Johannesburg — EVERY time director-general of land reform Thozi Gwanya gets up in Parliament these days he complains his department doesn't have enough money to meet the government's land-redistribution targets. Last week, he blamed the recession. This is a red herring.

A while back Gwanya told me he had buy-in from the Cabinet and the African National Congress to drop the ludicrous notion that 30% of white-owned farms could be transferred to blacks in the next five years, when less than 5% had been handed over since 1994. About half the land-reform farms had collapsed or were in decline. Every rand spent buying land should be matched twofold by targeted support to ensure transferred farms stopped collapsing.

"If we transfer 30%, about 25-million hectares, critical issues will be land use, the productivity of that land, skills, and commercialisation. Why should we be worried about 30% in 2014, if we can still achieve it by 2025, but make sure we are doing it right?" These words were uttered in April last year, well before the credit crunch and recession.

Land reform aims to reverse the effect of racist restrictions on black land ownership that left most of SA in white hands by the end of the apartheid era. It should also spread wealth to landless peasants and black entrepreneurs. These aims are critical to long-term social, economic and political stability, and well worth paying for. But the department, by its own admission, has spent billions in taxpayers' money to take hundreds of farms out of production, costing thousands of jobs and billions more in lost revenue. As long as the department's implementation plans lack coherence and sense, the Treasury will never allocate the kind of money needed to make the reforms work.

The land claim on KwaZulu-Natal cane and game farmer Charl Senekal's properties illustrates the point. Senekal is a member of what is called the club of super farmers. His turnover exceeds R160m a year, and he expects it to grow to R200m. He's also part owner of a sugar mill that handles 1,2-million tons of cane a year. But bungled land reforms prompted him to join a group of South African farmers who visited Libya last week, looking for new avenues for investing their money partly because they're getting gatvol at the way they're being treated back home.

I have no idea of the intricacies of Senekal's land claim, so I cannot judge its validity. He says he's had it thoroughly investigated, and it has no merit under land restitution law. The Land Claims Commission, which Gwanya headed before being promoted to director-general, disagreed. But instead of presenting its research to a court and letting a judge decide, or even making Senekal an offer for his land, now valued at R1,2bn, the commission did nothing for years.

All land claims had to be lodged by the end of 1998. For the past decade, Senekal has been bold enough to keep investing in his business, as he's entitled to as long as he gets permission from the commission. This included spending R43m on an irrigation pipeline that also provided fresh water for the first time to 250000 local villagers. Other farmers are more risk- averse. They just stop investing, at least in SA. Farmers' union AgriSA estimates that in Limpopo and Mpumalanga alone more than 300 have shifted their money and expertise to Mozambique.

Senekal claims to be a strong supporter of land reform and black empowerment. I have no reason to doubt him. He says he's sold 30% of high-quality cane land to workers with more than five years' service at a third of market value. It seems they are flourishing. He provided soft loans to 150 small-scale cotton growers on a neighbouring farm, and offered to sell the commission 600ha of cane fields, which he would lease back for 20 years and train the claimants "from scratch" to become successful commercial farmers.

If the Treasury allocates Gwanya's department the money to buy out farmers like Senekal, the loss to SA would be incalculable. "If they pay me out tomorrow I'll leave and invest my money in Libya," he says. "But 1200 people will be out of a job."

Each probably has at least six dependants, so a single badly handled land claim could destroy 80000 livelihoods. This is no budget issue, it's sheer lunacy. The Treasury is right not to back it.

Hofstatter is contributing editor.