MPUMALANGA’s controversial Motheo rural housing deal has finally been renegotiated but is still being delayed by legal technicalities surrounding tribal land, provincial housing MEC, David Mabuza, said on Tuesday. The original R198-million deal, hailed as South Africa’s largest rural housing project at the time, was cut by half in 1997 when a commission of inquiry ruled that tender procedures had been flaunted and that the deal was therefore technically illegal. Mabuza stressed on Tuesday that the latest hitches were caused by new legal difficulties involved with building on tribal land and not because of any problems with Motheo or the renegotiated contract itself. Tribal land is currently State-owned property held in trust for communities, making it difficult for local authorities or developers to issue individual title deeds for recipients of low cost housing grants.