Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has announced a marginally reduced allocation for land restitution this year — despite the looming March 2008 restitution deadline.
This is largely because the land affairs department spent only R2,2-billion of its R3,4-billion allocation last year. The 2007/08 allocation is R3,3-billion and R7-billion has been earmarked for the next three years. The restitution programme is designed to restore land to those deprived of it under past discriminatory laws.
Ruth Hall, a land analyst at the University of the Western Cape’s Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, said: “If past performance is anything to go by this is unlikely to be enough and unlikely to be spent unless urgent attention is given to the Land Claims Commission’s capacity.”
She believes the underspending on last year’s budget stems from the slow pace of settling complex rural claims. “This casts doubt on reaching the deadline of 2008 and again brings into question the continued need for the commission to continue operating beyond 2008,” she said. “The failure is largely due to the weak institutional capacity; there is an urgent need to invest in capacity to implement.”
When President Thabo Mbeki announced the March 2008 restitution deadline, he appeared to set it as the date by which all claims should be settled. However, the government now says it is the deadline for gazetting all deserving claims.
Hall predicted the process would continue for another 10 years. She said it was impossible to forecast how much money was still needed to address restitution. The commission had not been able to estimate how many claims were outstanding and which were urban or rural. It also has been unable to calculate the market price of the land involved.
AgriSA president Lourie Bosman said he believed past allocations for land restitution were adequate, but also said that underspending by the land affairs department was the root cause of underperformance in the restitution programme.
The good news is that the land reform budget, which deals with redistribution and tenure reform, has nearly doubled. “This is a good thing — it will mean increased spending on consultants and contracted service providers and communications,” Hall said.
The budgets for land reform and restitution make up 0,8% of the national budget of R534-billion, while the land affairs department’s total budget of R5,6-billion represents just 1% of the total.
Hall said the budget allocation for agriculture — R2,3-billion — was also cause for concern, despite more funds being made available for land support programmes, such as the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) scheme, which aims to promote black commercial farmers.
“There is increased funding to provide agricultural support to land reform beneficiaries, but this is still patently inadequate. The Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme has increased from R300-million to R415-million,” she said.
Bosman agreed, saying that agriculture received a Cinderella budget every year. “The dream is to have more funds available. As restitution finishes, we are hoping that LRAD and other agriculture grants will receive a bigger slice of the pie.”
But the question remains whether the agriculture and land affairs departments are making good use of their budgets. Hall said the land reform budget — for redistribution to land-hungry people who do not qualify for restitution — had been spent, but that land acquisition targets had been missed by a large margin. “This means that more is being spent to buy less land.”
The department has been criticised for spending too much time and money on policy workshops, rather than implementation. Hall said this was not entirely fair, because it had to attend to policy urgently. “We are still waiting for new policy direction after the National Land Summit in mid-2005 — nearly two years ago.”