By Michael Hamlyn

A three-tier land tenure system is to be proposed by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform in a Green Paper soon to be presented to cabinet and tabled in Parliament before the end of this year.

Announcing this in an extended committee of the National Assembly, where he presented his budget on Wednesday, Gugile Nkwinti the minister said that the three tiers will be: state land, which will be under leasehold, private land which will be held under freehold - "with limited extent", and foreign-ownership with precarious tenure linked to productivity and partnership models with South African citizens.

"The above system," Nkwinti said, "will be based on a categorisation model informed by land use needs at the level of household, small holder and commercial farming."

Linked to the green-paper process, will be legislation, which is presently being developed. In the meantime a Land Tenure Security Bill is to be introduced which will repeal current laws - the Extension of Security of Tenure Act and the Labour Tenants Act.

"It is imperative we find immediate mechanisms to respond to the plight of farm workers and farm dwellers as was enjoined by the president during his state of the nation address, last year," the minister told MPs.

The new legalisations, he added "will be informed by the following objectives: protecting relative rights for farm workers, strengthen rights of farm dwellers and enhancing food security through sustained production discipline."

Collapsing land reform projects and defunct irrigation schemes in the former black homelands have challenged the concept of food security, he admitted, and to respond to the challenge a new programme called "recapitalisation and development' has been introduced

"The objectives of this programme are to increase production, to guarantee food security, to graduate small farmers and create employment opportunities within the agricultural sector," Nkwinti told MPs.

"The core principles of the programme are mentorship, co-management and share equity."

He said that to implement the programme, 25% of the baseline land acquisition budget is to be allocated - an amount of 900 million rand for the 2010 to 2011 financial year.

Nkwinti returned to the concept of land as a national asset, which has proved a red rag to the farming community bulls. "National sovereignty is defined in terms of land," he said, "That is why, without it being enshrined in the country's supreme law, the constitution, land is a national asset.

"That is where the debate about agrarian change, land reform and rural development should appropriately begin. Without this fundamental assumption, talk of land reform and food security is superfluous.

He said the government will fundamentally review the current land tenure system during the three-year medium term strategic framework period. "This we shall do," he said, "through rigorous engagement with all South Africans so that we should emerge with a tenure system which will satisfy the aspirations of all South Africans irrespective of race, gender and class."

Source: I-Net Bridge