land

The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) says that despite receiving half a billion rand more from treasury than last year with funds of just over R4 billion, land reform is still spluttering along in South Africa.

PLAAS land analyst, Ruth Hall, points out that the 2010/11 national budget shows that there was no indication of a new direction for land reform.

The Restitution Programme - one of the three pillars of the National Land Reform Programme - was started by a skeletal working group in 1993. Later on, the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994 together with the Constitution formed the basis of the Restitution Programme.

The Land Claims Commission could not afford to pay about R8.8 billion in grants for post-settlement support to beneficiaries of the land restitution programme.

The Commission, which is tasked with restoring to blacks land that was taken from them during apartheid, is also unable to R1.19 billion for land it bought because of a shortage of funds.

Every year, GreaterGood South Africa organises and hosts Do It Day, a call-to-action event that connects people with good causes around the country. Do It Day is all about building a culture of volunteering in South Africa and exemplifies the unifying power volunteering has to change lives.

The South African government has set itself the target of redistributing 30% of South Africa’s commercial farming land to black farmers by 2014. So far it has only achieved just over 4%.

The easiest way to quickly reach the 30% target would be for government to find large amounts of cheap, unproductive peripheral land and allocate this to a few people. This land could be in the middle of the arid Karoo or the Northern Cape.

The Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), have warned that the proposed prohibitions on foreign land ownership promotes the perception that non-nationals are not welcome in the country.