Cape Town - President Jacob Zuma may have called for the expedition of the land reform programme in his January 8 statement at the weekend, but the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform appears to not have the money to cover thousands of new land claims.
It has been more than six months since Zuma signed into law the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill, but the Rural Development and Land Reform Department does not have the almost R200 billion needed to cover the expected 400 000 new claims. Despite this, the department insists the new claims would be accommodated in the fiscus.
The department said on Monday that 36 499 new claims had been lodged as at the end of November last year.
However, it did not indicate where it would get between R129bn and R179bn to fund the new land claims.
Zuma said at the weekend R18bn has been spent to settle 70 000 claims lodged before the December 1998 deadline.
The president reiterated that land reform was one of the priorities of the government and this must be addressed urgently. He said one of the resolutions of the Freedom Charter was to deal with the question of land.
The Rural Development and Land Reform Department admitted on Tuesday that there was still a backlog of thousands of claims lodged before the 1998 cut-off date.
Out of the 36 499 new claims lodged since the re-opening of land claims in June, none have been processed yet.
“The Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act of 2014 requires that the Commission (on Restitution of Land Rights) ensures that priority is given to claims lodged no later than December 31, 1998 and which have not yet been finalised,” said the department in a written response.
“The commission is therefore processing the claims lodged before the 1998 cut-off date,” it added.
There was currently a backlog of 8 373 land claims lodged before the first deadline. It was not clear when this backlog would be cleared.
Despite the expected large volumes of new claims, the department remained confident it would have the necessary funding to cover new claims. It admitted that its own study found that it would need between R129bn and R179bn to settle new claims.
Currently, the budget for the department is R9.4bn and this would increase to R9.5bn in the new financial year of 2015/16. Out of that, more than R5bn is for restitution and land reform.
Political Bureau