Hon House Chairperson, everything that we are going to do as the InterMinisterial committee will be transparent. The criteria to redistribute land will be transparent. Why are we selecting certain people that will benefit from that land release will be transparent. We are very happy to release to register of all people who have benefited from our land reform process since 1994.
We have made progress though not enough to celebrate about and that is why we discussed this matter here. To fast track our land restitution programme we must look at the option of expropriating land without compensation which is one of the instruments of pursuing land reform. We must say here that as government we are going to proceed restitution with the amount budgeted for in this current financial year.
We are going to continue to procure land and restitute it to those who have claimed it until you resolve the question here about section 25 of the Constitution. In the meantime, government will proceed to restitute land with the available resources that we have. We do not have
enough resources but we are going to continue to restitute land.
Government is going to redistribute land. There is land that has been claimed that is in the hands of government. That land is going to be released free of charge. We have got 261 claims of land parcels that have been made and those land parcels belong to government. We are in a process of releasing all these 261 land parcels.
On top of that, we have assessed 278 land parcels that are in the hands of government that we are aiming to redistribute. Remember this is not land that has been claimed. It is land that we have deliberately assessed as government to fast track our redistribution process. Now, we are done with the assessment of those land parcels and we know what these land parcels are capable of; whether you can grow crops or put livestock.
As we redistribute these land parcels it will come with an assessment report that would help the farmer about the status of that land so that you know exactly which crop you can grow or keep livestock. We are not just giving
you land but we want you to be productive on that piece of land. So our process of redistribution and restitution is well on track. In a very short space of time, all the Ministers in the InterMinisterial Committee will be out there to hand over these parcels before the end of the year. Thank you very much. [Applause.]