redistribution’
Derek Hanekom
Ann Eveleth’s article “Land reform targets are far, far away” (Monitor, June 5 to 11) ignores the remarkable progress we have made in the past four years and the complexity of land-reform processes.
The central argument is that we will never meet “the reconstruction and development programme promise to redistribute 30% of the country’s land to black hands in five years”. This was a broad aim, not a promise, and was never adopted as policy.
In reality, almost 250 000 people, in 279 projects, have received land. In the past year, more land has been distributed to more people than in the previous three years.
And the pace continues to accelerate: in the first quarter of this year, more than 50 000 people obtained land through the redistribution programme. A further 250 projects are in progress. In total, the more than 500 projects involve the transfer of nearly three million hectares of land.
The land acquisition/settlement grant of R15 000 is a flexible mechanism used by the poor and landless to buy land. For example:
l the Williams family in Stellenbosch, threatened with eviction from a farm they lived and worked on for 50 years, now own a house;
l the 1 600 families of the Joe Slovo village bought the land they are living on to build houses and secure freehold title; and
l the families at Fair Valley, Nelson’s Creek and Freedom Road now have a stake in wine farms, own land for housing and are producing wine under their own labels.
While the Land Claims Court has only ruled on eight cases, 27 000 people have benefited from restitution, recovering approximately 150 000ha of land. This excludes the 10 000 people of Makuleke and the 23 claims before the court.
While 23 000 land claims have been made, the Stake Your Claim campaign will ensure that after December 31 1998 no new claims will be accepted. And while we will have to work very hard to resolve these, it will bring closure to a painful chapter in our history. This will be a significant achievement for our new democracy, given that New Zealand and Australia are still grappling with the issue decades later.
No one would be happier than I if the process moved faster, and we constantly evaluate our procedures to speed things up. But we must recognise that land reform is slow because good process takes time and money.
In defining our policy, we made hard choices about which route to follow. Instead of the quick-fix option, we chose a market-based approach to create stability and certainty in the land market, to create opportunities for landless people to buy land, and to ensure “buy-in” from communities and the sustainability of projects.
Some non-market options to redistribution do exist, but not on the scale alluded to. There are probably fewer than one million hectares of state land available for redistribution and the process is in motion. The fact is, however, that the majority of land- reform cases will depend on the purchase, and availability, of privately owned land.
The process of planning and consultation, of empowering individuals and communities to make decisions about their needs and land use, takes time. Abandoning these processes would be at the expense of the long-term sustainability of projects and people’s security and livelihoods.
In four years our land-reform programme has created stability and certainty. Millions of beneficiaries are involved in processes that will see them becoming the owners of land. This work in progress lays the foundation for long-term security and stability.
Your article simply did not do justice to the extraordinary progress which has been made and the joy experienced by those who have acquired land of their own.
Derek Hanekom is minister of land affairs and agriculture
ENDS