At this rate, we are 20 years away from completing the land reform process, says Kobus Pienaar

On October 18 in "This isn't Zimbabwe, so let's ditch the myth of land-hungry masses", the editor of the Sunday Times stated that "South Africa's land restitution programme has been pretty successful, with more than 95% of land claims having already been settled".

Most of us would probably like to share this view but, sadly, this is not possible.

The Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights claims that, out of 79696 lodged claims, it is left with a "mere" 4296 outstanding claims.

It says these outstanding claims are mostly "rural".

But the impression these numbers create is completely at odds with reality.

Extrapolating from the commission's 2004 figures and a study of settled claims carried out by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry research institute, it is fair to estimate that to date there are only 350 cases where community claims have been fully and finally settled (in terms of law) and agricultural land transferred.

Even if the actual figure were double that , it would remain a far cry from the impression that thousands of "rural claims" have been settled.

The last thing we need is for the government to declare a false victory to justify withdrawal from the land reform process On October 18 in "This isn't Zimbabwe, so let's ditch the myth of land-hungry masses", the editor of the Sunday Times stated that "South Africa's land restitution programme has been pretty successful, with more than 95% of land claims having already been settled".

Most of us would probably like to share this view but, sadly, this is not possible.

The Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights claims that, out of 79696 lodged claims, it is left with a "mere" 4296 outstanding claims.

It says these outstanding claims are mostly "rural".

But the impression these numbers create is completely at odds with reality.

Extrapolating from the commission's 2004 figures and a study of settled claims carried out by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry research institute, it is fair to estimate that to date there are only 350 cases where community claims have been fully and finally settled (in terms of law) and agricultural land transferred.

Even if the actual figure were double that , it would remain a far cry from the impression that thousands of "rural claims" have been settled.

The last thing we need in relation to land restitution is for the government to declare a false victory to justify a withdrawal from the process.

At this stage it is impossible to say how much land and how many claims still need to be processed.

What we do know is that there are unsubstantiated assertions that 70% of Limpopo is under restitution claim. Mondi, the largest landowner in South Africa, has said 48% of its land is under restitution claim. Large swathes of sugar cane plantations are also said to be under claim.

If the government plans to tackle restitution at the speed that it has over the past 10 years, a fair estimate is that it will need another 20 years to complete the process.

The government's massive inability to bring claims to the point of final settlement in law is only part of the problem.

The challenge is not just in terms of speed, but more fundamentally to ensure that restitution is "done right".

If we do it wrong we may just as well not have done it at all, because wrong in this context not only means that good people are denied justice, but that good people are dumped into situations of internecine strife.

These problems are unfortunately not confined to restitution cases.

When it comes to the second leg of land reform - redistribution - the state has acknowledged that 51% of the projects established on white commercial farms from 2001 to 2006 have effectively been put out of production.

The land reform obligation on the state is not simply the redistribution of land, but to do it to achieve equity in access - and equity in access not just to land, but to all South Africa's natural resources.

The review on the redistribution projects made it clear that only in exceptional cases is there equity in access among members of land reform projects. It is on this point that there are similarities between our land reform and facets of Zimbabwean land reforms and farm invasions.

The almost total lack of the determination of the rights of individual members to land and benefits prior to actual land occupation has led to "self-help" and theft by powerful individuals within beneficiary groups - and the squandering of resources.

In most land reform projects, the rights of individual participants have simply not been determined or allocated within a community context.

In the few cases where this has been done, the land-holding legal entities do not have the capacity to administer and support the rights of individuals.

This failure presents one of the biggest challenges to post-1994 land reform. The remedy lies in administering the land rights of poor people where the market should not and cannot do so.

Kobus Pienaar, the Legal Resources Centre's Cape Town director.