New land bill no 'quick-fix'

2008-06-25 14:59

Johannesburg - The government's lack of capacity to perform on land reform would not be fixed by the Expropriation Bill, Andre Botha, president of Agri Gauteng, said on Wednesday.

"It is clear that the challenges facing government and organised agriculture in land reform have nothing to do with the acquisition of high potential agricultural land by government or the free market price of land."

Botha said in Gauteng land had been offered to government and in most cases the prices were acceptable to land owners.

He said the real problem was government's capacity to perform on the matter.

"This cannot be fixed by a draconian Expropriation Bill, the application would only aggravate the real problems."

Botha said the challenges could be addressed without the "draconian measures" by identifying and addressing the real problems.

He said in Gauteng a database of available farms for purchase by government were drawn up - of which 127 had been evaluated as economically viable farming units for the purpose of settling new farmers successfully.

46 000ha available

The farming body said these farms represented 46 000ha of high potential agricultural land and were made available to Gauteng's department of land affairs (DLA) for land redistribution in 2007.

"However, notwithstanding meetings with the deputy director general of the DLA in 2007 and again in February 2008, only seven of those farms have been transferred to date," said Botha.

He said 71 of the viability reports that had to be furnished by Gauteng's department of agriculture conservation and environment were still outstanding.

Botha said valuations were done by registered valuers but government failed to make offers for land valued.

"Farmers wait up to nine months for an offer on land that had been made available for land reform.

"A production season has been lost and farms lay fallow while farmers involved in the process have lost income."

Botha said compared to 2005, when there was a high trust in government on land reform, farmers were now loosing trust in the state's ability to perform on land reform.

- SAPA