Chairperson, the DA's vision for rural development and land reform in South Africa is informed by the four pillars of the open- opportunity society for all. These are redress, reconciliation, diversity and delivery. It is a vision of a thriving rural economy in which the vile injustices of South Africa's apartheid and colonial legacies are effectively and decisively redressed through a combination of sustained job- creating economic growth and a well-managed and resourced restitution programme.
Our approach to land reform has always been about the creation of genuine broad-based opportunity, coupled with the expansion and diversification of South Africa's commercial agriculture sector to increase productivity, create more rural jobs, and promote food security.
What this requires is an energetic and focused government, which is willing and able to perform its own functions effectively, while at the same time creating economic conditions which are conducive to sustained economic growth, which can attract investment and which can create jobs in order to ultimately eradicate the grinding rural poverty which grips the majority of our communities.
The ANC government's aims may be similar to those of the DA, but its state- centred approach and its failed policy implementation are vastly different. They have had the effect of ultimately hampering the achievement of these all-important goals.
At the level of implementation, for example, the department received yet another qualified audit from the Auditor-General in the 2009-10 financial year, with the Auditor-General citing once again its failure to conduct the all-important audit of state-owned land, which will enable it to reach a conclusive understanding of just how much state land is available for land reform purposes.
For 15 years, Mr Chairman, we have been subjected to excuse after excuse for the government's failure to conduct an audit of state-owned land and to get its house in order. All the while the department continues to engage in a process of aggressively acquiring land for reform purposes, under the auspices of the progressive land acquisition scheme, without knowing how much land it has in its possession. As such, we have no reason as a Parliament to believe that the Minister's new 2014 deadline for the completion of this audit will be met.
In addition to the failure to complete the state land audit, the Auditor- General further noted the following additional financial irregularities at the department: R53 million lost by the department through fraudulent activities; outstanding claims against the department amounting to R566 million; irregular and fruitless expenditure amounting to R4,1 million; fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounting to R3,2 million; and, finally, R420 million's worth of outstanding payments to land claimants.
The Deputy Minister, Thembelani Nxesi, has been a regular and enthusiastic attendee of the meetings of the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development. However, the Minister Gugile Nkwinti, under whose constitutional authority the activities of the department fall, has not appeared before the committee to account for the state of his department in the past year, even as his failure to perform has had an adverse effect on almost every single programme under the Minister's purview - the land reform programme, in particular.
Minister Nkwinti has acknowledged elsewhere the crisis which faces the department. Last year, the Minister admitted that 90% of the R5,9 million hectares of land acquired by the state for emerging farmers is not productive. As a consequence of this, one quarter of the R900 million budget for restitution had to be diverted to the Recapitalisation Programme in the last financial year. In addition, according to Minister Nkwinti and I quote:
To date, 852 distressed farms across the country have been advertised for expressions of interest by either mentors or strategic partners interested in making them commercially viable and productive.
At the level of policy, the ANC government seems more concerned with centring rural economic activity on itself than creating the economic and the regular three conditions necessary to make sustained economic growth and job creation a reality.
The much vaunted Green Paper on Rural Development and Land Reform, which was meant to be tabled for public comment in March 2010, has yet to be gazetted. While a number of copies of the draft document have been leaked to the media, causing a great deal of uncertainty in the agricultural sector, we have no guarantees that the government will be able to reach its own May 2011 deadline for the tabling of this all-important policy document.
The ANC government's Proactive Land Acquisition Scheme remains a seminal example of a rural economic government policy which is failing at both the policy and implementation levels.
A reply to a DA parliamentary question in January this year revealed that since the inception of the programme in 2006, the vast majority, that is 98,3%, of state land transferred to land reform beneficiaries by the department has not been transferred as freehold title. Instead, this programme has simply become a means by which the government has become an active participant in the commercial agriculture sector, while black beneficiaries are merely its tenants. According to the reply, of the 1 841 applications received since 2006, 528% were granted. Of those granted, only 1,7% have been converted into actual freehold title.
This is not land reform, Mr Chairman. It has more in common with nationalisation by stealth, since the leasehold title holders, who are supposed to be land beneficiaries, do not have the means to borrow against their assets in order to improve and implement changes to their businesses in the case of commercial operations, or simply to upgrade their property if it is residential.
In addition, so-called leasehold beneficiaries must apply and reapply for leases on an annual basis in order to continue their operations, until such time as the Department of Agriculture has decided that they are capable of continuing independently.
Mr Chairman, without the freedom and the stability to invest in their properties, black so-called beneficiaries of this programme are consigned to the status of tenants. They have no incentive to make improvements to the land that they have acquired, since they bear neither the risk nor the reward associated with running a successful, or indeed an unsuccessful, agribusiness. Under the circumstances, it can be no surprise that the ANC's land reform project is failing.
It remains unclear to the DA how the state can identify the need to acquire land aggressively if it does not know how much it already earns. While we support the principle of the government's using state-owned land for land reform purposes, we do not support the department's attempts to centre rural economic activity on itself, by creating land tenants instead of land beneficiaries.
The DA believes that land reform in South Africa can and must be a win-win situation. And for land beneficiaries this can only occur if they are able to be invested in the operations they acquire by fully taking on the risks and enjoying the rewards of free enterprising citizens. There is a need for the department to streamline its mandate, particularly in response to the challenges in respect of its capacity to deliver on its multiple and far-reaching programmes. The core business of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform should be providing the framework necessary to ensure that the rural economy flourishes and then managing, effectively and swiftly, the restitution and redistribution programmes which fall under Land Reform.
The Minister has referred to his department as co-ordinating in function, but the truth is that if this function were successful, much of the work that is the Minister's responsibility would not be in freefall, as it is right now.
It is essential that the Minister ensures that his department return to basics by providing those services which form the core of its remit in as efficient and transparent a manner as possible. Only then will we be able to ensure the sustainability of this crucial pillar of the South African economy and roll back the injustices in rural South Africa, which are the legacy of our apartheid past. Thank you. [Applause.]