Ann Eveleth
Land reform has quietly undergone a major policy shift as the government has entered the land market in a bid to reshape the way land reform works.
Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Derek Hanekom told the Mail & Guardian in an interview this week that the government had already begun purchasing farms for subdivision, and intended intervening further in the shape of the land market over the next five years.
The move marks a major shift from the demand-led land reform programmes of the past five years, to supply-led land reform. In the past the government has been loathe to purchase land, and has instead helped beneficiaries use their R16 000 land reform grants to purchase the farms they chose.
Now the government has begun to purchase large farms to subdivide among different groups of beneficiaries with different objectives.
Hanekom said the shift followed the realisation that demand-led land reform – and the large size of farms on the market – was forcing beneficiaries to join big groups and pool their grants in spite of competing interests.
“The supply of farms in South Africa is predetermined. The farms are big and the farmer wants to sell the whole farm. But someone who just wants some land to cultivate is forced to join a group because they can’t buy the whole farm … But they don’t need the whole farm, and the different land needs in the group can create conflict,” said Hanekom.
He added that the demand-led policy had seen many projects reach an advanced stage, with substantial proposals and business plans already drafted, before they were rejected as not being viable.
Hanekom said he had just rejected plans for a farm in Vanderbijlpark, where 250 people wanted to buy a 420ha farm for an agri- village. “They only need about 20ha or so, but the land they want to buy is very developed. There would still be about 400ha left which they wouldn’t use. The need is for a small piece of the farm, but the farmer says, `I’ll sell all or nothing.’ Under the past method, we would buy the farm. Now we are going to buy the farm and subdivide it to do other projects. The 250 people will get individual title, and form a little township. The rest of the farm will be modelled to create maximum jobs, which we will offer to the people in the community who are genuinely interested in farming. But some of the beneficiaries are hairdressers.”
The government had failed to create rural jobs in its first term, Hanekom said, and this would form a major focus of land reform in the future. “In the next five years, there will be far more emphasis on stimulating and supporting rural productive capacity. We’ve spent too little money on it. We need a major shift from land reform to land reform plus other measures,” he said.
The infant land rights Bill – not yet available in draft form – which plans to register and confirm existing occupation in the former homelands, would help pave the way for greater individual and private sector investment in the 13% of South Africa that comprises the former homelands.
A growing focus on helping local governments to purchase municipal commonage for people for grazing and other land uses would also stimulate productive capacity by introducing small-scale agriculturalists to land reform when they were not yet prepared to spend their one-time R16 000 grants on a farm.
“Commonage is going to be a major programme in the future. Some livestock owners need grazing land, but not ownership. Commonage provides them access to land without forfeiting their R16 000 grants. We can invest in public infrastructure, like kraals, fencing and water points, and the programme provides an entry and exit point for people who find it quite difficult to go into the land market. They may then move on to use their grants or the Land Bank later on,” added Hanekom.
He said commonage programmes also hold a high potential for job creation. Pointing to an emerging blueberry project on commonage in his Vredendal constituency, Hanekom predicted that the 10ha plot now under commonage use could yield at least 50 jobs for unemployed beneficiaries, if not 100 jobs, as these beneficiaries hire others to help them.
But he added that much more needed to be done “to stimulate rural entrepreneurs”, and funds were needed to sustain programmes aimed at this.
The minister said he intended approaching the European Union to fund rural job creation programmes like the Land Care Programme to the tune of about R150-million a year. “The EU feels at the moment that we haven’t tackled rural development overtly, that we haven’t tackled poverty. We think this will fit into what they are interested in funding in South Africa.”
Hanekom said land reform was likely to receive a larger share of the budget in future years if it could create jobs. “What we need is output-based land reform.”
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