Land reform faces funding shortages

A senior land expert called on the South African government on Tuesday to be "realistic" when setting targets for placing more commercial farmland in the hands of the rural poor. Edward Lahiff of the Western Cape Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (Plaas) told IRIN there was a "glaring gap" between "targets set by government" to transfer farmland to landless blacks and the "resources provided to meet them". He pointed to recent research conducted by Plaas, which showed that the government faced a shortfall of Rand 587 million (US $88 million) for land reform projects it has already approved but cannot afford to finance. Land affairs offices in both the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces have been discouraging new grant applications due to the backlog. "Other provinces face similar problems. In the Western Cape, however, the problem is particularly acute because of the high price of land," Lahiff noted. The Western Cape provincial government has estimated that it needs R1.5 billion (US $225 million) a year - 30 times more than it receives now - to meet the target of transferring 30 percent of mainly white-owned commercial land to black owners by 2015. The Eastern Cape will need R250 million (US $38 million) a year, or five times the 2004/05 budget allocation. "Currently, the process is hamstrung by the shortage of funds, which requires that the government scale up the budget substantially or reconsider its targets. Unless these figures are revised it is unlikely that the official 2015 target would be met," Lahiff warned. Plaas has said that "non-market options for acquiring land [should be] considered" for reasonable progress to be made in land redistribution. The agrarian think-tank noted that by March this year only 2.9 percent of agricultural land had been transferred, at a cost of R4.6 billion (US $689 million). "The current policy of paying full market prices for land has proven to be both slow and expensive. Both the constitution and recent judicial findings make provision for below-market levels of payment for owners. It is not a legal necessity but, instead, a political decision. Other options should be considered if the government hopes to speed up the process," Lahiff commented. He suggested that the valuation procedure should consider the original price paid and the subsidy farmers received from the government to purchase the property. South Africa's land reform programme is based on a fair price set by the willing buyer, willing seller system. "No country has successfully transferred 30 percent of commercial land without an element of confiscation - but this will, of course, have serious political implications," he said. Florence Cairncross, acting director of the NGO, the National Land Committee, said the current land policy had not "enabled those who desperately needed land". "We have outright rejected the government's market-driven based policy and have consistently called for a land summit to review the progress made so far. In fact, over the past 10 years very little land has changed hands. We now have to look for community-driven solutions," she told IRIN.