Land reform get R70m boost.

[Dave A]

Some international funds have been pledged towards land reform in South Africa. Hopefully it will help move the process forward.

Johannesburg - Belgium and Britain have jointly pledged more than R70 million towards the administration of land reform in South Africa.

At a function at the British high commission in Pretoria on Wednesday, High Commissioner Paul Boateng said land reform would underpin South Africa's political stability and assist rural economic growth.

"Land reform has an important role to play in addressing persistent inequality and creating a sense of ownership, not just in the land itself, but in the process of its development," he said.

Britain's Department for International Development would contribute around R13 million, for speeding up land reform in rural areas and Belgium's contribution was around R56 million.
Full story on Business Report here

[Dave A]

Stories like this don't help!

More than 70 commercial farms in Limpopo which the government bought for rural communities have collapsed, the SABC reported on Saturday.

The farms, which cost the government more than R100 million, were rendered unproductive, according to the province's agriculture MEC, Dikeledi Magadzi.

She was speaking at the start of the second phase of the settlement and land acquisition grant deregistration campaign on Saturday.

Magadzi said beneficiaries who did not want to farm should deregister.

"We can't leave the state assets, the state money being under-utilised. When we are saying we need to halve poverty we need to create jobs, to me that is unacceptable... What is of essence is that the national assets and the national money cannot lie fallow like we see."
full story from IOL here