BRANCH: LAND AND TENURE REFORM
PRESENTATION TO PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE 8 FEBRUARY 2005

Presentation outline

· The L&T Reform Branch
- Core business
- The CD: LRIMC & The CD: LRSSS
- Strategic context
· Government policy context
· Land reform policy and programmes
- Key elements of land policy
- The 3 land reform programmes
· Land delivery

BRANCH: LAND AND TENURE REFORM
- To provide access to and rights in land to the previously disadvantaged individuals, groups or communities within a well-planned environment
- Responsible for implementing redistnbution, tenure reform and state land administration and disposal

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)
·
Public Land Support Services
Provide Systems and support for state land administration and management
· Tenure reform Implementation Systems
Systems & procedures & legislation for tenure products (tenure security)
· Redistribution Implementation Systems
Systems & procedures for agricultural and settlement products

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

 

 

 

Land & Agrarian Reform

DoA, DLA, DoH, DPLG,

local spheres of

government

AgriSA, NAFU, NGO's


Land Redistribution Programme / LTA and CLARA / State Land Administration

Land Tenure programme
- Tenure reform deals with land rights where people are living now, focusing on making de facto rights legal, and on giving new rights to those who need protection but balancing this with the rights of existing owners

- Tenure reform is central to all land reform programmes as there is an element of tenure reform in restitution and redistribution.

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