1. Introduction

The Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies is based at the University of the Western Cape. Since 1996, we have been involved with research, teaching and policy analysis in the area of land reform and related fields, both in South Africa and throughout the southern African region.

We believe that the pace of land reform in South Africa is unacceptably slow, and that urgent steps should be taken to improve both the pace and the quality of land reform.

The reasons for the slow pace are complex, but include the following:

• inappropriate or poorly-designed policies, most notably the market-based approach;
• inappropriate project designs, that undermine the sustainability of land reform projects and the ability of poor rural people to gain a livelihood;
• limited capacity within state agencies, including Department of Land Affairs, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, provincial Departments of Agriculture and local government;
• limited resources, for land purchase and for post-settlement support;
• lack of a holistic strategy for land reform and rural development at local or national levels.

The slow pace of land reform manifests itself most obviously in the very limited transfer of land to date – approximately 2.9% of former ‘white’ agricultural land transferred by February 2004 – but also in less-publicised issues such as ongoing evictions from commercial farms and lack of progress in many land reform projects (including settled restitution cases). While land reform has achieved some notable successes, these are overshadowed by the scale of the task that remains.

We believe that many issues within the land reform programme require urgent review, and deserve the attention of the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs of the National Assembly. For purposes of this presentation, we will focus on four broad issues that we believe should be prioritised, namely the method of land acquisition, post-settlement support, the needs of farm dwellers, and budgetary requirements.

Since the outset, the land reform programme has relied heavily on the market to provide land for redistribution, under the so-called willing buyer, willing seller approach. This has meant that existing landowners have been in a strong position to determine which land is made available and at what price. Even in cases of restitution or tenure reform (particularly on commercial farms), the transfer of ownership had largely been determined by the cooperation or non-cooperation of the land owners. The market-based approach currently being followed is a policy choice on the part of government, and is not specifically mandated by the Constitution, which clearly allows for non-market approaches.

The market-based approach has a number of major implications for the land reform programme:

• it precludes a systematic, planned approach to meeting land needs in specific areas; land acquisition is instead piecemeal, as individual farms come up for sale;
• it militates against long-term and proactive planning by state bodies for the provision of infrastructure and support services to land reform beneficiaries;
• the willingness of the state to pay ‘market ‘ prices ensures that land reform remains expensive, and there is widespread perception that landowners are can exploit this willingness in order to obtain exorbitant prices.

South Africa has an active land market, which presents opportunities for acquisition of land for reform purposes. This would, however, require a proactive strategy by the state to acquire land in areas of high demand for transfer to beneficiaries, something that has long been discussed but has not formed part of policy to date. Alternatively, beneficiaries could be empowered to ‘shop around’ for the most suitable and affordable land, including bidding at auctions, but such flexibility is not found under existing policy which requires agreement from a specific land owner before a grant application can be considered.

Acquisition of land through the open market has proved to be slow, and offers no assurances that the most appropriate land, in terms of quality and location, will be acquired, at an affordable price or at the required scale. To address these concerns, it is essential that the state adopts a systematic and proactive approach to land acquisition, in close partnership with the landless. This would require the following:

• systematic assessment of all land needs per area, to include demands for restitution, redistribution and tenure reform;
• identification of suitable land, and matching this to identified demand;
• negotiations with landowners to release suitable land, on the scale required and at an affordable price;
• use of expropriation where negotiations do not yield results.

We believe that a critical programme of transformation such as land reform cannot be left to the vagaries of the free market, and requires a high degree of intervention from the state, including the use of expropriation where appropriate. To rely only on the free market puts poor and landless people at a great disadvantage, denies the state the power to plan systematically for the restructuring of apartheid-era ownership patterns and provision of post-settlement support, and grants an unacceptable veto power to the small, privileged class of existing landowners. The state should, in our opinion, adopt a systematic and proactive approach to land reform based on area-wide planning, close partnership with the landless and robust negotiations with landowners, utilising a mix of market and non-market approaches.

Alongside the pace or scale of land reform, the quality of land reform projects and the benefits they deliver to participants is emerging as a major source of concern. During the period 1994-1999, much attention focussed on the large numbers of members of many land reform projects. While this has been addressed to a certain extent through the introduction of LRAD (Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development programme), many challenges remain.

These challenges can be summarised as follows:

• Inappropriate project design and poor planning. Many land reform projects, particularly group projects under both LRAD and restitution, have been designed by officials and consultants to conform to idealised models of commercial enterprises, which bear little relation to the skills, knowledge and experience of intended beneficiaries. This is often compounded by high levels of borrowing by new and untested enterprises, which beneficiaries struggle to repay. There continues to be an over-emphasis on collective farming, where smaller sub-projects may be more appropriate. In the case of joint ventures between beneficiaries and former owners, there is a perception in many cases that little real empowerment or transfer of benefits has taken place. More flexible project designs are required, that build on the strengths and skills of beneficiaries and allow for a mix of commercial and non-commercial activities without exposing them to unacceptably high levels of risk.
• Lack of post-settlement support, and poor coordination between role players. Possibly the single most important factor influencing the success and sustainability of land reform projects is the quality of post-settlement support, which varies greatly between projects. Many beneficiaries complain of little or no post-settlement support from agencies such as DLA, provincial departments of agriculture, municipalities or the private sector, including both support for productive activities and for the management of communal property associations. Where services are available, they are often poorly coordinated, with delays of two years or more being reported between transfer of land and release of post-settlement grants. A comprehensive post-settlement support plan for every land reform project is required, to be coordinated by one agency (DLA, DOA or the municipality) and involving all key role players, that can deliver appropriate forms of support in a timely manner.

If land reform is to meet its potential to improve the livelihoods of beneficiaries and contribute to poverty alleviation and local economic development, much greater attention needs to be paid to project design and post-settlement support. An important step in this direction has been taken with the introduction of the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP) and the promised re-introduction of the Agricultural Credit Scheme. However, the full benefits of such programmes can only be realised if the agencies responsible for post-settlement support develop substantial new capacity to serve the needs of resource-poor farmers. In addition, there needs to be much more effective monitoring and evaluation of land reform projects to ensure that benefits are reaching the intended beneficiaries, and to ensure intervention where necessary.

1. Needs of Farm Dwellers

The estimated 800,000 farmworkers and six million farm dwellers are among the poorest and most vulnerable South Africans. Despite the enactment of two laws – the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) and the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act (LTA) – evictions of farm dwellers continue. The scale of evictions is subject to debate and it is not known how many farm dwellers have been evicted either through the legal route or illegally. Many private landowners have resisted tenure reform on farms, and organised agriculture has been highly critical of attempts to strengthen the tenure rights of farm dwellers.

Despite a landmark ruling by the Land Claims Court that recognised farm dwellers’ right to legal representation at the state’s expense, farm dwellers continue to face eviction proceedings without the support of an attorney. The high rate of evictions of farm dwellers from their homes has left families destitute, often in informal settlements without any means of support.

The high rate of evictions from private farms can be attributed to a number of factors:

• weaknesses in the legislation
• ignorance of the law on the part of farm dwellers, and inability to exercise their rights
• lack of monitoring or intervention by relevant government departments
• unlawful activity and coercion by many land owners
• lack of support from police, magistrates and prosecutors for farm dwellers facing eviction.

The land reform programme has focused on regulating evictions rather than proactively securing farm dwellers’ tenure rights. Little effort has been made to use the powers under ESTA to grant farm dwellers ownership of land or development assistance either on the farms where they already reside, or elsewhere. To illustrate, there have been just six cases to date in Gauteng, eight each in the Free State, Northern Cape and North West, and twenty-five in the Western Cape.

About 20,000 labour tenant applications have been lodged with the DLA, most of which are in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. Since the deadline for applications in 2002, the state has not issued notices to affected landowners, as required by the LTA. To date, approximately 200 labour tenant projects have been approved, but it is not clear how many of the 20,000 applications these represent. The lack of progress in responding to labour tenants’ applications has led to conflict and insecurity in certain regions of these two provinces, as labour tenants attempt to retain access to land for cultivation and grazing. The Minister recently issued a directive to the DLA to settle 10,000 labour tenant claims, including 5,000 in KwaZulu-Natal, by March 2005. This would involve the transfer of half a million hectares to labour tenants in that province within three years, at an estimated cost of R2.9 billion – a forty-fold increase on the R24 million available in the current financial year. The department does not have the funds to meet this directive.

A promised review of the two laws governing farm dwellers’ tenure rights has been underway for nearly three years. No proposed changes have been made public, nor has there been public consultation on how to remedy the deficiencies of the existing legislative framework.

• There is now an urgent need for policy development to confront the crisis of land rights and livelihoods among farm dwellers. The process must include farm dwellers in identifying and debating policy options that can respond to the problems they face. A revised legal framework must address not only the need to secure farm dwellers’ existing land access but also to provide farm dwellers with expanded access to land for their own livelihood purposes.
• Major financial and institutional investments are now needed in the areas of rights education, access to justice and enforcement of farm dwellers’ rights. The DLA budget to support the farm dweller programme must be increased and ring-fenced from the rest of the ‘land reform’ budget line.
• There is a need to challenge organised agriculture and private landowners to support land reform by agreeing to transfer portions of their land to farm dwellers. Land for farm workers and dwellers, for both residential and productive purposes, should be given greater priority as part of both the redistribution and tenure reform programmes, and within the Agricultural Black Economic Empowerment (AgriBEE) Charter.

Land reform can only succeed in creating livelihoods for the poor and restructuring rural property relations if substantial funds are made available to drive the process. Within the current approach, land purchase accounts for most costs, followed by the operating costs of the DLA, and finally development planning and support.

The budget for land reform has increased in recent years but still accounts for less than 0.5% of the national budget. Further increases are projected in the MTEF but these will not enable a substantial expansion of the land reform programme. Nor is it clear whether the gradual budget increases will be able to keep pace with rising land prices.

The budget for restitution increased markedly in 2003/04 and again in 2004/05 (to R933 million), while the budget for ‘land reform’ (including redistribution and tenure reform) has declined in real terms over the past six years, and current stands at R474 million. This means that the funds to purchase land for redistribution and to secure farm dwellers rights remain below the levels in 1998/99.

Despite its relatively small allocation, DLA regularly underspent its budget until 2002/03, when the trend was reversed and DLA over-committed its funds for the first time. As a result, over half a billion rands worth of redistribution and farm dweller projects were put on hold and an informal moratorium on new projects instituted in some provinces.

The resulting backlog of projects resulted in situations where DLA, applicants and landowners were ready to implement projects but unable to proceed due to lack of funds. In some instances, landowners withdrew from the process due to delays.

This means that, for the first time since 1994, budgetary constraints have become a real limitation on the land reform programme.

There are no coherent estimates of the total funding needed to meet the 2015 target of transferring 30% of agricultural land. However, at current market values, this would require tens of billions of rands for land purchase alone. Even if non-market approaches to land acquisition are to be adopted, which might reduce the cost of land acquisition, major investments are needed in the implementing institutions both to increase the pace of delivery, and to support improved and more integrated planning.

• Substantial increases are needed in the funds allocated to land reform.
• To address the current bottlenecks in approving and disbursing grants under the redistribution programme, a capital budget of at least R1 billion is required per annum, as against the R445 million envisaged for 2005/06 in the MTEF. Measures to bring down the costs of acquiring land should also be explored.
• To settle the outstanding restitution claims will cost at least R13,5 billion, according to the Chief Land Claims Commissioner, although the average cost of settling claims to date indicates that the figure could be much higher. Substantially increased capital and operating budgets will be needed over the coming years to support the conclusion and then the implementation of restitution settlement agreements. The proposed deadline for the settlement of claims cannot be treated as an end to the financial or institutional support to restitution.
• Dedicated budgets must be set aside to support the farm dweller programme, including a major injection of funds to transfer formal land rights to the majority of labour tenants whose applications are still pending, and to support a reinvigorated programme to confer substantive land rights on farm dwellers and to intervene where evictions or other rights violations have occurred.
• The cost of land reform should be shared more equitably between the state and the private sector – both individual landowners and agribusiness. The AgriBEE charter should address how current landowners will support the programme by donating land or making land available at below-market price, and how the established agricultural industry can support a negotiated approach to land acquisition in areas where there is a high demand for land.

1. Conclusion

Much has been achieved in the first ten years of land reform, and important lessons have been learned. A significant increase in the scale of delivery is now required, however, to meet the needs of the mass of poor rural people for economic upliftment and secure land rights. This will require three main elements:

• a substantial increase in resources for land reform;
• increased capacity within implementing agencies, including DLA, provincial departments of agriculture and municipalities;
• policy reforms that are capable of delivering land and the necessary support services at a significantly increased scale.

All of the above will, in turn, depend on strong political commitment to provide resources, build capacity within public institutions, convince government agencies to work more collaboratively and more effectively, and confront the vested interests of landowners and the wider agricultural sector.

The processes leading to the adoption of an AgriBEE Charter provide a valuable opportunity to negotiate the terms of a greatly enhanced land and agricultural reform strategy. It is essential that parliamentarians play an active role in these debates and ensure that the needs of the rural poor and landless for secure rights and sustainable development are really prioritised.