Ann Eveleth
South Africa’s “other half” – the rural poor – will descend on the birthplace of the African National Congress this weekend to thrash out a new charter demanding their fair share of the economic pie.
Delegates from rural communities across the country will meet at the national Rural Convention in Bloemfontein to draft a charter and development strategy in full view of competing political parties before the June elections.
The convention is the first national gathering of rural people since 1994, and conference organisers say it is a “stepping stone” in a long-mooted process to form a sustainable rural social movement that will keep rural development on the political stage into the next century.
The convention follows months of grassroots mobilisation by community-based organisations and NGOs, and organised under the umbrella of the fledgling Rural Development Initiative. It is the culmination of a series of community, regional and provincial workshops which began meeting in November 1998 to draw up a shopping list of rural people’s expectations from the government. Chief among these is that the government attach a higher priority – and an equitable budget share – to rural development.
A discussion document consisting of many of the demands raised at the workshops notes that “half of South Africa’s population lives in rural areas, with over 70% living in dire poverty. Rural development continues to receive lower priority than urban development. The potential of rural development to generate wealth and livelihoods is underestimated. The government’s spatial development initiatives are being planned and implemented with little regard for the effects on individual rural communities. Many of the causes of poverty are the result of the private sector’s interests in short-term profits at the expense of longer-term social goals.”
Delegates selected from the workshop process will debate the document’s demands and decide what to include in the Rural Charter.
The document centres mainly on the failure of government implementation strategies in the key areas of rural economic development; women; farm workers, land and tenure; agriculture and food security; water; the environment; education and training; health, security and welfare; rural infrastructure; governance and planning; and social organisation.
Key demands include the “urgent” prioritisation of rural development; the scrapping of apartheid debt; a moratorium on farmworker retrenchments; the removal of obstacles to women’s land ownership; the restructuring of government land reform policies to transfer at least 30% of all land to the dispossessed in the next five years; the establishment of “one- stop shops'” to provide emerging farmers with the help they need; 50 litres of free water per person daily; the application of the “polluter pays” principle; “accessible, relevant education” for all; large-scale rural infrastructure development; and a clear institutional home in the government for integrated rural development.
At a similar event in 1994 delegates from more than 350 rural communities joined forces in the Community Land Conference to draft a Land Charter demanding a democratic redistribution of land and raising the ire of the conservative white farming community with the slogan, “One farmer, one farm.”
The National Land Committee, which organised that conference, says the Land Charter achieved some of its demands over the past five years. Committee deputy director Dave Husy says the charter’s demands on land restitution and tenure reform exerted “a fair amount of influence” over the government’s land policy.
“But demands like `one farmer, one farm’, land ceilings and broad-based land redistribution have not been met. A lot of the current frustrations are focused on the lack of progress on land redistribution, and on the failure of implementation of some policies, like the Extension of Security of Tenure Act,” adds Husy.
The Land Charter demanded that 30% of South Africa’s land mass be redistributed to black people by 1999. Although this demand emerged as a goal of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the Department of Land Affairs has recently backtracked, saying it was unachievable. Less than 1% of land has changed hands in the past five years, and the Rural Convention is poised to reassert the 30% demand for the next five years.
While the Rural Convention’s goals are much wider than those of the 1994 conference, Husy says “land is still a core issue, because the provision of services is still largely dependent on people’s ability to get [land] security”.
The 1994 conference coupled its demands with the threat of land invasions should their demands not be met. But Rural Development Initiative representative Mark Weinberg says it is still unclear how the Rural Convention will force its issues on to the agenda. “The delegates must decide their course of action. But I think it’s fair to say that rural people will do anything in their power to see that their demands are met. They will start with lobbying, but that doesn’t mean they will stop there,” says Weinberg.
The impact of the Rural Charter may be determined by the success of the convention’s deeper motive – the formation of a sustainable rural social movement linking communities and organisations to co-ordinate development and keep rural development on the agenda.
While Weinberg says the “embryonic” movement is “a long way from the guerrilla tactics of the Zapatista [a Mexican revolutionary social movement]”, he adds that “there are parallels along broad structural organisational terms. There are also strong parallels with the Israeli Association of 40, which organised over 100 villages that were not recognised by the government around lack of services.”
Husy argues that the conditions now exist for the formation of a rural social movement: “In 1994 we had the glue – the Land Charter – to hold a movement together, but not the facilitative platform to organise.
“In 1999 we again have the glue, and we have a much greater platform of community-based organisations and NGOs, and the communities themselves are much better organised. The preconditions to start a movement are there, but the convention is just a stepping stone in the process.”