DA to write to Auditor-General over R580-million payments backlog
A reply to a Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary question has revealed that the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform owes land sellers R580-million in outstanding payments on purchased land. The reply further reveals that there are currently 21 court cases under adjudication for the non-payment of R494-million.
The ANC has made it clear that land, and land redistribution is going to be one of the main issues it is going to campaign on going forward. Yet while its rhetoric, which is often extremist and rarely considered, promises the world, in reality, its administrative ability to actually deliver on anything it says almost never holds up to close scrutiny. It promises the world but all it ever delivers is corruption, maladministration and cronyism.
This massive non-payment bill comes on the back of the Department placing a moratorium on land purchases in August last year, as a result a lack of funds. However sale agreements with farmers continued to be signed. Farms at a cost of R1.9-billion were purchased and close to half of this figure, R496 782 870, the Department could not afford to settle.
What this reply speaks to is the abject chaos that is South Africa's land reform process as a result of the disorganisation, mismanagement and a number of institutional inadequacies within the former Department of Land Affairs and the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.
Furthermore, the ANC-government has continuously positioned land reform as a matter of high priority and this has not been backed with the requisite funding. Currently, R70-billion is required to finalise all land restitution claims, and yet, the annual budget for land reform has not averaged R5-billion per year over the last decade. This is why the DA proposed, in our alternative budget, to expand the budget for Land Reform and Restitution grants by more than 50% to rectify the budget shortfall. The ANC government on the other hand continues to prioritise spending billions on bailing out state owned entities like the Land Bank and the SABC and continues to under-prioritise land reform.
The DA supports an equitable and sustainable land reform process. It is imperative that South Africa's skewed patterns of land ownership are urgently modified. It has now become clear that the ANC government is not serious about ensuring that the land reform process occurs at an adequate pace and has been using it as rhetoric as a means of gaining the vote of rural people.
The DA will be writing to the Auditor-General requesting firstly, a thorough financial audit of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, and secondly, the entire land reform process since its inception.
Statement issued by Annette Steyn, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of rural development and land reform, May 18 2010
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