The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform says after damning findings of fraudulent land deals by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) it had taken back 158 farms.
Some of the implicated staff had either resigned, retired, or had been sanctioned. 42 officials in the Land Reform Department face criminal action.
Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies’s Professor Ruth Hall says that the people eligible for land should be clarified and that it should not be distributed to the wealthy and to the families of officials.
“People who have historical claims should get restitution, people who have lost land or whose ancestors were unfairly dispossessed of land.”
Hall says that although progress is slow what is encouraging is that action is being taken.
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