"This represents a total award of R2,9-billion, which I think is well done. It makes quite an impact on poverty alleviation, especially in rural areas," Advocate Du Toit told reporters in Parliamentyesterday. He said the department was working hard to meet the deadline given by President Thabo Mbeki that all outstanding land claims should be completed by December 2005. "Land is laying at the base of all possible development, you can't have anything without some base," he explained.
Du Toit said under the leadership of Minister Thoko Didiza, the department had focused more on sustainable land reform, saying people could not just be put on land and be expected to farm.
"You need other grants, especially production assistance in order to make a living on that land, and that is the aspect in which we must better our efforts all the time".
In the pipeline in this regard, he said was a new farmer support scheme, which would be announced soon. "It has reached quite an advanced stage of development and we believe that it is going to make a difference," he said. On the issue of the Communal Land Rights Bill currently before Parliament, he said it would affect an area four times the size of the Netherlands.
The Deputy Minister said it was a practical law, which was aimed at setting up a registration system and to provide for legal security of tenure by transferring communal land to communities. He said land administration in the old homeland or traditional area had been neglected over many decades.
"You can't really trigger development if you don't have security of tenure in those areas, and we don't have it".
The Communal Land Rights Bill, which has been nine years in the making, is scheduled for debate in the National Assembly tomorrow. – BuaNews.
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