Pretoria - Farms allocated under the land distribution programme which are not being utilised properly by beneficiaries will be taken away and given to other beneficiaries.
This is according to Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana who has instructed her Director General to immediately enforce the "use it or loose it" principle to land reform beneficiaries who were not utilising their farms.
"Land must be fully utilised, a farm must always be occupied by land reform beneficiaries, farm managers and lessees. Farms must always be in production, whether it is crop or livestock.
"No farm must lie fallow. I have in this regard instructed by Directors General to implement with immediate effect, the principle or use it or lose it," said the minister, addressing the media in Pretoria on Wednesday.
She said some of the farms had not been utilised in over a year. In some instances, beneficiaries had left the farms to settle in the cities.
"This principle provides that those who do not use the land for farming will be taken away by the state and reallocated to those who have a passion in farming including the agricultural co-operatives."
The minister said training would be given to such beneficiaries.
She further instructed that an investigation be launched into those officials who were not doing their work as expected that action will be taken against them. Officials are responsible for visiting farms to ensure its effective use from time to time.
Land reform can be defined as the transformation of patterns of land ownership, to redistribute land and rights in land, as well as economic benefits, to disadvantaged sections of the society.
The policy has the dual objective, of alleviating poverty by enhancing household food security and rural livelihoods and of supporting rural economic development through measures directed at promoting entrepreneurship in the agricultural and other economic sectors.
Minister Xinwana conceded that while government had implemented several land reform projects, not all of them has had not lived up to her expectations. She said, however, that the Land and Agrarian Reform Programme was established to assess the challenges.
