2013 marks the Centenary of the 1913 Land Act. It is a date
all South Africans should commemorate, in order to better understand this law’s
tragic consequences, and find ways to make redress meaningful.
The 1913 Land Act was apartheid’s “original sin” because it
reserved 87% of South Africa’s land exclusively for white ownership, as the
basis of the “Bantustan” policy. It not only dispossessed many black South
Africans of the land they owned, but also sought to prohibit black people from
ever acquiring land in so-called “white” South Africa. The ultimate aim of the
National Party government was to strip black South Africans of their
citizenship.
This Act, and its successor, the 1936 Land Act, are a major cause
of dispossession and endemic poverty in South Africa today.
It is appropriate that public debate in 2013 should focus on this
tragic legacy and our failure, since the advent of democracy, to address
it.
One of the many reasons for this failure is that the national
government’s restitution strategy has primarily targeted the declining number
of commercial farmers who, in the face of tough international competition (and
without the state subsidies their competitors enjoy), still manage to maintain
South Africa’s food security, generate exports, underpin our agri-processing
industries and generate much-needed foreign exchange. Since 1994 the
number of commercial farmers has dwindled from 120 000 to 37 000. And even
more alarmingly, the number of jobs generated by the agricultural sector has
declined by almost 400,000 over the same period. If this trend continues,
South Africa will soon become a food importing country and the thousands of
unskilled workers whose only access to the economy is through jobs in the agricultural
sector, will be destitute.
Contrary to common perception, commercial farming is rarely
lucrative. In fact, farmers reap the lowest return in the agricultural value
chain. Research conducted by “Capturing the Gains” project found that many
farmers are struggling. For example, industry data shows that 30% of grape
farmers in the Hex River Valley in the Western Cape have sold their farms
between 2007 and 2011. Hex River farmers who sold their table grapes to the UK
in 2011 only received 18% of the final retail price while supermarkets took 42%
and distributors 22%. Furthermore, according to industry reports the net income
per 750ml of wine has dropped from R1 in 2004 to 38c in 2011.
Any discussion on sustainable land reform needs to acknowledge
that our remaining viable, productive farms are a precious resource. We
must seek to extend their number among farmers of all races, not diminish them.
It would, therefore, be a disservice to the cause of redress to
make productive farmers the target of attack during the centenary
commemorations of the 1913 Land Act. The real goal should be to try to
understand why the government’s attempts at land reform have failed so far, and
what we must do to redress the legacy of the past while retaining and increasing
the productivity of our agricultural land.
This is a complex debate. It is not reducible to a simplistic
black-versus-white/good-versus-evil analysis. But, if President Jacob
Zuma’s January 8th statement is anything to go by, the ANC will milk
this commemoration (yet again), for the purpose of racial mobilisation, in
order to deflect attention from the real reasons for 20 years of failed land
reform. And this diversion will merely perpetuate these failures.
Before South Africans fall for this con-trick, we would do well to
ask the following questions:
1) Why is 90% of the 5.9-million
hectares of land bought by the state for emerging farmers no longer productive?
(according to Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Gugile Nkwinti).
2) Why does the government blame the
“willing-buyer-willing-seller” principle for its failure to meet its land
reform targets, when the money squandered on failed projects could have
purchased 37% of all farm land in South Africa at market value? (according to
Mr Theo de Jager, Deputy President of AgriSA).
3) Why, almost 20 years since the
dawn of democracy, is the audit of state-owned land (which is needed for the
potential release of millions of hectares into productive use), still
incomplete? Why has the deadline for this audit repeatedly been extended?
4) Why is 30% of South Africa’s most
fertile agricultural land so unproductive that it yields hardly any food and
almost no jobs?
If we can use this centenary commemoration to grapple with these
questions, and answer them honestly, we will take a significant step towards
sustainable restitution. This is the least we owe to dispossessed South
Africans who could make a living off our fertile soil, if land reform were
tackled properly.
At the outset, it is important to note that only one third of our
country receives more than 500mm of rainfall per year. That means that
more than two-thirds of our country is semi desert or desert.
Most of the high yield agricultural land lies on our eastern seaboard. And
a full 30% of the most fertile land is controlled and allocated by all-powerful
traditional leaders in feudal communal land tenure systems. The rural
peasants who live on the land are dependent on the Chief’s patronage and have
no independent rights to the land.
As the historian G Findlay correctly noted: “tribal tenure
is a guarantee that the land will never properly be worked.” That is why
hundreds of thousands of people migrate from very fertile land (under tribal
tenure) to less fertile provinces to seek work on productive farms.
Ironically, the ANC already recognised the urgent necessity of
reforming tribal tenure systems as far back as the 1940s when its President, Dr
AB Xuma, said: “The fundamental basis of all wealth and power is the ownership
and acquisition of freehold title to land.”
An even greater irony was President Zuma approving use of this
quote in his 8th January speech -- despite the fact that the ANC
has, since 1994, moved in the opposite direction, entrenching the power of tribal
chiefs, in return for their commitment to secure their subjects’ political
support for the ruling party. Tightening his grip on power is a far
greater priority for the President than tackling land reform.
Against this background, the ANC’s lamentations about the slow
pace of land reform ring hollow. If President Zuma really takes the
National Development Plan seriously, as he professes to do, he would take note
of its analysis that “insufficient tenure security” for black farmers in
communal areas is “the first major risk” to “integrated and inclusive” rural
economies. The NDP concludes that “better land use in communal areas has
the potential to improve the livelihoods of at least 370,000 people”.
If the ANC simply applied the NDP’s proposals for transforming
communal land tenure, it would more than quadruple the yields of the most
fertile land in the country, meet its numerical land reform targets, create
thousands of jobs, and extend food security. This surely, must be a
priority, rather than the continued destruction of once productive farms, in an
escalating race to the bottom.
But this shift cannot happen without limiting the patronage and
power abuse of the tribal chiefs. And the ANC refuses to take this
risk, even though the National Development Plan (which the ANC adopted at
Mangaung) identifies it as a priority.
It would also be too much to expect our President to publicly
acknowledge that the only successful model of land reform to date has been the
Western Cape’s equity share schemes. Over 90 farms in the Province have
opted for these schemes and are now under the co-ownership of farmers and
farmworkers. Approximately 80% of these deals have succeeded in maintaining the
productivity of the land, while turning farmworkers into successful farm owners. Again,
the National Development Plan seeks to develop this model further.
The NDP’s proposals should be the centrepiece of public debate
during this centenary commemoration, so that we can avoid the tempting detours
of political expedience that has resulted in past failures. The saga of
failed land reform projects makes heart-breaking reading, such as the account
of 20 top crop and dairy farms in the Eastern Cape, bought for R11.6-million,
which have ceased production. Several have become informal settlements,
according to the Sunday Times.
But given the emotive value of the land issue in achieving the
ANC’s goal of mobilising its electoral support base by exacerbating racial
divisions, this may be too much to hope for.
The odds are far greater that President Zuma will continue to duck
the issues, blame the past to avoid dealing with the realities of the present,
and destroy one of the most important pillars of our economy.
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