Significant changes are to be made to the willing buyer-willing seller model of land restitution, Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti said on Wednesday.

Less costly models would be investigated, he told Members of Parliament (MPs) in the National Assembly during debate on his department's budget vote.

"The department has recognised that in order to move forward decisively with the land redistribution programme, significant changes will have to be made to the willing buyer-willing seller model of land redistribution,

"The department will have to investigate less costly, alternative methods of land acquisition by engaging with all stakeholders in the sector."

Nkwinti said both landless people and the African National Congress (ANC), at its last convention, had noted that the willing buyer-willing seller model did not work. The Department would now seek a different formula for land redistribution.

This was "one that will address the issue as part of our country's ongoing effort at national reconciliation", he said.

Speaking in the debate, ANC MP Stone Sizani said the department would talk to farmers, landlords and corporations that held land, "to try and find common ground".

Only 4% of agricultural land had been redistributed to landless rural people in South Africa, against a target of 30%.

"To redress [the] imbalances of the past, the government must have enabling laws that can allow the pace and the price of land acquisition to be in the hands of the State, rather than in the hands of the seller," he said, to heckling from opposition benches.

Speaking later in the House, Nkwinti again stressed the willing buyer-willing seller model did not work.

"It doesn't work because we don't have money, as government."

There were many very well-meaning commercial farmers in South Africa, and government intended to negotiate with them as a group.

"That's what we're going to do. We're going to work with those farmers and then try to expedite this process...

"We're going to react fast with the collective [sic] of farmers to resolve the problems, including AgriSA," he said to applause.

Land access and ownership should be a question that was primary for all South Africans.

"It shouldn't be a situation where we can't get land because it's too expensive because it's owned by Americans, by Germans, by other Europeans and people outside this country, and not Africans... It must be prioritised for South Africans," he said.

The reason South Africa was importing food was because the use of land had been changed, including into game farms.

"It is no longer producing food. It's rearing animals. That's what is happening. Golf courses? Who owns these? Overseas people. These are not South Africans."

Nkwinti said South Africans could not be expected to wait much longer for land redress "before they explode".