Land tenure is a hot topic that will come to a head when the issue of communal land is discussed during the drafting of the Land Reform Bill.
So said Gugile Nkwinti, minister of rural development and land reform at Agri SA’s recent congress. Land tenure is the central theme of his department’s Green Paper on Land Reform.
“It is going to be a battle between tradition and modernity in terms of the Constitution” he said. He added that freehold is the preferred tenure of many ANC members. “If there must be leasehold, the minimum term I’m advised the ANC members prefer is 30 years.”
Nkwinti, however, felt that such a long term raises problems. “We don’t want to give land for 30 years and find [a beneficiary] can’t farm it,” he said.
He pointed to the current Proactive Land Acquisition System (PLAS), which gives emerging farmers a couple of years to prove their farming ability to get the land. He said that foreign ownership of local land is a problem. “We don’t want to drive away foreign investment, but foreign landowners must also contribute to change in South Africa.”
Nkwinti explained that foreign landowners should get black people into their business structures in order to transfer skills and “teach them to run businesses”. “We want to create certainty for the market to work. South Africa must provide leadership for the rest of Africa. We need a model of land tenure that works for Africa.”
The Green Paper proposes a four-tier land tenure system which includes freehold, leasehold by the state, communal hold and conditional long-term hold for foreigners. – Jaco Visser
