Agri SA supported orderly land reform – equitable land distribution is a prerequisite for rural stability and inclusive rural development. Agri-SA believed that expropriation should only be used as a last resort where negotiations fail. There needed to be a clear purpose for expropriation. Compensation should never be dependent on the state’s ability to pay. The land owner should always be afforded recourse to the courts to contest both the merits of the expropriation and the compensation amount.

The Ingonyama Trust Board (the Trust) presented its Annual Report for the 2014/2015 financial year. The Trust had committed R6 000 000 for the purchase of tractors to support production on communal land and noted that substantial sums of money were paid out for the benefit of 120 Learners. Employment, HR and vacancy figures were given. The Trust highlighted some performance statistics. In this year, the Board had approved 1 100 tenure rights, falling short of the target of 1 200.

A representative of the Auditor-General South Africa (AGSA) briefed the Committee on the audit outcomes and expenditure patters in the rural development portfolio for the 2014/2015 financial year. The quality of submitted financial statements for the Agricultural Land Holding Account (ALHA) was good but needed improvement. The quality of submitted performance reports for Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) was good but required intervention from the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR or the Department).

The extent of land dispossession of the indigenous population in South Africa, by Dutch and British settlers, was greater than any other country in Africa, and persisted for an exceptionally long time. European settlement began around the  Cape of Good Hope in the 1650s and progressed northwards and eastwards over a period of three hundred years.

At the end of Apartheid, approximately 82 million hectares of commercial farmland (86% of total agricultural land, or 68% of the total surface area) was in the hands of the white minority (10.9% of the population), and concentrated in the hands of approximately 60,000 owners (Levin and Weiner 1991: 92). Over thirteen million black people, the majority of them poverty-stricken, remained crowded into the former homelands, where rights to land were generally unclear or contested and the system of land administration was in disarray (Hendricks 1990; Cousins 1996; Lahiff 2000).

The Department achieved 56% of Q4 targets and 50% of Annual Performance Report targets in its Administration programme while annual targets on vacancies filled and disciplinary cases were partially achieved. In Geospatial and Cadastral Services, the Department achieved 77% of its Q4 targets and 69% of its APR targets. The Rural Development programme achieved 71% of its Q4 targets and 86% of its APR targets. The annual target for establishment of rural information desks was not achieved and the target of jobs created was partially achieved.

Reversing the legacy of the 1913 Natives Land Act. The root of the land question today arises out of the pervasive process of land alienation that dispossessed the majority of South Africans of their land over the past few centuries. 2013 is the centenary f the 1913 Natives Land Act, which was the first of number of discriminatory laws that reinforced the massive dispossession of land from black South AFricans

In the accelerating process of urbanization and social transition era, industrialization, urbanization and construction of urban-rural integration also inevitably leads to the land expropriation, land conflicts have become important issues in the development process.

To provide for security of tenure (land) of labour tenants and those persons occupying or using land as a result of their association with labour tenants; to provide for the acquisition of land and rights in land by labour tenants; and to provide for matters connected therewith. WHEREAS the present institution of labour tenancy in South Africa is the result of racially discriminatory laws and practices which have led to the systematic breach of human rights and denial of access to land

Political resistance towards international development is a prevalent theme in global civil society and

To provide for the designation of certain land; to regulate the subdivision of such land and the settlement of persons thereon;_andto provide for matters connected therewith

As a country we need to prioritise the acquisition and development of land for settlement purposes if we are to make any impact on the demand for housing.  Between 1994 and 2014 the South African government provided more than 2.5 million houses and some 1.2 million serviced sites, but the housing backlog nevertheless increased over this same period from 1.5 million to 2.1 million units