ALTHOUGH many white farmers have reacted with outrage to Derek Hanekom’s new Land Reform Bill for labour tenants, the draft law is neither new nor revolutionary. It is, in fact, based on regulations that are common in free market societies, writes Andra
The Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill, published in the Government Gazette this month for comment, gives labour tenants security on farms where they live and the rights to acquire ownership of land they have historically used and occupied.
A comparative survey of international law shows these are consistent with measures enacted in countries such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, many European countries — and even South Africa during the apartheid era.
Rent control measures are the most common form of protection for urban and rural tenants and are prevalent throughout the world. Historically, these laws were passed in times of severe housing shortages and are generally designed to prevent arbitrary evictions. South Africa’s Rent Control Act of 1976, for example, regulates rent and eviction procedures
Protecting labour tenants is not new
ALTHOUGH many white farmers have reacted with outrage to Derek Hanekom’s new Land Reform Bill for labour tenants, the draft law is neither new nor revolutionary. It is, in fact, based on regulations that are common in free market societies.
The Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill, published in the Government Gazette this month for comment, gives labour tenants security on farms where they live and the rights to acquire ownership of land they have historically used and occupied.
A comparative survey of international law shows these are consistent with measures enacted in countries such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, many European countries — and even South Africa during the apartheid era.
Rent control measures are the most common form of protection for urban and rural tenants and are prevalent throughout the world. Historically, these laws were passed in times of severe housing shortages and are generally designed to prevent arbitrary evictions. South Africa’s Rent Control Act of 1976, for example, regulates rent and eviction procedures that must be followed by landlords.
Many European countries have specific provisions for agricultural tenants which are generally more far- reaching than urban regulations. This is because tenancy arrangements are the basis of many rural farmers’ livelihoods and arbitrary evictions can cause great social stress. Furthermore, secure tenancies help ensure long-term investment in land and stability in this sector.
In Austria, Germany and Switzerland, agricultural holdings legislation provides for minimum tenancy periods and rent control measures. In some cases, tenants are entitled to live on the land even after their contract with a landlord expires. The French Agricultural Holdings Act gives tenants the option to purchase the parcel of land they hold and use and, if evicted, the right to compensation for buildings and improvements on the holding.
Scottish crofters are analogous to labour tenants in South Africa — people who provide labour to a landlord in exchange for the right to farm a parcel of land on the farm. The Crofters (Scotland) Act of 1993 limits the circumstances under which crofters may be evicted and provides compensation when the landlord reclaims the croft.
The Scottish Land Court has the power to order recalcitrant landlords to transfer land to their crofters and to determine the level of compensation to be paid. Because the Scottish reforms combine protective tenancies with the right to acquire land, they are similar to proposals in the latest South African legislation.
Protective tenancies and the right to acquire land complement each other. Protection on its own would condemn tenants to semi-feudal arrangements in perpetuity. The right to acquire land allows the system to be phased out while preventing landlords from evicting tenants before they can lay claim to parcels of land.
Governments in the United States, Puerto Rico and Hawaii have enacted laws that provide for subdivision and expropriation of large land estates. In two Indian states, Kerala and West Bengal, legislation provides security for tenants. In Kerala, farmers who wanted to take back land for their personal cultivation were required to pay compensation to the tenants and these tenants had to be left with enough land to ensure subsistence farming.
In South Africa this principle was in fact adopted in the Upgrading of Land Rights Act of 1991, which allows certain rights to land to be converted into ownership, and the Conversion of Certain Rights to Leasehold act of 1988. The fact that this legislation was introduced by the previous government bears testimony to the fact that this principle is neither new nor revolutionary.
Land-to-the-tiller programmes are designed to convert tenants or share-croppers into small landowners and to promote small farming systems. They are the primary mechanism whereby feudal agricultural relationships have been converted into dynamic and modern farming arrangements.
In Latin America, agrarian reforms have been adopted in almost every country. Some countries, such as Brazil, Peru and Colombia, have actually abolished all forms of share-cropping and tenancies and adopted the “land-to- the-tiller” approach.
In Taiwan, South Korea and Japan — shining examples of free-market economies — similar laws stipulated a ceiling on landholdings and redistributed land in excess of these maximums to tenants.
There is no doubt that the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill is consistent with, and influenced by, measures that are widespread in western capitalist societies.
* The Land and Agricultural Policy Centre (LAPC) in Johannesburg this week pointed out that labour tenants in the North West Province and elsewhere will not be protected by the new law. The draft applies only to particular districts in the south-eastern Transvaal and
The LAPC has urged the public to make comments on the Bill and on the Land Reform Policy Framework document by the end of June. Interested parties should contact Theresa Plewman at (011) 403-7272.
Andra Eisenberg is a researcher at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies in Johannesburg. Her research was used to help in drafting the new Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill