Addressing a media briefing in Parliament, Gwanya, who moved to his new post after being the chief land claims commissioner, said that the cost of land and the speed of processing transfers were the big delaying factors.
He said the department has calculated that an additional R74bn would be needed to deliver the remaining 19,8m hectares required to fulfil the required 24,6m hectares. In addition, the shelving of the Expropriation Bill by Parliament will also slow the process down.
The R74bn figure had been discussed with the National Treasury, and officials there, Gwanya said, were "prepared to listen more to this". He told the briefing that the Treasury was not rejecting the figure by saying that it was impossible.
And he drew a comparison with the sum of money available for land restitution five years ago – R395m, which was increased to R3,3bn last year.
"The main challenge related to land acquisition for land reform is the escalating land prices caused by inflation and changes in land use," he said.
"Prices become higher when agricultural land is changed into game farms."
He said that the department had been buying land at an average of R4k per hectare, but the average sugar cane land costs R55k per hectare, macadamia, lychee and other fruit costs about R60k a hectare, and in the Western Cape vineyards cost about R100k a hectare.
But the capacity to deliver is also being addressed by increasing the staff of the department by roughly a third. Another 1,200 posts are being created to add to the existing 3,000 positions.
Gwanya said that the Treasury had set a financial limit on this expansion, allowing an increase in personnel costs of no more than a norm of 15% a year. It will accordingly be implemented over a three-year period. – Michael Hamlyn, I-Net Bridge
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