The land reform programme takes a leap forward as a controversial law seeks to destroy the semi-feudal labour tenant system. Eddie Koch and Gaye Davis report
Land Affairs Minister Derek Hanekom this week published a tough law to put an end to a semi-feudal system of farming that forces thousands of black labour tenants to live in conditions described by human rights lawyers as the “closest we have to slavery in South Africa”.
The Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill will provide more than 250 000 labour tenants in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Transvaal with rights to live on white- owned farms without fear of eviction, or to appropriate land from farmers who are intent on sticking to the archaic system.
Hanekom says the draft law, gazetted on Friday morning as part of a wider land reform programme designed to share out 30 percent of the country’s arable land to the rural poor within five years, has two main aims for labour tenants: “protection and redistribution”.
“The Bill contains a land-to-the-tiller programme that provides tenancy rights and an opportunity for land redistribution. It is aimed at providing immediate protection for an extremely vulnerable group of people whose living conditions have been described to me as being the closest we have to slavery.”
The draft law was approved in a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. Support from the National Party, which represents white farming interests, was secured when Hanekom agreed to publish the Bill for public comment instead of tabling it immediately in Parliament.
Describing the Bill as one of the “most exciting aspects of land reform in the country”, Hanekom said he anticipated a strong backlash from some white farmers and a possible rash of “pre-emptive evictions” as farmers try to clear their land of tenant families before the Bill passes.
To guard against these potential evictions the Bill stipulates that the right of tenants to live in security on the land is guaranteed retroactively to the date the Bill was published. Hanekom believes the limited territorial scope of his new law — along with the fact that it makes a strict distinction between “second generation tenants” and ordinary farmworkers — will contain much of the anticipated fallout from affected white farmers.
“The Bill applies only to those districts where labour tenancy is still endemic. A labour tenant is defined as a person who is a second generation labour tenant. Thus it is clear that the Bill does not apply to all farming land nor does it cover farmworkers in general,” Hanekom told the Mail & Guardian.
“It is designed to address the particular problems and abuses inherent in the system of labour tenancy and also to address the fact that because of the underlying land claims the solution has to include elements of land reform … The South African Agricultural Union (SAAU) has always been against the system and we expect they will support this initiative to bring South Africa in line with other democracies.”
Labour tenancy is a semi-feudal relationship between a landowner and resident families who are obliged to provide free, or virtually free, labour in exchange for the right to eke out an existence by farming, for domestic use, a small parcel of land on the farm.
The system was outlawed in the 1960s mainly because the Nationalist government feared tenancy would lead to a beswarting van die platteland — a blackening of the countryside — and many farmers began to use a system of straight wage labour. As a result of laws prohibiting tenancy arrangements, about a million people were evicted from white farms in the biggest single bout of forced removals during the apartheid
However the method survives in modified form — where farmers began paying a nominal wage of R10 or R20 a month in the 1970s to disguise the feudal relationship — in parts of KwaZulu/Natal and the southeastern
There have been explosive conflicts during recent months between tenants desperate to maintain their hold on the land and farmers who want to evict black families before the land reform programme gets into gear. Areas most affected are the Weenen and Colenso districts of KwaZulu/Natal and the region around Piet Retief in the Eastern Transvaal.
Disputes are currently endemic in labour tenant districts. Features of these disputes include strikes, bitter legal battles, marches and boycotts. “Farmers often use brutal force to evict tenants. Tenants and their families resisting eviction have been intimidated, and farmers have complained of retaliatory acts of fence-cutting, cattle theft and starting of fires,” says a memorandum attached to the Bill.
“The disputes have led to such serious instability that [Mathews Phosa], the premier of the Eastern Transvaal, and the Minister of Land Affairs have repeatedly been called in to avert conflict between labour tenants and white farmers degenerating into local wars.”
The law protects against arbitrary evictions of tenants by stipulating strict conditions under which farmers are allowed to move families off their land. This is only allowed where tenants have breached their contracts, are guilty of serious misconduct or the owner has specific needs for the land.
It lays down detailed procedures and says a period of notice has to be given to the affected families. Landowners will have to pay compensation to families who leave behind houses and unreaped crops and the Land Claims Court can review cases.
The other main feature of the Bill is that it gives tenants the right to acquire ownership of the land which they have historically used and occupied. “This right of acquisition is subject to the payment of compensation to the landowner … The Bill provides for state subsidies to assist labour tenants to raise the money necessary to pay for the land,” the memorandum
Hanekom says the pillars of the Bill — protective tenancy and the right of long-term occupants to acquire land — are principles that have been accepted in most of Europe and North America. Hanekom’s law is modelled on the Crofters Act which was enacted in Ireland in
“In those countries where anomalous semi-feudal relations continue to exist in modern societies, similar measures have been introduced to uphold the rights of the long-term occupants.”
Human rights organisations have welcomed the law although some have expressed concern with the fact that tenants will have to pay for land that they have always
The new Bill will be discussed on Talk at Will with the Mail & Guardian on SAfm, on Friday 2 at 8.30am