Speech by Rural Development and Land Reform Minister, Gugile Nkwinti, on his departmental budget vote, national assembly, parliament, Cape Town, June 17 2009
The MINISTER OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND LAND REFORM: Thank you hon Chair, hon members, as we prepare the way for implementing the objectives of our new Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, we must take stock of what has been done by the Department of Land Affairs and, based on that, clearly articulate the way forward
The key mandate of the Department of Land Affairs was primarily tfo create and maintain an equitable and sustainable land dispensation through the land redistribution, tenure reform and restitution programmes.
As reflected in the 2008-2011 strategic plan, the department revised down the national land redistribution target to 608 000 hectares in order to align with actual budget allocation. Of that revised target thus far, the department has delivered the total of 443 600 hectares consisting of 501 projects and benefitting 14 457 persons or groups.
The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights settled the total of 653 claims, including 108 claims that were dismissed. This resulted in approximately 394 000 hectares of land being approved for restoration, affecting about approximately 30 000 households.
Cumulatively, the approved hectares of land for restitution purposes since 1995 is 2.47 million hectares representing a 10% contribution to the overall target of redistributing 30% of white owned agricultural land to black farmers by the year 2014.
In terms of forestry claims, great progress has been made with regard to the implementation of the memoranda of agreements signed with Mondi, as well as the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry on the settlement of these claims. And much of the deliverables in that regard will be reported in the 4th coming financial year.
The commission is left with approximately 4296 complex rural claims to settle, with four of the provincial offices intending to finalise their claims by the end of this financial year. These are the Gauteng office which is left with only three outstanding claims, the Free State with 22, Northern Cape with 164 and the Western Cape with 573.
The commission will also focus on finalising 1 695 of the remaining rural claims. While the department develop the post-settlement strategy to effectively support communities after they took transfer of land, this strategy could however not be fully implemented due to lack of capacity.
With regard to 19 June, it marks 96th anniversary of the infamous 1913 Land Act. In this part of the process of remedying wrongs created by this notorious legislation, we celebrate the return of peoples to their ancestral land through the restitution process.
On Friday 19th June, we will be in Riemvasmark restoring 46 000 hectares of land to the community. Together with the community, we will celebrate the return of their ancestral land. The community will once again be the custodians of land that belonged to your ancestors.
The department has recognised that in order to move forward decisively with the land redistribution programme significant changes will have to be made to the willing buyer willing seller model of land redistribution.
The department will have to investigate less costly alternative methods of land acquisition by engaging with all stakeholders in the sector. We have had the landless people; they say that the willing buyer willing seller model does not work. We have had the ANC 52nd National Conference in 2007; it said the model does not work. We now need to the landed volk of our country. We will be seeking a much more pragmatic formula to land redistribution, one which should address the issue as part of our country's own going effort at national reconciliation.
It should not be seen as a super profit making business venture. Such an approach would lead our country to a dead end in the long term. Our strongly held view is that land access and ownership should first of all satisfy land needs of South Africans. This objective shall preferably be pursued without the need to amend the Constitution.
Securing people's tenure is a foundation of rural development and it is imperative that the department reviews policy and legislation which relate to tenure on commercial farms, as well as in communal areas.
As a short to medium term measure we will continue to provide legal assistance to the 2.8 million people living without secure tenure on commercial farms in South Africa.
Two most recent Grahamstown Court judgements in favour of victims of farm evictions in the Cradock and Seven Fountains areas are encouraging in this regard.
Side by side this aggressive legal protection of the rights of farm tenants and workers on white commercial farms, the former homeland areas will become a central focus of the government's comprehensive rural development programme for the next five years.
The strategy for the implementation of a comprehensive rural development programme and land reform is agrarian transformation. A sustained rapid and fundamental change in the relations of land, livestock, cropping and community for sustainable growth and development.
Relying heavily on the Freedom Charter, the 2005 January 8th Statement of the ANC has the following to say in this regard, I quote:
"The democratic state must take the lead in the transformation of our economy away from the festers of the past, which constrain growth and development. Among the mechanisms that the developmental state deploys to restore the national wealth of our country to the people are as follows: Firstly, sustained and substantial investment in economic and social infrastructure built with methods with a bias towards labour intensive technologies. Secondly, increasing the access of the masses of the people to the physical resources, particularly land, housing and community infrastructure. Thirdly, poverty reduction and eradication through job creation, skills development and budget interventions to increase the social wage bearing in mind our limited resources. Fourthly, affirmative action, broad-based black economic empowerment and other interventions designed to fast track the inclusion of the previously marginalised in the mainstream economy and simultaneously transform the structure of the economy, And finally, ensuring the growth and development of our economy to provide the means to achieve the broad goals indicated by the Freedom Charter."
Of course, this is what we have to do. As his Excellency, the President of the republic enjoins us during his state of the nation's address; we are committed to speedily returning the Land Use Management Bill to this House after undertaking the necessary consultations. Without this Bill, we may not achieve our goal of dealing with the disintegrated apartheid settlement patterns and the inefficiency with which land use decisions are considered.
The Land Use Management Bill will also enable us to improve the capacity of our municipalities, especially rural ones in land use and management. Following the reorganisation of the new administration, we have now a new department, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.
The Budget Vote which I am presenting today is informed by what we consider to be an interim strategic plan. Our five year strategic plan for this new term of office will be influenced by a new strategy based on the new mandate for the government and its key objective and strategic goals. The strategy of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform in executing its rural development and land reform mandate is agrarian transformation.
Its key objective is the achievement of vibrant and sustainable rural communities. The overall outcome has got to be social cohesion and development.
The following strategic goals will be pursuit in the quest of vibrant and sustainable rural communities. Firstly, the establishment of business initiatives, Agro-Industries, corporative, cultural initiatives and vibrant local markets in rural settings. Secondly, the empowerment of rural people and communities, especially women and the youth through facilitating and mediating strong organisational and institutional capabilities and abilities to take full charge of their collective destiny. Thirdly, training rural people in technical skills combining them with indigenous know-how and knowledge to mitigate community vulnerability to, especially climate change, soil erosion, drought nor animal disease, flooding, tornadoes, other national disasters, emergencies and hunger and food insecurity. Finally, revitalisation and revamping of old and creating new economic, social and information communication infrastructure and public amenities and facilities in villages and small rural towns.
Our land planning and information branch has a capability to perform crucial land administration task such as mapping, surveying, demarcation, restoration of rights on land and overall land use management regulation.
All these activities are required to among other things guarantee ownership and security of tenure, support land property taxation, provide security for audit, develop and monitor land markets, protect state land, reduce disputes, facilitate land reform, improve urban planning and infrastructure development, support environmental management and produce statistical data. This capability will be the cutting edge in our pursuit of the milestones listed above.
We have developed the broad concept of what the new department will look like. This is work in progress, but we have a clear idea about its core thrust. Thanks to the resolution of the ANC 52nd National Conference on rural development, agrarian change and land reform.
An important element of this resolution is the establishment of a rural development agency. Our work has thus been cut out for us. Secondly, we have to speed up the settlement of processed claims and expedite the processing of remaining ones. This much has been made well understood by the national land claims commissioner and the Director-General.
In addition to the point made above, we have agreed that we need to improve the manner in which we work as a department. We have agreed that in both land restitution and land redistribution we must sort out unnecessary institutional constraints in the short term while dealing external challenges in the medium to long-term.
With the respect to the comprehensive rural development programme, we have adopted a three phased approach, short-term, medium-term and long-term linked to phase one, phase two and phase three.
In terms of phase one, we need to focus - though not exclusively - on breaking the back of hunger. We need to energise our people so that they become full participants in all efforts of pulling them out of poverty. It is during this phase that empowerment and training of people will be intensified. The battle-cry for this programme is Siyazonda, Vukuzenzele, Hi ti Hluvukisa, Phezukomkhono, and etcetera. This is a homestead and communal land production programme; which could be referred to as a mediated form of subsistence production. The catalytic tool for this programme is social, technical and institutional facilitation. A framework model for employment creation and skills training and development, in this regard, is being developed. This phase is being piloted in Muyexe Village in the Greater Giyani Municipality, in Limpopo. It is going to be replicated in seven other provinces in the next few weeks.
In the medium-term, the focus is on enterprise development and food security. This programme which is a joint effort by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will be riding at the back of fencing. Its complexity and enterprise lies on the fact that it must encompass the total value added, in both cropping and livestock farming. The catalytic tools for this phase are economic, social, information and communication, and amenities and facilities infrastructure development. All nine provinces should commence with this phase very soon.
Finally, phase three is the long-term, in which the programme will focus on small, micro and medium enterprises and industries, cultural tourism, co-operatives and vibrant village markets and credit facilities and so on. The catalyst for this phase - though not exclusively - is the Rural Development Agency, riding at the back of phase two. The small rural towns will, prominently, feature during this phase.
Mr Chairperson, we cannot do all this work alone. As we are all aware, rural development is a transversal function. We are also aware that for the government to achieve its key objective of vibrant and sustainable rural communities and the long-term outcome of social cohesion and development, rural communities have to be both the object and subject of all processes affecting them. This is a fundamental assumption underlying the ANC's people-oriented and people-centred development perspective.
In this regard, the role of the following stakeholders cannot be over-emphasised; rural communities themselves, other government departments in both national and provincial spheres, both tiers of municipal government, farmers in traditional institutions, women and youth formations, people with disabilities, farm tenants and workers, labour unions operating on commercial farms, developmental non-governmental organisations, and the private sector and state-owned development entities.
Co-ordinating and putting these institutions and entities to effective use, is a mammoth task. The department will, urgently, need to establish the two sets of capabilities; namely, rural development agency and the social, technical and institutional facilitation branch. This urgent task forms part of our organisational structure plans. Once more, extensive consultation will take place with regard to the establishment of the said rural development agency. As you will have been noted above, the Department of Land Affairs put in place a post land settlement strategy but could not implement it due to lack of capacity. Many farms which the government had purchased as part of its land reform programme have been repossessed, auctioned and repurchased, in most cases, by the same white farmers from whom the farms have been bought.
In short, Mr Chairperson, the department lack strategic capacity to protect and to defend the productive assets acquired by the state to empower historically disadvantaged South Africans. This agency will, amongst other responsibilities, provide this sorely needed strategic capacity to: follow the Rand; warehouse farms from the Land Bank; make strategic land reform interventions; and align with or enter into strategic institutional partnerships in pursuit of rural development and land reform mandate. Further detail will emerge during the said consultations.
As I stated during the debate on the State of the Nation Address, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has identified the villages of Muyexe, Dingamanzi and Gongongo in the Greater Giyani Municipality, in Limpopo Province as the pilot site for the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme. In the President's State of the Nation Address and in his reply debate, he endorsed this initiative making it a government project. As a department we are very excited with that development.
The Portfolio Committees on Rural Development and Land Reform and the Portfolio Committees on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries raised a big question during our interaction, last week. They said: "We have been observing over many years that government departments and entities have not been to work in an integrated manner. How are you going to make it happen now?" That's the question posed. They sited as one example the failure in terms of Integrated Development Plans in municipalities.
Mr Speaker, there is nothing romantic about poverty, inequality, unemployment, cultural backwardness and social fragmentation. And we dare not romanticise these socioeconomic illnesses, for they are real and very bad, as reflected in rural communities and peri-urban areas across our country. We have to deal with them in a decisive manner. This much has been stated and emphasised by the President in his State of the Nation Address, his reply to his debate and in numerous media interviews - before and since his address. We want to restate what we said during the State of the Nation Address that the road to rural development and emancipation will be a long and winding one, which we must, together as a nation, undertake to attain our historic mission to bring about a better life for all our people, irrespective of where they reside in our country. It is only through this national partnership - as the President enjoined us, South Africans, in his State of the Nation Address that we have the hopes and aspirations of our people a reality. But one fundamental requirement and the bottom line for a successful and lasting rural development project is that rural communities have to be assisted and encouraged in a sustained manner to organise themselves into disciplined productive formations through which they can express themselves, in themselves and for themselves, in the spirit of Vukuzenzele, Hi ti Hluvukisa, Siyazondla or Phezukomkhono. I thank you.
Source: Hansard, Parliament, Cape Town (note: this is an unrevised transcript)
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