WE NEED to gain an understanding of the role of land reform and how we ended up in the situation where the state has to make radical land reform policies.
It has been more than 100 years since colonists introduced the Natives Land Act, promulgated on June 19, 1913. This act is seen as providing the cornerstone of legislation that followed, for a systematic process of land dispossession by the then state.
The most sacrosanct provision of the act was restricting Africans to only buy, lease and sell land in the scheduled areas, which were referred to as “reserves”, while whites were prohibited from owning land in those areas.
According to our historical encyclopedias, the scheduled areas amounted to about 21 million acres, which was only 7.3 percent of South Africa, while the area set aside for the white minority was 10 times larger than that of the African majority. Though a few percentages were added to land available to Africans by the Native and Land Trust Act in 1936, the African community remained suffering.
In 1994 the democratic government opted for a three-pronged land reform policy to redress the historical injustice of land dispossession, denial of access to land, and forced removals.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform thus introduced policies that sought to correct those previous apartheid laws, namely the land restitution, land redistribution and land tenure reform.
Under the Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994, persons or communities who lost their property as a result of apartheid laws or practices after 1913 were invited to submit claims for the returning of their land or receive financial compensation.
Land was then made available for agricultural production, settlement and non- agricultural enterprises through the land redistribution policy, also assisting in development support to small farmers.
Farmworkers and labour tenants continue to be at helm of exploitation in the working environment. Land tenure policies, guided by various land reform laws, were formed to provide security of tenure to farmworkers and labour tenants.
The Rural Development and Land Reform Minister, Gugile Nkwinti, has also introduced various land reform programmes that assist new owners of land in becoming productive.
Land reform in South Africa plays a significant role in economic transformation as it aims at reducing poverty and changes the way agricultural land is owned. Let us remember that the quality land will be needed forever to produce good quality food.
Nthabiseng Matabane
Pretoria