The state is not a cash cow - minister

Durban - A view that the state was a cash cow had hampered the willing buyer, willing seller principle in land restitution, Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti said on Tuesday.

"The market mechanism is good for individuals, but when the state enters that market, the price shoots up because everybody thinks the state is a cash cow," he told a three-day National House of Traditional Leaders lekgotla in Durban.

For this reason, the government had drafted the property valuation bill.

"That land valuation bill is meant to shift the system of buying land by the state from private hands so that we don't use the market."

Nkwinti said the bill would be presented at the next sitting of Cabinet after public submissions had been taken into account.

Should the bill become law, it would see the establishment of a valuer general's office to determine the price that the government paid for land.

"You will have a two-tier system of land acquisition, one being driven by the market [for indivduals], but then another one which is based on the just and equitable principle of the Constitution, when the state buys land in the public interest," Nkwinti said.

He said only South Africans should own land in the country and the bill would make it cheaper for the state to acquire land for redistribution.

"No non-South African national should own land in South Africa. What should happen is that they should lease land, but they can't own land."

He accepted it would be difficult to reverse land ownership by foreigners, who had acquired the land prior to the passing of any law against foreign land ownership.

He said that a recent land audit had revealed what land was state-owned and what was privately owned.

The audit did not reveal who owned private land, or what their race was. The government was attempting to determine the race and nationality of those who owned land in the country.

"We are still using race as a mechanism to determine the extent to which we are making change in the country," he said.

The proposed land management commission, if established, would require everyone to declare all their land ownership, the minister said.