Hon members, hon MECs for Rural Development and Land Reform from various provinces - some of whom are in the gallery - traditional leaders, representatives of organised agriculture, our partners from the private sector, senior government officials, hon ladies and gentlemen, let me also join the Minister in welcoming all our stakeholders, friends, comrades, and colleagues from different sectors who found it necessary to set aside other important engagements in order to come and join us in our Budget Vote. Your presence here today is highly appreciated and it provides inspiration for our humble efforts.
The work of this department started just a little over 10 months ago, on 10 May 2009, when the newly inaugurated President Jacob Zuma announced his Cabinet to the country. Among the new Ministries announced was the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform. In making this announcement the President was taking the first decisive step in fulfilling a desire expressed by delegates at the historic 52nd national conference of the ANC held in Polokwane in December 2007. The delegates unanimously passed a resolution spelling out what they felt needed to be done to transform South Africa's rural areas.
Amongst other things, the delegates noted that, and I quote:
Colonialism and apartheid were rooted in the dispossession of the African people of their land, the destruction of African farming and the super- exploitation of wage labourers, including farmworkers and their families. Poverty, inequality and joblessness are the consequence of centuries of underdevelopment and exploitation consciously perpetrated on the majority of the population, which had its most destructive and enduring impacts on rural South Africa. Consequently, the structural faults that characterised the apartheid rural economy remain with us today.
The conference further noted that the Constitution enjoins the state to take action to enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis; to ensure security of tenure for people and communities; and to realise the restitution of land rights for those dispossessed after 1913. The delegates further stated that, based on the belief that rural development is a critical pillar of our struggle against unemployment, poverty and equality, more equitable distribution of land is necessary, both to undo the injustices of history as well as to ensure higher productivity, shared growth, employment and sustainable livelihoods.
Then, among other things, the conference resolved to embark on an integrated programme of rural development, land reform and agrarian change; to build stronger state capacity and devote greater resources to the challenges of rural development, land reform and agrarian reform with the particular aim of creating an overarching authority with resources and authority to drive and co-ordinate this programme; and to ensure that the state regulates the land market effectively with a view to promoting the goals of rural development and agrarian change.
To this end, the management and control of state land must be consolidated under one roof. We must also accelerate the roll-out of rural infrastructure, particularly roads, and other services, including potable water, electricity and irrigation. Also, we must ensure that the former Bantustan areas are properly provided with an infrastructure base for economic and social development. Finally, we must improve the co-ordination and synergy between departments and all levels of government to ensure an integrated approach to land reform and rural development.
It is therefore quite clear that when President Zuma announced the establishment of this Ministry and the expansion of the mandate of the former department of land affairs, our work was cut out for us by the ANC Polokwane conference. This also clearly dispels the myth that the Polokwane conference was only about change of leadership without substantive attention to policy direction. In pursuance of the objectives of this resolution, the ANC national executive council, NEC, further included rural development and food security as one of our top priorities in our 2009 election manifesto.
Over the past 10 months a lot has been achieved in implementing this policy directive. Immediately after we were sworn in, and together with our top managers, we started working to unpack the mandate and put flesh to the aspirations entailed in these policy decisions. Within a few months and weeks we were able to conceptualise the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme, CRDP, with a clear vision, mission and anchor strategy. It is this clarity of purpose that has enabled us to also make inputs into the outcomes-based approach which has been developed by the Presidency.
Our decision to embark on a pilot project at Muyexe village in Limpopo provided us with an invaluable avenue to match our theoretical conceptualisation with practical experience. We took this decision only a week after our appointment. This enabled us to keep refining the model as we were getting ready to roll into other pilot sites in the other provinces. I wish to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to our management and staff for their enthusiastic embrace and participation in the engineering and implementation of this new vision.
The current pilot projects in the eight provinces provide a valuable mix of experiences, each with its own unique challenges and opportunities. These projects are: the Muyexe Project, as already mentioned; Riemvasmaak in the Northern Cape; Mkhondo in the Mpumalanga Province; Diyatalawa and Makolokwe in the Free State; Disake, Mokgalwaneng and Matlametlong in the North West; Mhlontlo in the Eastern Cape; Msinga and Sekame in KwaZulu-Natal; and Dysselsdorp here in the Western Cape. These projects vary from tribal villages to former trust land, former homeland areas, state farms and even restituted farms, as is the case in Dysselsdorp.
The experience gained from these projects will certainly make us better prepared for a more extensive roll-out of the CRDP. The CRDP speaks to key tenets of our policy decisions - both of the ANC manifesto and the Polokwane conference - that rural development should speak to poverty eradication, the provision of employment opportunities, the reduction of inequality and support for sustainable livelihoods. As envisaged in our policy decisions, the CRDP also speaks to the rolling out of rural infrastructure - roads in particular - potable water, electricity and irrigation. The CRDP also speaks fundamentally to the issue of improved co- ordination and synergy between departments and also among the various spheres of government as pronounced in our policy decisions.
All the CRDP implementation projects, be it social facilitation, community profiling, laying out of economic infrastructure such as roads, water and electricity or social infrastructure and social services such as schools, clinics, multipurpose centres, early childhood development centres, etc, provide major opportunities for our young people to acquire skills which can result in medium- to long-term jobs or even the ability to start their own businesses.
In terms of resourcing the programme - I know some hon members have made comments about the budget - we have gone a long way in making sure that there is a budget dedicated to rural development. This started with the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement in October and now it is part of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework from 2010-11 to 2013-14. While we would be the first to accept that the current allocation may seem a far cry from what this mandate seems to suggest, we believe, nevertheless, that it's a good beginning. We should also bear in mind that our department is not expected to be the full implementer of all rural development projects. We see ourselves as initiators, catalysts, facilitators and co-ordinators. Our role is to bring in other role-players within government, parastatals and also from the private sector, as certain hon members have commented. We are already doing that.
We have also gone a long way in the restructuring of the department to align its programmes and organogram with the new mandate. An ongoing need is the reorientation of the mindset of our staff, some of whom have been in the employ of other departments for many years. Many of our staff previously focused on land affairs and on the functions of the Land Claims Commission. Now we have to bring them around to a more comprehensive rural development and land reform focus. We are a long way into creating one department with different branches focusing on different responsibilities but with one vision, one mission, one strategic approach, and under one leadership.
We also need to take this opportunity to thank our various stakeholders who have enthusiastically embraced the new vision, both in the three spheres of government and outside of government. We are not yet at the stage where we can claim that government co-ordination is at its best, but a lot has been achieved. The commitment is showing and everywhere we go we encounter colleagues from different Ministries and departments. We are also grateful for the unwavering support of our President.
All the premiers, MECs, mayors, councillors and officials that we have worked with have displayed the utmost commitment to the new vision. We have also been met with great enthusiasm outside of government, by parastatals, institutions of higher learning, agricultural organisations and private business in general. Our challenge is to turn all this support into tangible, visible results.
From a land reform perspective, this programme has been a serious learning curve and a major challenge over the last 10 months. We admit that. First of all, in the first few days of our appointment we were confronted with the reality that the land restitution budget would soon be exhausted due to a pile-up of finalised claims awaiting payment. To make matters worse, there were some huge claims - one was about R600 million - that had to be settled as one specific claim.
It also became evident that while 95% of the claims had been settled, the remaining 5% were mostly highly complex and many of them potentially very expensive. Even more challenging was the fact that up to 50% of long- settled claims on previously productive and economically viable farms were not functioning optimally. We are the ones who pronounced on that. We were not coerced; we wanted to address this. Many claims settled in terms of research of validity could not be finalised due to financial constraints, while others that had been finalised could not be supported with development grants.
With regard to proactive land reform, it became evident that while a lot of progress had been made in terms of transferring land to previously landless black people, huge challenges remained, with many allocated farms either not fully productive or functioning under optimal levels. As we already indicated, the land reform programme, including restitution, has now been integrated into the CRDP and we will focus on making sure that all land allocated for a specific purpose - food production in particular - is well utilised.
We have reached the conclusion that it is better to chase quality utilisation than quantity of acquisition. This is a hard choice and I want to emphasise that it has its own consequences. That is why we must review the entire land tenure system, because this is not sustainable.
The recapitalisation programme, which we have already announced, will go a long way in making sure that many of our farms are functioning. As far as the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme is concerned, our challenge now is to make sure that we progress from a few pilot projects to a massive roll-out of this programme. The day-by-day experience provided by the pilot projects is proving to be useful...