Land reform resolutions adopted in the ANC's elective conference in Mangaung in 2012 will be implemented, Minister Gugile Nkwinti said on Thursday.

"We are here because we are saying to South Africans, these are the resolutions we are implementing now."

He was speaking at the start of a three-day national land tenure summit in Boksburg, on the East Rand.

"On Saturday when we [leave] here, we want to say we are moving closer to implementing the resolutions adopted in Mangaung 2012.

"We are consulting with you. If you have anything you want to amend, amend it."

He said land reform was a serious matter and South Africans needed to find a way of sharing it equitably and fairly.

"You can't not mediate the question of land redistribution. You cannot leave it to the markets. This is the mediation."

Nkwinti asked all parties at the summit to discuss the proposed policies and voice their opinions by Saturday, before the department finalised the policies for implementation.

In its policy document the African National Congress proposes that farm labourers assume ownership of half the land on which they are employed.

This would be "proportional to their contribution to the development of the land, based on the number of years they had worked on the land".

The "historical owner" of the farm "automatically retains" the other half.

According to the policy proposals, tabled by Nkwinti, with a deadline for feedback of April next year, government would pay for the 50% to be shared by workers.

This money would not be paid to the farm owner, but go into an investment and development fund, to be jointly owned by the parties constituting the new ownership regime.

On Thursday, Nkwinti told reporters farmers would need to be rewarded for the contribution they had made to the land.

Workers would have to be trained on how to manage the farms and keep them profitable under their own administration, as they already knew how to take care of the land.