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Biggest handover of state land
11/10/2002 16:16 - (SA)
Bethlehem - The biggest hand-over yet of state land took place on Friday as part of the Free State land reform programme.
The title deeds to 35 projects, covering 40 431 hectares, were given to new owners at Harrismith and Bethlehem in the eastern Free State.
The handing-over ceremony followed years of bureaucratic
processing and preparations after the new owners, who up till now
leased their farms from government, had asked as early as September 1995 to buy them.
Land Affairs spokesperson Sefai Monaheng said on Friday that the then land affairs minister Derek Hanekom had approved the farms' sale at productive value. The farms, in the former homeland area of Qwa Qwa, were part of former South African Development Trust Land, which fell under the minister's jurisdiction.
Neighbouring commercial farmers have been worried over the past few years about the financial fate of the black farmers settled on the land. These farms, including some of the best stock farming land in the area, were disowned many years ago by the apartheid government to be included into the former homeland area.
'Government not living up to promises'
Farmers accused government of not living up to its promises of
helping develop the Qwa Qwa farmers expertise.
However, a spokesperson for the department of land affairs said on Friday that all the farmers receiving title deeds were actively farming. The one or two who had suffered financially, had been helped to their feet by government and were now seen as commercial farmers.
A smaller portion of the 40 431 hectares handed over on Friday represented state-owned land donated to the local Maluti-a-Phofung municipality. This was for the development of cemeteries and the so-called Disaster Park, where Phuthaditjhaba flood victims, hit by floods in 2000, were re-settled.
President Thabo Mbeki earlier declared the Qwa Qwa area a rural development nodal point due to the high rate of poverty and the population density, Monaheng said.
She said Friday's 40 431 hectares were part of a total of 50655 hectares of former South African Development Trust land in the Free State that had already been disposed of by the department of land affairs.
- SAPA
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