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Following a recent joint oversight visit by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committees of Rural Development and Land Reform as well as Agriculture, the Democratic Alliance (DA) noted the extent to which the mismanagement of state land in the Free State and Mpumalanga provinces has become widespread.

The DA will therefore be writing to Rural Development and Land Reform Minister, Gugile Nkwinti, calling on him to place a moratorium on the Proactive Land Acquisition Scheme (PLAS ) until such time as the Department has completed the comprehensive state land audit, as mandated by the Auditor-General.

I will also be posing parliamentary questions to Minister Nkwinti to establish how much land under state ownership is either lying fallow or has been illegally occupied, and what steps the Department plans to take to rectify this situation.

The Department cannot continue to spend public money acquiring land when it does not know how much it already owns, and its ability to manage existing parcels of land is in a state of paralysis.

In the almost two years since the audit was initiated, it has become clear that the management of state land is in a chaotic state. Accurate information about state land is still not available; all that is available is a desktop analysis, which so far estimates that 19% of all land parcels belong to the state. Not all of this land is surveyed and in some instances it is unclear which government department is responsible for managing it. In Mpumalanga we learned of extensive parcels of state land which are lying fallow and unused, while others have been invaded by illegal occupants.

The DA has long argued that the Department cannot continue to buy up private land when it has yet to establish exactly how much land is already in the hands of the state. Indeed, the Auditor-General has, in successive annual reports, based his qualified opinion on the fact that the ANC government has failed to complete an audit to establish how much land is in the hands of the state. If this audit were to be completed, the Department would be able identify which parcels of land could be utilised for land reform purposes, in order to address land hunger in an equitable and sustainable manner.