Chairperson, the SA Institute of Race Relations has dared to suggest that actual patterns of land ownership in South Africa bear little resemblance to the picture presented by many land activists and officials in government. The amount of South African land in black hands is not 13% but, they say, as high as 50%, with the bulk of land in white hands being held by South Africa's food producers.
Hon Minister, whichever way we look at it, any policy that compromises the ability of those producers to produce food will impact negatively on all of society, with a particularly harsh effect on the poorest families and communities.
The Department of Land Affairs, as it was known, has arguably been one of the worst performing departments and the capacity in the department continues to be perceived as extremely weak.
Insufficient involvement of specialist NGOs and development professionals in land reform processes, especially project preparation and planning, leaves poorly capacitated officials trying to deal with complex land reform issues without adequate support. This results in poor decisions and poor project conceptualisation.
A preoccupation with transferring land, instead of making sure that projects work, has proved problematic. The NGOs have witnessed an acute failure of the planning and preparation of projects. [Interjections.] They often see land transferred without any proper plan for how the land will be utilised or farmed, and insufficient participation of beneficiaries in planning processes. There has also been a failure to release preparation funding or preproject funding to enable this to occur.
The Minister was quoted as saying that 90% of farms transferred to emerging black farmers had failed and were no longer economically productive, and NGOs have observed this first-hand. There is a mismatch, they say, between project concepts and the skills levels and capacity of beneficiaries, coupled with insufficient beneficiary training and capacity-building, and weak beneficiary institutional capacity.
It is crucial that the department focuses on ensuring that the livelihoods of beneficiaries actually improve and that agricultural land remains productive. Often the income-earning expectations of beneficiaries exceed the profit a farm can actually make.
Because of a lack of planning in consultation with rural communities priorities can become confused, like, for example, completely underutilising even unused community halls. Priority responses in rural areas should be in regard to basic education, primary health, basic infrastructure and agriculture - both subsistence and commercial. This must be demand-led, and not supply-led, supporting growers and small farmers over a sustained period of time through sustained agricultural programmes, and not once-off, ad hoc capital investments.
The co-ops programme has also posed major challenges. It has been supply- led, and very few are economically viable or successful. So, that leaves me to say the ACDP calls for this programme to be reviewed. [Interjections.]
We do have serious reservations about supporting this Budget Vote. I thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]