/ 22 February 2010

Land reform still just ‘trundling along’

Despite receiving half a billion rand more from treasury than last year with funds of just over R4-billion, land reform is still spluttering along in South Africa. And surprisingly land restitution seems to be the biggest loser this year in the land budget.

Ruth Hall, a land analyst at the University of the Western Cape’s Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (Plaas), said the budget showed that there was no indication of a new direction for land reform.

Land affairs and rural development will get 18% more than last year, an amount of R1,56-billion, but land restitution that is used to fund land claims will get 18% less.

Hall said this shows that Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has been guided by caution.

“The budget suggests that despite the department’s calls for great order-of-magnitude increases into the tens of billions of rands to fund land reform and to meet the magical 30% target, this is just not on the cards. The government would most likely look instead to driving down the costs of land acquisition through its alternatives to the willing buyer, willing seller principle, though this will not resolve the problem.

“Rather, we should expect that land reform will trundle along in the same way it has in the past few years, though hopefully with improved systems to ensure that people getting land have the support they need to use it,” she said.

A large chunk of the land reform budget will be used for grants, to enable people to buy land through the market-based approach.

Hall said the extra money in the budget is earmarked for an agricultural holding account, which suggests that government is going to push ahead with buying more land to lease out rather than for transfer to beneficiaries.

“Given the existing problems it has with managing state land — and qualified audits because of this over three consecutive years — this may not be such a good thing,” Hall said.

Restitution is the big concern. Just more then R1,5-billion was allocated for settling claims, down from R1,9-billion in last year’s budget.

Hall said reducing the funds for restitution now, and for the third year in a row, seems ill-advised given that, unlike land redistribution, there is a clear group of people with claims to specific land, who have been waiting for more than a decade for government to respond to their claims.

Apart from new claims the land claims commission still has to finalise, existing commitments are in the region of R3-billion.

“Many of these land claimants and landowners will have to wait for future budgets to get their land and cash,” she said. “And those whose claims have not yet been addressed will have to wait for the backlog to be cleared, as their claims will start to be attended to only in 2012-13.”

Rural development, which at first glance seems to have a meagre budget, might get its funds from other parts of the budget as it has to coordinate with other government departments.

“The indications that rural areas will be prioritised for job opportunities under the expanded public works programme, and the creation of a new on-site water and sanitation grant as part of the rural housing programme, are steps in the right direction,” Hall said.

The actual shape and scale of rural development has yet to become clear, she said.