As the long-awaited draft green paper on land reform was released by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform on Wednesday morning, questions were asked about whether the new policy would pave the way for a quicker, more sustainable and efficient land reform process between now and 2014.
Some core elements proposed by the department have been criticised by economists, commercial farmers, unions and emerging farmers.
Other than what it calls unconstitutional legislative measures proposed in the paper, the commercial agricultural community is irked by a move to cap the size of the land a farmer may own as well as the suggestion to produce commercial products on leased property where the farmer does not have security for funding.
In its draft paper, the government proposes to establish a Land Management Commission (LMC) that would report to Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti and a land valuator-general. The LMC would have powers to subpoena, initiate prosecution and validate or invalidate corporate title deeds.
In the agricultural industry, where 80 percent of the food is produced by 15 percent of the farmers on 80 percent of the land, questions have been raised about the sustainability of the proposed process.
Mike Mlengana, president of the African Farmers Association of SA, raised concerns about the valuator-general. “It seems as though it will control the market. Prices should be regulated by the markets.”
His ire was raised by the government’s proposal to provide farmers with leases over a longer period of time instead of ownership. “Farmers will be seriously affected, this creates a situation where the government is the grandfather. When you lease land and cap the amount of land farmers can own, at what point do farmers become productive?” he asked.
Nick Vink, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Stellenbosch, found it strange that the government was saying that if you were wealthy and had the means, you could acquire private property, yet black emerging farmers would have no property rights. He was also quick to point out that the proposed ceiling on how much land farmers could own would not be implemented because it was unconstitutional.
“What they are saying to black farmers is that they won’t get title deeds as they will be held by the government. Black farmers were discriminated against in the past and are still discriminated against today. Nothing has changed.
“What they are saying is that they don’t trust black farmers and they want to create an environment where it’s hard to invest. There is no incentive to get bigger. The message is wrong,” he said.
Thami ka Plaatjie, a director at the Pan African Foundation, blamed the failure of land reform on the government’s insistence on using the 1913 Land Act as a framework for the present land reform process. He called for a new framework on land redistribution to be established. The 1913 act made provisions for Africans to only hold 13 percent of the land.
“Africans were producing food and selling it to miners prior to 1913, the Land Act destroyed African farmers. It dislocated African people from the land. Migration to towns and city centres is an offshoot of the 1913 Land Act,” he said.
Johan Willemse, the chairman of the agricultural economics department at the University of the Free State, was critical about the green paper’s lack of clarity on implementation, saying it did not provide detail on how its proposals would be implemented.
“We will need to change laws, so it needs to clarify some of the issues. It does not say how to solve the problems or how it will support new farmers,” he said.
Willemse said the sector was already declining as there was no confidence to invest and a limited number of new farmers were going into agricultural production.
In a nutshell, the issues raised by Vink and Willemse paint a bleak future for agriculture in the country as the green paper does not make farming attractive as a career for prospective young farmers.
On land redistribution, Willemse said it needed to be constructed in a way that would bring wealth and welfare to the communities because some had benefited from the process since 1994 and others were still struggling.
He sketched a scenario where the born-free generation, black and white, were reluctant to go into farming because the white person felt that their land would be expropriated and the black person was interested in agriculture but was reluctant because of its lack of profit.
Vink said the lack of interest in the sector would see the corporatisation of the agricultural sector, which would see foreign agribusinesses buying up farms in South Africa and shipping food to their countries of origin, as was the case with countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Modern agriculture is a huge commercial business and the modern world sees farming as an industry that supplies food to the cities. It would be unrealistic to expect people to go back to farming as a way of life, but if it was presented as a viable business alternative, then there would be a different story to tell. - Ayanda Mdluli