Department of Rural Development and Land Reform expenditure: HSRC & Treasury inputs

Author: Ms P Ngwenya-Mabila

The Committee, with the Deputy Minister in attendance, heard from National Treasury that the Department had been very successful in spending its allocation. Under the Restitution Programme, a total of 130 000 new claims had been lodged since 2014, and the number was expected to increase to 397 000 claims during the extension period. As a way forward there would be engagements between DRDLR, National Treasury and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) on the overlapping functions between the DRDLR and DAFF. The Minister of Finance was in the process of engaging with the Ministers of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and Rural Development and Land Reform on the development of an integrated funding and support model to land reform beneficiaries, smallholder farmers and emerging black commercial farmers.

 

The Committee asked what Treasury’s attitude was to the 0.06% under expenditure of R60 million; how it felt about the duplication of services between DAFF and the DRDLR with the overlap in post settlement support; how long the new land claims processing would take and how much it would cost as the MTEF budget did not appear to cover this; what role Treasury was playing with the Ingonyama Trust Board; what an integrated funding and support model would look like generally and the timelines involved.

 

The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) noted in its analysis of DRDLR expenditure performance, that it research found there was an unequal spread of farmer support evidenced by some households receiving more than one type of farmer assistance package and that 33% of respondent rural households did not actively engage in agriculture.

 

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