More than 80 per cent of land claims have been settled

More than eighty per cent of South Africa’s land restitution claims had been settled by the end of last month. This is according to the chief land commissioner, Tozi Gwanya. He told MP’s on the Agriculture and Land Affairs Committee that the commission has transferred around a million hectares back to their original occupiers and that only about 8-thousand claims remain outstanding. The bulk of the remaining claims which have to be settled by 2008 are rural claims, which are usually the more difficult to get agreement over. Only just over a thousand claims remain in urban areas. Gwanya says he hopes to see all of these urban claims settled by the end of this month.