South Africa will not be able to distribute 30% of its land to black people by 2014, the director general in the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs has warned.
Glen Thomas says the high land prices will make it impossible to reach the 2014 target — set by President Thabo Mbeki — if ‘drastic interventions†are not made.
Last year the department delivered just more than 250 000ha of land through its land redistribution programme. While this is significant, it is not nearly enough to meet the presidential target. Just less than 5% of land has been transferred in the 13 years since 1994.
To realise the 30% redistribution target, about 1,75-million hectares needed to have been redistributed every year from 2000. Up to now about 3,5-million hectares have been redistributed and just more than 20-million hectares still have to be delivered.
This means about two million hectares a year must be redistributed between 2007 and 2014.
Thomas says that in the past three financial years the department spent 100% of its budget on land transfers, but it had not been able to deliver land to reach the 30% target.
‘The fundamental problem is the high prices of land. Surely we cannot be expected to spend money that we don’t have,†he says. ‘We can buy only as much land as our budget allocation dictates.â€
He says the department’s allocation has not been increasing in tandem with rising land prices.
‘To the department it is clear that with the current total budget envelope available — R56-billion — for all government departments and spheres of government for the next three financial years, the target will not be met by 2014 unless some drastic interventions in the land market are made or government is prepared to increase its deficit by borrowing money for land reform,†Thomas warns.
It is estimated 5% of farmland has been up for sale every year in South Africa and critics say this availability should be enough. But the problem is not availability, says Thomas, it is the price of the land on offer.
After the land summit in 2005 the department considered a number of interventions to lessen the consequences of high land prices.
‘Increasing the deficit might not be prudent from a macroeconomic and fiscal policy perspective. In the light of this the only viable option, short of outright nationalisation of land, will be to reconsider the target by changing either the extent of land or the time frame or both.â€
Agricultural unions say Thomas is looking for reasons to hide his department’s own incompetence. The department of land affairs has been plagued by a huge turnover in staff, as well as a lack in skills. Relations between the department and white farmers are severely strained.
Thomas says one of the greatest challenges the department faces is the capacity and organisation of the state for effective service delivery. He says for almost two years the department has been engaged in business re-engineering and culture-change processes aimed at improving its capacity to do its work properly.