The South African Communist Party will from next month pressure both the government and commercial agriculture to accelerate land and agrarian reform.
The announcement coincides with Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza’s appointment this week of a panel of experts to study the extent and impact of foreign land ownership in the country.
The panel, chaired by University of South Africa land expert Professor Shadrack Gutto, will report back to the government within a year.
The SACP says its Red October Campaign will focus on land and agrarian reform and will be directed at commercial agriculture, because the agricultural industry still represents some of the worst features of the political economy of land and agriculture under apartheid.
More than 80% of prime agricultural land is owned by about 55 000 mainly white corporate and individual farmers.
SACP spokesperson Mazibuko Jara said that, if there was no intervention, foreigners with strong capital could buy up most of the country and threaten the government’s land-reform policies. ”Our land is a public resource that should be strategically used for the development and benefit of South Africans,” Jara said. ”The opportunity afforded by the AgriBEE Charter should be used to go back to poor people and ask them to stake their claim on land reform.”
SACP secretary general Blade Nzimande this week said that while the government has made significant interventions in agriculture, the process is moving very slowly — only 3% of land has been redistributed. He acknowledged that the AgriBEE Charter is an important step in the agrarian reform process.
He said that since 1994 South African agri-business, in particular, has consolidated its economic position and it is flourishing because of new regional and global opportunities created by the post-apartheid era.
But he said this has happened while employment in the industry has been declining and those who were employed continued to be exploited through low wages and lack of access to basic services such as water, sanitation and proper housing.
The issue of foreign land ownership has been on the agenda of the African National Congress government since the party’s congress in Stellenbosch in 2002. The ANC has raised concerns about absentee landlords and people buying land for future speculation, but it has been cautious not to state outright that it is considering restricting foreign land ownership.
Empirical studies to assess the extent of foreign land ownership are needed, said Ben Cousins, director of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape.
He said there is a lot of anecdotal evidence implying that foreign property investors are driving up prices, but that it is difficult to assess whether this is confined to coastal areas or is more widespread.