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Land redistribution
This programme is not linked to a time limit as it endeavours to revise land holding patterns in South Africa by enabling non-White citizens through a grant system to acquire White-owned land. The legal basis for redistribution of land is the ‘The Provision of Certain Land for Settlement Act (No. 126) of 1993’ and enabling regulations. Here, the target had also not been met by 2014, when 30% of agricultural land in South Africa had to be transferred from White farmers to Black farmers.
By June 2009, 6.7%, or 5.5 million hectares, had in fact been distributed at a cost of approximately $800 million. This 30% figure was based on suggestions by a group of land reform experts convened by the World Bank in the early 1990s. It is not clear, whether this is either an appropriate or meaningful figure towards which a major government policy should aim, nor is it clear, which land is subject to the 30% target – all agricultural land (including state-owned land) or only White-owned agricultural land’ (Boudreaux 2010:16).
Here, as in the case of Land Restitution, government relies on the willing buyer/willing seller strategy to transform the distribution of land. Qualified applicants receive grants to purchase land in rural areas for agricultural purposes. Beneficiaries, after having registered a business entity, have to supply a business plan, which the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform may amend, reject or accept.
Government support for this programme has come in two forms. The first programme, which ran from 1997-2000 is known as the Settlement and Land Acquisition Grant or SLAG. This grant was R16 000 to poor households earning less than R1 500 per month. The grant would have been used to purchase land for subsistence purposes. This programme was criticised for not supporting beneficiaries after the purchase of the land. Bearing in mind that these beneficiaries were poor, they needed support in terms of funds and equipment to start and sustain farming activities. This support was not forthcoming and these farmers rarely qualified for credit. Furthermore, government was often slow in the buying process, losing many opportunities to conclude purchases. Consequently, many of the SLAG beneficiaries – who often did not have farming experience or skills, nor access to extra funds for equipment, lifestock or seeds, could not start to farm or continue to farm sustainably.
In 2001, SLAG was replaced by LRAD or Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development. The intention of this programme was to assist individuals, not households, to become commercial farmers. The grants are bigger at R100 000 and the individuals have to contribute funds, equipment, property and/or labour of their own. The condition that beneficiaries had to be poor was scrapped; yet, they had to be under privileged. Criticism brought against LRAD centred around government’s shift from supporting poor people to enabling successful middle-class commercial farmers. The project of restructuring the agricultural sector by creating and enabling subsistence farmers had been abandoned.
Hall (2009:30) was not in favour of the complex, asymmetrical partnerships that are formed between under privileged people and White business. Although it is one of the advantages of LRAD that the grants may be used not just to purchase land, but also to enter into partnerships, aimed at securing sustainable business opportunities, Hall pointed to the fact that it does not redistribute land.
Still, I would add, these partnerships tend to offer access to the market and skills, which would otherwise be out of reach.
Regrettably, government’s land redistribution programme is not a resounding success. The Daily Dispatch Online reported on a reply filed on 1 September 2009 by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Mr Gugile Nkwinti, to a question in Parliament. He stated that the department had purchased 2 864 farms, of which 29% of the LRAD projects had failed and a further 22% were declining. These failures point to the urgent need for civil society and specifically White farmers to plough energy and creativity into the land redistribution programme for the sake of food security and restorative justice.
Tenure
The objective of the tenure reform programme is to clarify and strengthen tenure rights of farm workers living on privately-owned White farms as lessees and people living in former homelands. ‘The Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act (No. 31) of 1996’ forms the legal basis of this programme and as such, tenure security is a constitutional requirement. This act was supplemented by the passing of ‘The Extension of Security of Tenure Act (No. 62) of 1997 and The Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act (No. 3) of 1996.’
The aim is to protect people living in rural areas, especially farm workers and their family members, from arbitrary evictions. One of the strategies of ‘The Extension of Security of Tenure Act’ to protect farm workers is that it enables farm workers, who had been leasing farm land from White owners, to change their tenancy rights to freehold (CDE, 2008:19). A case in point is the recent (judgement delivered on 14 July 2016) Constitutional Court case of MC Denneboom Service Station cc and another vs. Molefe Ian Phayane. Farm worker Klaase was evicted and a charge laid against him for absconding. Even though he found employment on a neighbouring farm, and his wife Elsie Klaase was served an eviction order with him, she was found to be an occupier in her own right under ‘The Extension of Security of Tenure Act’ or ESTA. The result is that Ms Klaase’s eviction as ordered by the Clanwilliam Magistrate’s Court is illegal.
‘The Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act (No. 3) of 1996’ assists workers in becoming owners of the land they work. These are specifically workers, who receive access to the land they work in exchange for their labour. These Acts offered a time-limited period for labourers and labour tenants to file for full ownership. If successful, they could purchase the land with government grants. 20 000 claims were received by the closing date of March 2001. Few of these claims had been resolved, and the negative outfall of the programme is predictable: Instead of increasing security, it has created more insecurity. Farmers are hiring fewer workers and are mechanising their processes. This increases unemployment. Many farm workers have been evicted in an effort by the farmers to create more certainty as to the futures of their investments in the land. Wegerif (2005:7) held that more than two million Black South Africans were evicted from farmland between 1994 and 2004. It seems as if the law has created pre-emptory evictions.
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
1.2 Limitations of scope
1.3 Co-researcher
1.4 Unique contribution
1.5 Epistemology
1.6 Methodology
1.7 Problem statement
1.8 Primary research question
1.9 Secondary research questions
1.10 Aim of this research
1.11 Objectives
1.12 Chapter outline
1.13 Land
1.14 Ubuntu
1.15 Personal positioning
1.16 Preliminary understanding
CHAPTER 2 THE LAND BECAME PEOPLE
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Ethical account
2.3 The land and us
2.4 The land changes hands
2.5 Where are we now?
2.6 Preliminary understanding
CHAPTER 3 RELATIONSHIP BY LAW
3.1 Introduction
3.2. Dispossession
3.3 Land reform in post-apartheid South Africa
CHAPTER 4 UBUNTU
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Joba’s understanding
4.3 Approaches to the study of ubuntu
4.4 Connotations
4.5 Critique of ubuntu
4.6 Applying ubuntu to the challenges of South African land reform
4.7 Preliminary understanding
CHAPTER 5 THE PLOT THICKENS
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Postfoundational practical theology
5.3 State Capture
5.4 Radical Economic Transformation (RET)
5.5 White Monopoly Capital (WMC)
5.6 Preliminary understanding
CHAPTER 6 MINDFULNESS
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Subjectivity
6.3 What is mindfulness
6.4 Preliminary understanding
CHAPTER 7 THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Joint ventures
7.3 A manifestation of the 7th step
7.4 Preliminary understanding
CHAPTER 8 REFLECTIONS
8.1 Questions, aim and objectives
8.2 Doubts
BIBLIOGRAPHY
