The Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform was briefed by the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR) on its 2014/15 annual report. The Commission had exceeded its targets by settling 428 new claims against a target of 379; finalising 372 claims against a target of 239; approving 119 projects against a target of 53; researching 1 525 claims against a target of 1 445; establishing 14 operational claims lodgement offices; and acquiring four mobile lodgement offices.

The preservation, development and sustainable use of agricultural land are of vital importance to ensure longterm food security in South Africa. These principles of food security as well as an integrated, inclusive rural economy underpin the core focus areas of the National Development Plan, Vision 2030 (NDP).

The Department of Land Affairs introduced the Provision of Land and Assistance Amendment Bill and explained that this Bill was intended as an administrative piece of legislation to supplement the provisions of the principal Act. Currently, in terms of that Act, the Department was authorised to acquire land, but was not authorised to acquire the immovable property essential to the proper use of that land – such as irrigation schemes, plant and equipment, farming implements or livestock. Without having those powers, the Department could not fulfil its functions properly.

Political resistance towards international development is a prevalent theme in global civil society and

To provide for the designation of certain land; to regulate the subdivision of such land and the settlement of persons thereon;_andto provide for matters connected therewith

As a country we need to prioritise the acquisition and development of land for settlement purposes if we are to make any impact on the demand for housing.  Between 1994 and 2014 the South African government provided more than 2.5 million houses and some 1.2 million serviced sites, but the housing backlog nevertheless increased over this same period from 1.5 million to 2.1 million units

To provide for the temporary protection of certain rights to and interests in land which are not otherwise adequately protected by law; and to provide for matters connected therewith

The extent of land dispossession of the indigenous population in South Africa, by Dutch and British settlers, was greater than any other country in Africa, and persisted for an exceptionally long time. European settlement began around the  Cape of Good Hope in the 1650s and progressed northwards and eastwards over a period of three hundred years.

At the end of Apartheid, approximately 82 million hectares of commercial farmland (86% of total agricultural land, or 68% of the total surface area) was in the hands of the white minority (10.9% of the population), and concentrated in the hands of approximately 60,000 owners (Levin and Weiner 1991: 92). Over thirteen million black people, the majority of them poverty-stricken, remained crowded into the former homelands, where rights to land were generally unclear or contested and the system of land administration was in disarray (Hendricks 1990; Cousins 1996; Lahiff 2000).

The Department achieved 56% of Q4 targets and 50% of Annual Performance Report targets in its Administration programme while annual targets on vacancies filled and disciplinary cases were partially achieved. In Geospatial and Cadastral Services, the Department achieved 77% of its Q4 targets and 69% of its APR targets. The Rural Development programme achieved 71% of its Q4 targets and 86% of its APR targets. The annual target for establishment of rural information desks was not achieved and the target of jobs created was partially achieved.

Reversing the legacy of the 1913 Natives Land Act. The root of the land question today arises out of the pervasive process of land alienation that dispossessed the majority of South Africans of their land over the past few centuries. 2013 is the centenary f the 1913 Natives Land Act, which was the first of number of discriminatory laws that reinforced the massive dispossession of land from black South AFricans

In the accelerating process of urbanization and social transition era, industrialization, urbanization and construction of urban-rural integration also inevitably leads to the land expropriation, land conflicts have become important issues in the development process.