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The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights has missed its own first quarter targets on settling land claims by 41% and finalising land claims by 77%.

This was revealed in today’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform.

The DA calls for an urgent and speedy intervention by Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti, into the affairs of this Commission.

Such an intervention should be aimed at urgently assessing the capacity, productivity and financial resources of the Commission to perform its fundamental function - to bring redress to those who have made land claims.

The below statistics show how the Commission is failing:

• The Commission set itself a target of settling 92 land claims in the first quarter of 2015, but it only achieved 38 settlements, missing it by 41%. This despite an annual target of settling 463 land claims;
• A target of finalising 74 land claims was set for quarter 1, yet only 57 were achieved, missing its target by 77%. Again, the Commission is far off from settling its annual target of 373;
• Shockingly, only 195 claims lodged by 1998 were researched in the first quarter. This despite an annual target of 2 660 and a first quarter target of 532; and
• Over this same period, a further 20 737 new claims were received by the Commission.

The unmet targets and the growing bottleneck are resulting in a fundamentally unfair setting for victims of past discriminatory practices in relation to land who are trying to find redress.

This problem also echoes the bottlenecks that developed during the previous (pre 1998) window for lodging land claims resulting in some land claims lodged in the 1990's still not being resolved.

Judging by these results, it is hard to believe that the Commission has the skills, capacity or know-how to actually deal with these claims expediently and urgent interventions are required.

It was notable – and alarming - that most of the commissioners were absent from today’s meeting.

The Commission’s dismal excuses for their under-performance were evasive and disturbing. The only thing that appears to be working within the Commission is the payment of employees’ salaries, which totalled R93 million over this period – 30% of the annual budget of R312 million. Yet the Commission complains of under-staffing, which begs the question as to what employees are currently doing that justifies such large amounts of public money being spent on salaries.

The Democratic Alliance is on record, when it moved amendments to the current restitution legislation, as stating the view that any restitution process without the capacity to deliver on the expectations it raises, is tantamount to lying to the people of South Africa.

Furthermore, a third of the report presented to the Portfolio Committee comprised reporting to the committee about mass communication and meetings, which makes one wonder the extent to which the 2016 elections play a role in expenditure.

No one can deny that few South African dilemmas pull at the emotions of our people than the land issue. Yet neither the allocated budget nor its usage display a sense that the ANC's interest in land claims goes beyond electioneering. It is abundantly clear that the ANC government is failing the people of South Africa on this very sensitive and important issue.

Issued by DA