Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza is running a vibrant department into the ground Ben Cousins The replacement of senior managers of the Department of Land Affairs (”Hanekom’s appointees shown the door”, August 4 to 10) is the tip of a very large iceberg. Weak leadership by Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza, with lack of clarity on key policy issues and a de facto takeover of the leadership of land reform by the Department of Agriculture, have led to a loss of morale throughout the department, and a large number of key staff members have resigned.
This has undermined the capacity of the government to implement effective land reform, and constitutes an irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ and donors’ monies. Millions of rands were spent between 1994 and 1999 on training, capacity building and transformation projects within the department. Invaluable experience of dealing with the complexities of land reform was accumulated and lessons from both failure and success were painfully learned. These investments in human capital are now being carelessly squandered. Since Didiza took office the following key staff have left or are in the process of leaving: the director gene-ral, three deputy directors general, three land claims commissioners, five chief directors and four directors in the policy and implementation branches. In provincial offices the loss of staff appears to have been less dramatic, but there is widespread disillusionment caused by uncertainties in relation to both policy and the department’s decentralisation initiative. Attrition plus a freeze on public service appointments means that key posts are not being filled (for example, programme managers, who handle project finance), potentially compromising effective control over public finances. The rapid decline in the department’s capacity is common knowledge throughout the rural development sector, but has thus far escaped public attention. Policy shifts towards the promotion of emergent black commercial farmers have grabbed the headlines, but few questions have been raised on the issue of capacity of the government to deliver. Meaningful land reform within the rule of law is inherently complex and necessarily slow, but steady and visible progress is vital for political stability. In a context of deep rural poverty, continuing job losses, low-key but widespread land invasions, murders of farmers, abuse of farm workers, rampant stock theft and tensions within rural communities over land rights, the gutting of the department’s capacity to deliver land reform is a recipe for disaster. A review of the restitution programme initiated by the previous minister, and consequent institutional reforms, has seen notable improvements in the rate at which land claims are being resolved. Concerns remain whether the government is giving equal attention to the developmental needs of successful claimants. More worrying is the bleak record of delivery since mid-1999 in relation to redistribution and tenure reform. A moratorium on new redistribution projects instituted by Didiza has seen a sharp decline in the number of projects approved, and hundreds of officials twiddled their thumbs for months waiting for clarity. The key initiative in tenure reform, a draft bill on land rights in the former reserves, was summarily thrown out and there are no signs of anything to replace it. These shifts have again raised the spectre of underspending of the land reform budget. Initially this derived from the need to develop and test new procedures and to build capacity by recruiting and training staff. After five years this investment had begun to bear fruit – by the end of 1999 underspending had been eliminated and projects in the pipeline were valued at R1,5-billion, which meant that the capital budget of about R400-million was set to become a major constraint on land reform. Not that all was rosy – both the department and NGOs had identified major problems with land reform ”products” ill-matched with the real needs and capacities of the rural poor. In some projects ”rent-a-crowd” groups formed and used their pooled grants to take over commercial operations that they had few skills to operate. Many of the legal entities formed to own land in common were dysfunctional. Outsourcing of business planning and legal entity establishment was lucrative for consultants but too often resulted in bizarrely inappropriate plans and processes – and project failure. The lack of integration of land reform into local development planning was increasingly recognised as a critical issue. By 1998 attention had turned to the quality and sustainability of projects rather than simply the amount of money spent, or the number of projects designated and hectares transferred (which staff assessments tended to focus on). These problems were being addressed through a major review and redesign exercise, including decentralisation of decision making, when Didiza halted all new projects and initiated the drafting of the controversial programme for ”integrated land reform and agricultural development” (recently confirmed as policy, despite an absence of meaningful consultation with either civil society or Parliament). This poorly conceived and targeted programme has rightly been criticised for its shaky premises, its failure to address the real problems of redistribution and the likelihood that it will (in practice, if not intentionally) use scarce state resources to benefit a small group of relatively better- off people. It includes illogical and unworkable formulae (for example, an ”own contribution” in labour towards the costs of land acquisition and development), and attempts to smuggle into policy a mechanism to individualise communal tenure systems. Less public attention has been given to the effective sidelining of the department offices in the land reform process and the central role proposed for agricultural officials in the design, assessment, approval and extension support of projects. It is acknowledged that these officials will need ”special training” to prepare them to play these roles. What is not acknowledged is the time and money this will require and the time-lag before they become effective. Also unacknowledged are low levels of expertise and morale in provincial departments of agriculture and land affairs, and their ineffectiveness. Last year all extension officials in the Eastern Cape were grounded due to lack of funds. The Rural Survey of 1997 revealed that in the previous year 89% of rural people in the former ”homelands” had no contact with extension staff. Current incapacity means that it will take years, even if larger budgets are provided (for which there are as yet no assurances), before these departments can effectively service any kind of land reform. A number of questions arise: why not develop a truly integrated land reform programme utilising the skills, experience and commitment of the department’s staff in an effective partnership with other government departments, at national, provincial and district levels? Why has the mini-ster chosen instead to alienate committed staff with long experience of land reform, run a vibrant department into the ground and led South Africa a long way down the road already trodden by Zimbabwe? The answers are hard to fathom. The waters are muddied by racial politics and a history of tension between Derek Hanekom, on the one hand, and both Didiza and Agriculture Director General Bongi Njobe on the other, but these dynamics are clearly insufficient as explanations: too many black staff, and people not associated with either ”camp”, are leaving the department in dismay and despair. Competing ideas on whom the main beneficiaries of land reform should be, and on the design of appropriate policies, are relevant, but not the whole answer either. One clue may lie in the quality of the new senior officials and advisers the minister has appointed. Many in the sector express deep concerns over their administrative skills, experience and capacity. It may be that Didiza is more concerned to surround herself with ”yes-people” than with real expertise and skills – perhaps because she is insecure about her own lack of experience. Is a culture of incompetence, driven by a fear of robust debate (evident in the somewhat hysterical tone of recent public responses to criticism), beginning to pervade the ministry and the department? If this is so, then we can look forward to a dismal few years as land reform falters, the frustration of rural people grows and land invasions spread to epidemic proportions. Is it too late for a rethink? Professor Ben Cousins directs the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape