Paul Janisch

The most successful land reform projects were those where beneficiaries enlisted the help of commercial farmers

Democratic Alliance MP Lourie Bosman, a former president of farmers’ union Agri SA, endorsed the bureau’s findings and said the most successful land reform projects were those where beneficiaries enlisted the help of commercial farmers. "I therefore share the bureau’s findings on support. I have seen many farming projects fail for lack of it," he said. "There was often no expertise available and people didn’t know how to manage, or didn’t have the capital they needed."

As per BDlive today.  And the bureau found

TIGHTER margins in farming because of "fierce" local competition and the entry of global players will make it "virtually impossible" for small farmers to enter the sector, an agricultural think tank said on Tuesday, raising fresh doubt about the government’s land reform targets.

The Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy also said land reform had been dealt a severe blow by the dismantling of support services for farmers in the years of political transition, the bureau said in its latest Baseline Agricultural Outlook.

 

 

Land restitution - considering the emotional practicalities

Two articles appeared in BDLive this morning (and yes there are ways to read this without paying extortionate amounts for the content; as soon as the drop the price to something reasonable I will subscribe).

This paragraph sums up the need for black ownership of farmland

At this point, the landlessness of black people should be the most pressing priority. Land brings dignity and is capital to fund a better education, new businesses and an improved quality of life. We should have solved the restitution question many years ago and redistributed 30% of land to blacks by now. Without it, black lives will continue to suffer indignity and upward mobility will still be largely in the hands of the government.

Written by Sipho Hlongwane on the anniversary of the 1913 Land Act, the article provides a surprisingly objective view of the emotional attachment to land and the indignity of having that land removed from you. Sipho writes

Sol Plaatje famously put it: "Awaking on Friday morning, June 20 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth." In one fell swoop, the government of the day restricted black land ownership to just 7% of the available land, and later, under the 1936 Native Trust and Land Act of South Africa, that portion was extended to 13% — most of it a collection of "native reserves" that could not possibly support the country's growing black population. The results of this political act were immediately apparent. Blacks were either forced into unsustainable slivers of land or forced to move to white areas where they were ruthlessly exploited as cheap labour.

In this context it is easy to understand the emotional attachment to land. But Hlongwane conveniently omits a vital point that has been accepted by the government.

The government has long assumed a major land hunger among South Africans, which restitution is supposed to help fulfil. However, in April, Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti finally acknowledged that few claimants wanted land, for 93% (about 71,000 out of 76,000) had opted for financial compensation instead. Said Nkwinti: "We thought everybody, when they got a chance to get land, they would jump for it. Now, only 5,856 have opted for land restoration." People wanted money because of poverty and unemployment, but they had also become urbanised and "deculturised" in terms of tilling land. "We no longer have a peasantry; we have wage earners now."

This is taken from the other article in BDLive, written by Anthea Jeffery who is head of special research at the South African Institute of Race Relations. Anthea goes into a fair amount of detail about the pitfalls of the land restitution process and the ramifications of the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill which is now open for comment. Jeffery goes into a few issues that we are likely to experience if the bill goes through. The first one relates to verifying the claim.

According to Theo de Jager, the vice-president of Agri SA, which is the national voice of commercial agriculture, part of the reason is that would-be claimants have realised that claims are no longer being adequately verified. In the past, says De Jager, when people anticipated proper investigation, they hesitated to put in bogus claims. But now that probes are no longer rigorous, lodging land claims has become "a free-for-all, in which the only criterion is a claim form".

The second is purely an economic one, farmers will no longer invest in the land if there is a claim on it. This has a direct impact on food availability.

And finally – taking the lead from Zimbabwe, we need to consider that the ANC might just go for land grabs to retain its dwindling majority

Land reform in Zimbabwe — which Nkwinti was recently at pains to praise — has left virtually all land in the hands of the government, which leases it to people on a "use it or lose it" basis. This has given President Robert Mugabe's administration a powerful instrument of political control. South Africa's ruling party may also want the same for itself as its already declining electoral support withers further in the future.

This is not an easy situation to sort out. There is no doubt that people feel dispossessed but allowing for expropriation below market value could force our people to become refugees in Zimbabwe.

Water affairs issues water licences not DAFF

Thanks for correcting this Andrew.  Andrew wrote in the comments

Water use licensing is undertaken by DWA. The current demise of DWA is not unlike that of DAFF though....but it is a different minister....

It seems that I am a little too hasty to blame incompetent ministers on everything, Tina gets a reprieve.  I've made changes to the original post.  

The link to apply for water rights is here.

I was also a little too hasty to post the complete AgriBEE scorecard. Here it is 

 

AgriBEE – why would you bother?

A farmers' union has asked me to present a course on the AgriBEE Code. In conducting my research I could not fathom why any entity involved in agricultural would want to pay any attention to the AgriBEE scorecard. It's rather like paying your TV licence because it's the right thing to do but otherwise there is no other perceived benefit. The real issue with agricultural land is that of land restitution and the AgriBEE Code attempts to offer some sort of incentive to agricultural land owners to become part of this process. The only incentive offered being BEE points under the ownership scorecard. Government has committed to a number of initiatives to facilitate ownership under the code – all of which are stated land reform outcomes and land reform is still awaiting the finalisation of the Land Reform Green Paper. Most of the ownership aspect of the AgriBEE code does depend on the finalisation of the land reform legislative process.

• Contribute to increasing access and acquisition of agricultural land by Black People, through its existing programmes;
• Proactively acquire suitable agricultural land that comes onto the market for land redistribution
• Use above mentioned land and agricultural land that reverts to the state through foreclosure of indebted farmers, for redistribution, including through long lease arrangements (e.g. 99 year lease)
• Promote sustainable management and use of natural resources
• Finalise the land restitution process (it must be noted that the draft said this was to be done by 2008 – the code leaves this deadline open)
• Encourage the development of a land lease and land rental market
• Promote the consolidation and tenure on traditional community land in terms of relevant acts that support communal land
• Secure the ownership, access and tenure rights of Black Designated Groups through the registration of old order rights or new order rights into freehold ownership.

Returning to my earlier argument that, other than land redistribution there is little reason to implement a BEE scorecard within an agricultural environment. Implementation of BEE cannot be enforced without a procurement process driving it. It is because of the preferential procurement element that all BEE scorecards exist. The principle is simple – a large corporate asks its suppliers for a BEE scorecard because this has an impact in their own preferential procurement scorecard; the supplier asks its suppliers and so you get further down the chain. BEE has succeeded because of this process and this is without any assistance from the government. Agricultural produce, like all consumer goods should in theory fit in with this model. The retail sector is not the fastest adopter of BEE because there is less pressure on them to comply. The average customer is not concerned about the BEE status of their favourite retail store (although I think Jimmy Manyi might be), they purchase for a variety of reasons that are unrelated to BEE status. It is very likely that agricultural products are going to follow the same process. Pick 'n Pay is not going to quibble about the BEE status of a carrot supplier, they are going to buy because the stock is available and the price is right. Similarly, Tiger Brands is not going to prioritise baked bean suppliers on the basis of BEE status because it might possibly impact on the quality and price of the product which will result in me not buying a tin of Koo baked beans. The code does make a pathetic attempt at creating preferential procurement urgency by claiming that government will

• Align their procurement practices with AgriBEE when procuring goods and services from the agricultural Sector
• Provide Black People and QSEs preferred supplier status in the procurement of goods and services;
• Identify, prioritise and target Black entrepreneurs and Enterprises which contribute to broad-based BEE when awarding tenders and contracts to entities in the private sector; and
• Utilise all legislative and other measures available to it, including preferential procurement, to influence the attainment of broad-based BEE objectives

Of the four drivers only 1 and 4 carry any weight. In fact number 4 is a repeat of number 1. Numbers 2 and 3 lack the constitutional and legislative muscle to enforce. As it stands at the moment government is not permitted to prioritise classes of suppliers for their procurement. The success of the uptake of AgriBEE will therefore depend entirely on government as a consumer in this model. I suspect that this is not enough to sway farmers to implement any form of BEE in their organisations.

However – we are not out of the woods completely. A trend is starting to emerge within government legislative circles where BEE scorecards are going to be required when certain licences are allocated. This has been threatened in the allocation of liquor licences. There is nothing stopping the Department of Water Affairs from insisting on BEE compliance in the allocation of water licences.  In the absence of such a driver it is likely that uptake of AgriBEE is going to be very slow.