Hon House Chairperson, Deputy President, the DA supports the efforts to release state land for land reform purposes. This is long overdue and something that we have been calling for. My concern however with the second part of the question relating to the economic participation and the agricultural sector is that are you aware of all the forensic as well as the Special Investigation Unit, SIU investigations currently ongoing in the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development? This is because of irregularities or stealing regarding use of state funds that was budgeted towards farmer support.
The SIU is investigating the comprehensive agricultural support programme, forensic investigation into strengthening the relative rights of farm workers programme, recapitalisation and the development programme. The R3,9 billion as announced by President
Ramaphosa for blended finance was put on hold already in April this year.
So, the difficulty that our farmers have is the misappropriation of funds in the department. What are going to do about that?