1.1 The South African Communist Party (SACP) welcomes this opportunity to contribute to the important discussion on reviewing the pace, progress and framework of land reform in our country. We congratulate the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs to use the advent of the 10th anniversary of the historic defeat of apartheid to go back to an important discussion on how far we have gone as a country to address an historic injustice. The land grievance is at the heart of what shapes South Africa today: continued land inequality is a perpetuation of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

1.2 Land reform is the form of the broader land and agrarian question which in South Africa is shaped by four factors:

2.11 The first ten years of democracy have seen considerable progress in terms of the recognition and protection of the land rights of all South Africans (land redistribution and restitution, security of tenure, labour market reforms, the Agricultural Credit Scheme, etc.)

2.1.2 These interventions have not fundamentally (or even remotely) transformed the current accumulation regime and the political economy of the countryside: severe constraints mean that land ownership patterns and class relations still remain the same as under apartheid. This is clear from the fact that from 1994 to 2004, only approximately three per cent of land in white ownership was transferred to previously disadvantaged people. Other major problems are the continuing eviction of long-term residents from commercial far and the ongoing uncertainty around land rights in the communal areas. Much more remains to be done if the historical process of dispossession is to be reversed and a more equitable distribution of land achieved.

2.1.3 Like the rest of the South African economy, the accumulation regime in agriculture has not fundamentally changed since the historic defeat of the apartheid regime in 1994. Indeed, South Africa's agriculture and its accumulation regime still represent some of the worst features of the political economy of land and agriculture under<colonialism and apartheid. Commercial agriculture is most resistant to transformation of the countryside and represents some of the most backward sections of South African capital. In fact, the current land reform framework and dispensation has, wittingly or unwittingly, emboldened this section of South African capital even to the extent of brazenly delegitimising the land grievance with the acquisence of most of the capitalist media and their political representatives and shop-stewards (the Democratic Alliance and the Freedom Front +).

2.1.4 It is no surprise therefore that demands for land and wider agrarian reform strike at the heart of the highly racialised and stratified system of private property and corporate capitalism, and these demands will be actively resisted by those with vested interests in the current set-up. The struggle of poor landless people for land is an integral part of the wider struggle for social, political and economic emancipation: it cannot be consigned to a 'welfare issue' or merely a 'symbolic' or even 'emotional' issue, nor to the mere restorati6n of historical rights; it is rather a key issue of survival and empowerment for a large proportion of our population:

2.1.5 The land and agrarian question also underlines the manner in which the South African capitalist path of accumulation continues to rely heavily on patriarchal domination over black women. Traditional structures of domination - chieftaincy, village headmen, and house-hold patriarchy were appropriated, perverted, and their coercive features exaggerated for the purposes of colonial control and accelerated capitalist accumulation. Black women generally, and African women in particular, have played the central role in the production and reproduction of the working class - a working class that was "cheap" (for the capitalists), not just because it suffered direct coercion (colonial dispossession, pass laws, compounds, starvation wages), but also because the burden of its reproduction was carried by the unpaid labour of landless and rightless women in rural areas initially. Up to now, the land reform process has not fundamentally altered gender relations in the countryside. It is therefore particularly regrettable that the Communal Land Rights Act was passed by the democratic parliament despite its perpetuation of this patriarchal legacy and undue concessions to conservative sections leading traditional leaders.

2.1.6 Clearly, the results of more than three centuries of dispossession cannot be reversed overnight, and it is inevitable that the legacy of the past will continue to shape the pattern of landownership and land rights for many decades to come. In the analysis of the Communist Party, key reasons for the slow pace of reform include:

2.1.7 A related and important matter is that of how the structure of agricultural markets affect food security. The structure of agricultural markets and the agricultural value chain subjects the ways in which most of South African food is produced, distributed and sold to the interests of agricultural capital. In addition, food security is also affected by large scale, over exploitation of natural resources and environmental factors such as rapidly increasing levels of pollution, climate changes, the widespread degrading of amble land, shrinking water supplies, disappearing forests, collapsing fisheries, trade subsidies in developed countries and controversial technological solutions such as the spread of genetically modified food. The impact of all these factors affects the growing number of poor and working people very much more than others, especially poor women

2.1.8 In the South African context, land reform cannot be limited to rural or agricultural land leaving aside urban and residential land; Very few municipalities have linked their key mandates and programmes with land reform which could include cooperative purchasing of food and fair-price grocery outlets relying on small farm producers; campaigns around food prices directed against the hegemony of agribusiness and major retailers; food garden and cooperative projects in townships; urban land for housing needs and general urban land usage.

4.2.3 Long-term support from small-scale and emerging farmers, from state and private sectors, in order to create sustainable land-based livelihoods;

4.2.4 Radical restructuring of agricultural markets and support services in line with pro-poor land and agrarian reform

4.2.5 Increased protection for those currently living with insecure tenure rights, both on private farms and in communal areas, as well as developmental assistance in order to boost livelihood opportunities and reduce poverty;

4.2.6 Rapid provision of land for housing in urban areas, within reach of jobs and services, and for other urban dimensions of land use

4.4.1.3 In the immediate period, empowerment and resourcing of farm workers, rural dwellers, the landless, the workers and the poor to ensure their informed input into the Agri-BEE Charter.

4.4.1.4 A land audit, to be conducted before the National Land Summit, to focus, amongst other things on:

4.4.2 Ten years into a democratic South Africa, we have seen massive resistance to land reform and protection of apartheid land ownership patterns and slave-labour conditions under which close to a million farm workers still toil. Therefore agricultural capital must answer the question: what is their contribution to democracy? What is their contribution to addressing the historical land grievance? How can they justify the reality that more than 80% of productive land is still in the hands of some 46,000 white corporations and individual farmers? How can they justify the reality that less than 3% of this land has been redistributed to the landless over the last ten years? What have they done about this, and what are they going to do to correct this huge historic, social, political and economic injustice? The National Land Summit is an important opportunity for this discussion to take place and for a historic breakthrough on the land question to be achieved.