Little detail is provided in the budget on land reform and restitution initiatives, despite land ownership being a politically sensitive issue THE budget allocation for agriculture, rural development and land reform is up 4.9% to R26.4bn this year. But the allocation for land restitution has increased by 20%, from R2.6bn in 2015/2016 to R3.17bn in 2016/2017.About 31% of the department of rural development & land reform’s budget over the next three years — R10bn — is allocated for land claims.Little detail is provided in the budget, however, on land reform and restitution initiatives. This is surprising, given how politically sensitive the issue of land ownership has become. Last year, government said it intended to more than double the number of existing land-claim settlements — from 602 in 2014 to 1 457 by 2019.In addition, government recently established an office of the surveyor-general to help with orderly implementation of acquisition and redistribution.Bulelwa Mabasa, directo...
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