The government lacks efficient policy for land reform and redistribution, the SA Council of Churches secretary-general Eddie Makue said on Wednesday.
"... As far as I know, they don't exist," he said at the opening of a three-day SACC national Land Reform Conference in Kempton Park.
Churches needed to continue to be involved in the struggle for land, he said.
It was a struggle which had not ended, "but is continuing into the new dispensation".
Makue said the SACC developed a covenant and land programme in 1997.
Its three aims were to:
- establish how the church could make land available towards the eradication of poverty;
- ensure effective utilisation of church land in a way that sets an example for other land owners, particularly the government; and
- ensure there was justice in land reform.
While churches owned only one percent of the country's land, it was not barren, but usable, he said.
The SACC had since learned that "the government is slower than the church in their pace of land reform," said Makue. - Sapa