Durban - South Africa’s top commercial farmers have agreed to hand over 20% of their farms to their workers in a deal that organised agriculture says is the start of a new land settlement plan with the government.
In a meeting in Stellenbosch on Wednesday, 38 “mega-farmers” who control hundreds of thousands of hectares of intensive agriculture unanimously accepted a draft proposal which they will hand to the government in April.
KwaZulu-Natal sugar farmer Charl Senekal, who chaired the Stellenbosch meeting, said the full deal would be hammered out over the next month before the final document was adopted.
“We all realise something has to be done about the land claims. Farmers cannot continue with this sword hanging over their heads. What we are proposing is that each of us will give 20% of our farms to our workers in return for a 40-year government loan (equitable to the value of the land) at 2% interest. While the money could be used for anything, we are confident most will use it to develop their operations further or buy other farms for development,” he said.
Mtobeli Mxotwa, spokesman for Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti, said the plan was “sincerely appreciated”. “The minister asked the farmers to come forward with proposals to contribute to craft our policies. They haven’t moved since 2011. Because we couldn’t get anything out of the farmers, the minister advocated the 50/50 land concession for farmworkers earlier this year.”
However, Mxotwa said, the proposal had to be “pitted” against the national opinion of all the sector players before it could be accepted.
Senekal has the most land under irrigation in the country, producing more than 300 000 tons of sugar annually. His entire operation is under claim.
The farmers in the group are all recipients of the prestigious Agricultural Writers’ SA Farmer of the Year Awards which started in 1977.
“These are serious guys,” Senekal said. “All of them have at least between two and five thousand hectares each, under intensive farming, under their control.”
He said the concern was whether the government had the cash to furnish the loans.
Hans van der Merwe, the chief executive of Agri-SA, said he welcomed and supported the plan.
“Most of those farmers are members of our structures. They have come up with this in line with a broad proposal which is outlined in the National Development Plan and how they think it could work.”
However, Van der Merwe said, the government’s contribution to the plan and how it was managed post-handover was the key.
“We have a technical team of government and agriculture sector members who are thrashing out the details of how this private-public partnership should work.”
Van der Merwe said the proposal had been mooted at banking sector forums and had been favourably received. “We can’t only have one approach, though. There will have to be different proposals for smaller farmers.”
Ruth Hall, of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, said the farmers had handed the government “a get out of jail free” card but questioned whether the plan was not a “rejig” of the defunct willing seller, willing buyer policy.
“They (the government) have promised all sorts of things to land claimants, but the Treasury has cut back on their land claim budgets. It is a politically savvy move by the farmers.”.
While the move was concessionary by the farmers, the government was cash-strapped.
“The government is going to have to pay out a huge sum of money on these loans at a less-than-inflation interest rate over 40 years. They just don’t have that kind of money,” she said.
Kwanalu chief executive Sandy La Marque said the move by the “mega-farmers” must not be equated to the willing seller, willing buyer policy.
“In this the land is not devalued and a plan to keep the farms productive will be in place. It is very exciting,” she said.
Agri-economist Michael Alliber believed the farmers’ response was an attempt to make land available through a concessionary deal in response to Nkwinti’s announcement that farmers must give 50% of their land to their workers. “The farmers have come up with a soft plan for government. I guess in return they will say that all land claims against their farms must be cancelled,” he said.
The Mercury