DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: Land Reform Policies Under the Microscope

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Stephan Hofstatter

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 4 2005 (IPS) - Civil society in South Africa has told government that the pace of land reform in the country needs to be speeded up.

The Alliance of Land and Agrarian Reform Movements (ALARM), a broad coalition of non-governmental organisations that promote land rights, urged officials Tuesday to implement without delay resolutions tabled at a national land summit held recently in Johannesburg.

These include scrapping the “willing buyer, willing seller” (WBWS) policy, which certain politicians and activists say has slowed land reform by pushing up prices. The summit also resolved to re-open a process of land claims that was instituted by government to allow persons who were dispossessed of their land under apartheid and colonialism to reclaim it.

In addition, the resolutions provide for inserting a clause in the constitution to protect the right of the landless to invade unoccupied land.

“The government must be held accountable to implement these resolutions,” said Marc Wegerif of the Nkuzi Development Association. “No one from government raised any objection when they were adopted.”

ALARM’s call was backed by the South African Communist Party and the Emerging Red Meat Producers Association. The latter claims to represent farmers owning almost 50 percent of South Africa’s total beef herd – and has become influential in lobbying government on agricultural policy.

The four-day summit, which ended a day early on Saturday, was billed as South Africa’s first significant review of land policy since the advent of democracy in 1994. It was opened by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ncuka, who set the tone by calling for WBWS to be revisited. “We want to make sure sellers work with us instead of, in some cases, seeking to exploit us,” she told delegates.

White farmers’ unions said later that changes to this policy could lead to food shortages in South Africa.

“The moment you meddle with the “willing buyer, willing seller” principle you send hugely negative messages to the marketplaces,” noted Louw Steytler, spokesman on land affairs for AgriSA. “The value of land used as security to plant that land will be skewed by (this) grossly irresponsible rhetoric.”

He rejected the prevailing view at the summit that market sales were slowing down the transfer of land to South Africa’s black majority, instead blaming government for its failure to allocate a land budget capable of paying for the large number of farms traded daily on the open market.

To a certain extent, land sector statistics support this argument. Economists have pointed out that the total value of commercial farm assets in 2002 was over 15 billion dollars, which meant that almost five billion dollars was needed to meet the government’s target of a 30 percent transfer of land into black hands. According to the Department of Land Affairs, less than 110 million dollars was budgeted for land reform in that year.

However, black farmers say white sellers also push up prices when authorities offer to buy their land, and that state intervention is needed.

“A farm is advertised for one million rand (about 156,000 dollars), but when they hear you are buying with an Lrad (Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development) grant the price becomes two million rand (about 312,000 dollars),” said Russel Milander, president of the Northern Cape province chapter of the National African Farmers Union.

President Thabo Mbeki made a surprise appearance at the summit on its second day, telling delegates that the Zimbabwean government’s willingness to put its own land reform initiatives on hold had played a part in bringing democracy to South Africa. However, this had also led to mounting frustration amongst dispossessed Zimbabweans, which laid the ground for the seizures of white-owned farms in 2000 and later years.

Mbeki said that when the African National Congress – now in power – was locked in negotiations with the apartheid regime in 1990, former Commonwealth secretary general Emeka Anyaoku visited Harare to ask Mugabe to delay his land reform plans. “He was told, ‘You are going to frighten the apartheid regime in South Africa’,” Mbeki noted. As a result, Mugabe agreed to begin land redistribution after South Africa had freed itself from white rule, said Mbeki.

The president was responding to questions from the floor by Zimbabwean academic Sam Moyo, who said frustrations about the slow pace of market-led land reform in his country had led to a hardening of views concerning its redistribution programme.

While the farm occupations in Zimbabwe were initially portrayed as a spontaneous attempt by former liberation war fighters and government militants to correct racial imbalances in land ownership dating from the colonial era, government critics paint a different picture of the seizures. Some claim the invasions were orchestrated by government in a bid to deflect public attention away from its poor track record ahead of parliamentary elections in 2000.

The calls of land groups notwithstanding, it is unclear at this stage whether WBWS will be abandoned entirely in South Africa or continue to exist alongside new policies of state intervention. These might take the form of expropriation at below-market prices, a tax on unproductive land – or implementation of laws allowing for subdivision of farms.

World Bank economist Rogier van den Brink cautioned that expropriation at below market value could slow down land transfers and drive up prices because of the likelihood of the policy being contested in court. Instead he proposed a tax targeting large landholdings, with productive farms being exempted.

“(The tax) would bring more unused land onto markets. It would control land price inflation, and it would reduce speculation by absentee landlords,” he said.

But, Van den Brink also dismissed farmers’ fears that reviewing WBWS could destroy agriculture through undermining the value of land – which presently served as collateral for loans taken out to enable production on farms.

“They are being alarmist. This country has a very strong constitution and legal framework. It has well thought out policies and programmes. After the summit, these programmes and policies will improve.”

He also noted that the market, left to itself, would never distribute land from large farmers to small farmers, even though this was essential for social and political stability in South Africa: “We must give markets direction.”

With senior officials having ruled out the possibility of large-scale expropriation, however, it seems likely that a combination of selective expropriation, a land tax and land subdivision might come into effect.

In this regard, an approach pioneered in Brazil could serve as a model for South Africa. Under the Brazilian initiative, unused farmland is expropriated, then subdivided into family-owned units with land and production costs financed by subsidised loans. The system exists parallel to a commercial land sector regulated by market forces.

The director general at the Department of Land Affairs, Glen Thomas, cautioned against seeing summit resolutions as a blueprint for accelerating land reform.

“The recommendations that have come up will be taken on board by government as part of their programme that will start to deal with these issues in a detailed manner,” he said.

New policies would be formulated through interaction with all concerned, including communities, other government departments and the agriculture sector.