Allocation of state farm land a slow process, says Didiza

The government’s plan to release 700,000ha of “vacant or underutilised” state land for use by black farmers is proceeding more slowly than expected, agriculture, land reform & rural development minister Thoko Didiza told MPs on Thursday.

The release of state land was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa last October as a priority to speed up land reform. The 700,000ha includes 896 farms, most of which were acquired by homeland governments during apartheid and had remained state property.

Speaking in her department’s budget vote in the National Assembly, Didiza said leases had been issued for less than 25% of the land, due to the complicated situation that existed where many of the farms were not vacant but already occupied by communities and farmers whose leases had expired or who had no leases at all.

A land inquiry process to investigate the status of the farms had, however, resulted in close to 50% of the farms being allocated to individuals, with the issuing of leases still pending. The leases that have so far been issued include 78 farms allocated to 211 women; 18 farms to 131 youth; and one farm to a person with disabilities.

These are the three priority groups identified for the programme. The overwhelming majority of land reform beneficiaries in the past have been men, many of them well-off businessmen rather than farmers.

Didiza admitted that the land inquiry process had revealed that the management of farm land leases was chaotic, with several well-publicised cases that involved established black farmers being erroneously evicted from their farms in the process of allocating state land. These include the case of David Rakgase and Ivan Cloete, who had been saved from eviction by the efforts of DA MP Annette Steyn, who waged a legal and a public campaign on their plight.

“The Rakgase, Cloete and [Vuyani] Zigana cases, though resolved, have amplified the need for a complete overhaul of our system of property management as a department,” said Didiza.

Speaking in the debate, Steyn dedicated her speech to Rakgase, saying that his legal fight to obtain a lease for his farm had inspired other black farmers to take up similar action.

“The publication of the much talked about 700,000ha of supposedly ‘vacant or underutilised’ state land that was to be made available for redistribution is another clear example of the chaos in the land administration,” said Steyn.