Three National Land Audits underway

There’s been very little research on landownership in South Africa since 1994, but now it seems there are three separate national land audits being conducted simultaneously.

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Industry analysts said this underscores the need for an accurate registry, but also of the mistrust that exists between the state and the private sector. Agri SA’s strategic committees held discussions in the Centurion on November 11th, after which it was announced that a national project to document all agricultural land ownership had been initiated.

“It’s something we’ve been planning for a very long time,” said Agri SA spokesperson Annelise Crosby. “We decided it wasn’t practical to partner solely with the Agricultural CEO’s forum on this. They are spearheading their own land audit, which we are still involved in, but we’re in a little bit of a hurry now, because you really can’t do anything or argue anything if you don’t have the facts on land ownership. It’s very late in the day unfortunately. We don’t want to say too much about it because we must see that it is feasible and that it can be done relatively quickly.”

The Agricultural CEO’s Forum has members from all of the major stakeholders in agriculture in South Africa (including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of rural development and land reform, AgriSA, TLU, NAFU and many private sector organizations), but the initiative is clearly proceeding too slowly for some.

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“The agricultural sector has been held back by lack of investment in farm infrastructure because there are a number of outstanding land claims, and farmers who are sitting on their farms waiting to be paid. Without accurate data on land holdings nobody will be able to tell when the state’s target of redistributing 30% of agricultural land will be reached; we will never reach the point where farmers feel confident investing in their land again,” said Agri SA deputy president Theo de Jager.

The department of rural development and land reform also has plans to create a national asset registry for agricultural land.  “The green paper proposes that the office of land commissioner be created, to conduct a land audit and regulate land holdings,” said ministerial spokesperson Mtobeli Mxotwa. 

The department has received a qualified opinion two years running from the Auditor General for its failure to consolidate its own land holdings into an accurate asset registry.  On November 10th Minister Gugile Nkwinti told parliament that “a joint task team between public works and our department has begun looking at an audit of state land.”

“We have five teams working through the provinces, led by the directors-general, to establish what is the precise number of outstanding land claims in each province…we think over the next two months or so we will have a clear determination on this,” he said.