In his State of the Nation Address in 2021, President Cyril Ramaphosa said during the course of the next financial year, they will establish a land and agrarian reform agency to fast-track land reform. AsPresident Cyril Ramaphosaprepares to deliver the State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday evening, questions have arisen on why the Department of Land Reform did not implement the Land Reform Agency, which the president announced about five Sona’s ago. “Who is stalling the process?
Was it (former minister of the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Thoko) Didiza or now (Department of Land Reform and Rural Development Minister Mzwanele) Nyontso, or are the bureaucrats that are ignoring the president’s instruction,” asks Professor Johan Kirsten, the director of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER). Delivering the State of the Nation Address in February 2021, Ramaphosa said: “During the course of the next financial year, we will establish a land and agrarian reform agency to fast-track land reform.” In 2020, he said SA became theworld’s second-largest exporterof citrus, with strong export growth in wine, maize, nuts, deciduous fruit and sugar cane. He noted that the favourable weather conditions in 2020 and the beginning of 2021 meant that agriculture was likely to grow in the near term.
The president said the success was an opportunity to accelerate land redistribution through a variety of instruments, such as land restitution and expropriation of land to boost agricultural output. “To date, the government has redistributed over five million hectares (ha) of land, totalling around 5 500 farms, to more than 300 000 beneficiaries. This is in addition to the land restitution process, which has benefited over two million land claimants and resulted in the transfer of around 2,7 million ha.
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“We are also pursuing programmes to assist smallholder and emerging farmers with market access, to develop skills across the entire agricultural value chain and increase the number of commercial black farmers,” Ramaphosa said at the time. Why is the state still holding onto the 2.5 million ha of land they acquired through PLAS, asks Kirsten. “This is an ideal opportunity to empower black farmers.
Why is the land not transferred to them with title deeds? Why is there no consequence management?”
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