Company black-empowerment levels must be considered before firms benefit from international export agreements, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana said on Friday. "The government has opened the doors for not one race, or one sex ... but for all the people of South Africa," she told agriculture sector partners in Boksburg.
Illegal evictions and rights violations continue to happen in the farming sector, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana said on Thursday. She said of the eight million people evicted between 1985 and 2005, 1% of the evictions was legal.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) needs to urgently tackle land issues to foster regional stability and promote sustainable economic growth, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana said on Thursday. "For us to achieve the goal of land reform, we will require a major new effort to build capacity, both at national and regional levels," she said.
The government intends acquiring five million hectares of land next year in an effort to have 30% of agricultural land in the hands of black farmers by 2014, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulu Xingwana said in Cape Town on Thursday. Currently, black farmers own 4,7% of farm land, she told a press briefing.
After a decade-long struggle in the courts, Richtersvelders will on Saturday celebrate the return of their land in a handing over ceremony in Alexander Bay. Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin and Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulu Xingwana will hand over to the community the deeds to 194 600ha of land.
The Ministry of Land Affairs would not give reasons for the termination of the contract of Director General (DG) Glen Thomas until the minister returned from a trip to Namibia, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. Godfrey Mdhluli said: "The minister and the DG made an agreement that the DG's contract be terminated [on Monday]."
The government welcomes open debate on the issue of foreign land ownership, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana said on Friday. She said this particularly applied to the question of whether or not proposed new regulations on land ownership should be put into effect retrospectively.
Since the beginning of the year not a single illegal farm eviction has been reported to farming union AgriSA, it said in a statement on Thursday. The union was responding to remarks by Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Dirk du Toit that farmers who illegally evicted tenant workers would have their land expropriated.
Farmers who evict tenant workers illegally will have their land expropriated, Deputy Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Dirk du Toit warned on Wednesday. "Those people who don't want to hear, we are not only going to take them to court, we are going to also take their land away from them," he told MPs in the National Assembly.
After years of waiting, thousands of people who lodged a claim to have their land at Wallmansthal, north of Pretoria, returned to them will on Saturday receive the deeds of their stands. The land set to be restored measures 4 186ha. Approximately 4 270 people will benefit from the settlement, the Land Claims Commission said on Thursday.
The proposed compulsory disclosure of race and nationality for all property registrations is re-racialisation and bad for the economy, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Tuesday. "Re-racialising land ownership will hamper investment and misses the point," DA spokesperson on land affairs Maans Nel said in a statement.
Measures to curb or control foreign ownership of land in South Africa are proposed in a government-commissioned report, a copy of which was obtained on Monday. A panel of experts call in the document for a two-year moratorium on foreign ownership of land.
Government ministers have changed their minds about referring the forensic report on the affairs of the Land Bank to the police. According to Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko, they did so after hearing that a number of board members and senior executives of the bank had challenged statements in the report.
Hundreds of men and women, including Cabinet ministers, marched in Pretoria on Wednesday in support of the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children campaign. The crowd marched from Sammy Marks Square to the Union Buildings to hand over a memorandum calling for more to be done for gender equality.
Top Land Bank officials have siphoned off more than R2-billion -- meant for farmers -- to fund their close friends' and associates' ventures, the Sunday Times reported. The money was reportedly used for luxury golf estates, a sugar mill, equestrian estates and residential developments. The fraud was revealed in a forensic audit by Deloitte, which was handed to the Cabinet this week.
