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Cape Town - The draft green paper on land reform released by
Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti on Wednesday proposes
a single reconfigured four-tier system of land reform.
This will ensure that all South Africans, particularly rural
black people, have reasonable access to land with secure rights to fulfil their
basic needs for housing and productive livelihoods, he told a media briefing at parliament.
The green paper aimed to create a new trajectory for land
reform which attempted to break from the past without significantly disrupting
agricultural production and food security, and avoiding redistribution that
did not generate livelihoods, employment and incomes.
The principles underlying land reform were deracialising
the rural economy, democratisation and equitable land allocation and use across
race, gender and class, and a sustained production discipline for food
security, he said.
The green paper proposed a recapitalisation and development
programme to ensure that all land reform farms were 100% productive.
It focused on all land reform farms acquired through state funds since 1994, as well as smallholder farms privately acquired but where the new owners had had no means of keeping them productive.
The programme's strategy was partnership with commercial farmers
on a risk-sharing basis.
The proposed single four-tier tenure system included state
and public land on leasehold, privately owned land on freehold with limited
extent, land owned by foreigners on freehold but with precarious tenure and
obligations and conditions to comply with, and communally owned land on
communal tenure with institutionalised use rights.
An autonomous but not independent land
management commission was proposed with functions including advising,
coordinating, regulating and auditing.
The land
management commission would have the power to subpoena any entity, private
or public, to answer questions relating to its landholdings or land interests,
enquire about any land question, verify and/or validate or invalidate
individual or corporate title deeds, and seize or confiscate land obtained
fraudulently or through corrupt means.
The green paper further suggested establishing a statutory
office of the land valuer general responsible for, among other things,
providing fair and consistent land values for rating and taxing purposes,
determining financial compensation in cases of land expropriation, and
providing specialist valuation and property-related advice to the government.
A land rights management board and land rights management
committees were also proposed.
