Programme director
Deputy Minister
MECs for Agriculture and Rural Development
Director-General and staff
Traditional leaders
Land claimants
Good morning
I extend a special welcome to delegates, traditional leaders and stakeholders here with us this morning.
Some of you have travelled long distances to be here today. I thank you for that. I acknowledge that we have not done well in managing the Land Reform Programme, as government, causing strain, pain and frustration. In some instances Land Reform programmes have not yielded the intended results.
The objective of this National Land Reform Consultative Workshop is to look at the challenges facing land reform programmes and also to give feedback to different stakeholders on various workshops that have been held with farmers at the national level.
The workshops were on Farm Equity Schemes, (FES) Land Redistribution and Agricultural Development (LRAD), Settlement Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG), Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) and Restitution.
The land reform policy is underpinned by three principles, namely; the deracialisation of the rural economy for sustainable growth; equitable and democratic land redistribution across race, gender and colour; and production discipline for sustainable food security.
Land Reform is part of an effort by the government to undermine and defeat the legacy of apartheid legacy.
This will bring about national unity.
Here in this workshop we, therefore, need to focus on six critical areas, namely:
- Policy and legislative reforms
- Institutions to support land reform
- Communication
- Monitoring and evaluation of land reform programmes
- Continuous capacity building for beneficiaries and officials and
- Development of efficient, transparent systems and procedures.
The purpose here today is to evaluate the impact of the land reform in terms of its intended objective – to redress land imbalances in our country.
We must therefore look at, amongst others, the following:
- What have been our successes
- What have been our shortcomings
- What is to be done?
It would have been folly of government if it thought it could run this massive, extremely emotive national programme on its own. It could never have been the intention of government to deny people, even a single individual, their constitutional right of equitable redress from the brutal and unjust policies and laws of apartheid.
We are here today to draw on your experiences - sweet and bitter ones - of this programme. Even more importantly, we want you to work with government to resolve all problems/challenges facing government in this programme. That is why we are here. We are all privileged here to embark on this noble exercise.
We must stay focused on this task throughout these two days. There is no predetermined outcome. It will emerge from debates and discussions.
I thank you.
