Last year’s policy shift allowing the state to take an active role in identifying and buying land for redistribution, rather than forcing Land Affairs to wait for land reform applications to arrive on its desk, should speed up spending considerably.
A shift in allocations signals that proactive land buying by the state – to meet its 30% target – will dominate spending trends in the next three years. By 2009/10 restitution’s budget will have dropped by almost a third to R1,25 billion (all land claims are expected to be settled by March 2008), whereas redistribution and tenure reform’s budget will almost treble to R3,30 billion – a fivefold increase since 2005/06. Implementation is likely to kick in this year through a so-called special purpose vehicle that pools resources of different departments and private sector partners for buying and developing land.
Officials are mooting a separate entity or parastatal, but Treasury officials are yet to be convinced this is necessary, fearing a wasteful duplication of functions and resources. They are likely to favour reviving a planning committee comprising top officials from relevant departments, including housing and local government. Recent efforts to slash red tape, particularly allowing provincial land commissioners to authorise farm sales of up to R50 million without ministerial approval, will undoubtedly speed up spending in the Land Claims Commission too.
A new incentive scheme to attract and retain better-calibre staff should also help. Banks officials have welcomed government’s proactive efforts as a step in the right direction, but said capacity concerns remained paramount. “Capacity in the land acquisition unit in the Land Bank leaves much to be desired. These issues must be resolved first before creating any new entity,” said a senior official from Absa. Despite these reservations Treasury officials are confident Land Affairs will be able to spend its R5,7 billion allocation for 2007/08 (after managing to spend only R3,3 billion the year before). “The department can go out to buy land and disburse it rather than relying on the willing buyer, willing seller model,” said one official. “These interventions – including using expropriation as an extreme measure – will definitely speed things up.” – Stephan Hofstätter
