Chairperson, during September 2008 this honourable House debated and approved the Provision of Land and Assistance Amendment Bill. This Bill is critical for ensuring successful land and agrarian reform that will contribute to poverty eradication.
The Bill empowers the Department of Land Affairs to acquire moveable assets and fixed properties as going concerns. This includes agriculture related enterprises so that land beneficiaries, given the necessary assistance and equipped with appropriate skills, will be able to operate such enterprises.
Once enacted, the provisions of this measure will enable the department to facilitate sustainable land reform, contributing to alleviating the risk of failure.
According to Land Affairs Director-General, Thozi Gwanya, about 50% of land reform projects have failed or are on the verge of failing. The portfolio committee believes that the percentage of failures and those facing problems of sustainability are well in excess of 50%.
The Select Committee on Land and Environmental Affairs of the NCOP has proposed that new definitions and a new clause 10A(1) and (2) be inserted. It proposed a new definition for "agricultural enterprises" which the portfolio committee accepts, while expressing concerns that it goes a bit wider by including activities such as hunting, game propagation, forestry and fishing.
The second definition proposed, is "enterprise", which the portfolio committee has no problems with. The select committee proposed a new class which provides for the creation of trading entities through the department that will account for the acquisition, management, disposal and leasing of property and provision of financial assistance.
The trading entity will operate in conformity with the provisions of the Public Finance Management Act. Once established, the entity must maintain separate and itemised accounts and records of each agricultural enterprise or separately administered portion of property that it acquires. Some of us had objections to providing this kind of role for this entity, raising concerns about the lack of capacity in the department, which had a 22,7% vacancy rate in the 2007-08 financial year. Furthermore, it will be encroaching on the role of the Department of Agriculture.
The temptation to create numerous entities, following the acquisition of going concerns, will lead to undesirable bureaucratic expansion and the department is advised to act cautiously. Movable assets can move very fast and be pilfered within days of acquisition, unless adequate systems exist.
To ensure successful land and agrarian reform, which can contribute to poverty alleviation and food security, the department will have to be capacitated with skilled, loyal and accountable patriotic staff. If one takes what has happened over the last couple of weeks and months, such as the veld fires in the higher lying areas of the country and the decimation of vineyards here in the Western Cape, one realises that agriculture is an extremely tricky operation to be in today.
We need to be extra careful with whatever money we spend on the acquisition of such entities, and we must first see to it that we have beneficiaries in tow who are ready, willing and able to take over such enterprises. We must see to it that these enterprises do not remain as trading entities within the department because the state is not there to run agricultural enterprises or businesses. Its job is to see to it that beneficiaries get them as soon as possible and that they contribute handsomely towards food security.
The portfolio committee, having made these comments, trusts that the department, which is not here today, will have access to the Hansard and take into account the concerns that have been expressed here. We recommend that the select committee's amendments be supported.
Can I also request, when chairpersons of portfolio committees are not going to introduce the Bill and they've changed, that they inform the chair and give the name of the hon member who is doing it, otherwise these blanks are going to cause problems.
Chair, on the point that you are raising, it has always been like that. I was never billed to table the report. It was always going to be hon Abram who had to table the report.
I am making a simple request, not only to a particular portfolio committee, but to all portfolio committees, because I have a string of them which do not indicate ... [Interjections.]
From our side everything was done properly, so it needs to be investigated whether there is a problem in your system or not.
I do not know how properly it was done because the name is not here.
Chair, I move on behalf of the Chief Whip of the Majority Party:
That the Bill, as amended, be passed.
Motion agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly passed.