must be delivered per year to meet target
Land Delivery:
Total land delivered since 1994
- Total size of land delivered since 1994 is about 3,4 million ha
- This includes land delivered through the restitution, redistribution and state land
- The total number of household/individuals that have benefited from land reform is over 995 145