Gilingwe Mayende crossfire
The article by Prof Ben Cousins last week (“Didiza’s recipe for disaster”), attacking Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza on a range of issues, cannot go unchallenged.
Cousins essentially argues that Didiza is undoing a lot of good achieved in the Department of Land Affairs during the tenure of her predecessor. He attributes these alleged feats of success to the group of senior managers who have decided to leave the department and he thus laments their loss. The facts tell a different story: briefly, the legacy of the redistribution programme that we are having to grapple with is one where large numbers of people, acting on the advice of the department, pooled their R16E000 grants and bought land with the aim of farming it together. This has rendered the programme unsustainable, given the marked asymmetry between the number of people involved and the available land. Strangely Cousins, who was one of the originators and chief proponents of this ill- conceived policy, now decides to cut and run and dissociate himself from it, denigrating it as the rent-a-crowd approach. This opportunism is sickening, but not surprising. Worse still, he maligns the minister’s decision to review what is a clearly flawed draft Land Rights Bill by making the completely unjustified charge that she has summarily thrown it out. This is because he chooses to take a personal view of the matter, as he was one of the key drafters. He realises, of course, that the days are gone when a handful of consultants producing work of dubious quality at great cost would dominate the policy work of the department. The current bout of whingeing by people like Cousins should thus be understood in this context.
When Didiza decides to do something to correct the negative consequences of the rent-a-crowd approach, she is lambasted. This despite her repeated outlining of the objectives of the new integrated policy as basically seeking to empower the beneficiaries of land reform by giving them the opportunity to become meaningful agricultural producers. The fact that she has clearly stated that the beneficiaries will range from small through medium to large-scale producers has conveniently escaped Cousins’s attention. The same has happened in response to her constant assurances that some of the existing programmes are being continued, albeit in modified forms. With regard to the charge by Cousins about lack of consultation on the new policy, perhaps his memory needs some refreshing. On April 20 he participated in a national consultative workshop organised by the department on the policy and even served as a rapporteur for a commission that dealt with its food safety-net component. His behaviour is therefore typical of those who distance themselves from processes once they realise that their personal interests are not being served. Cousins also calls for an inclusive approach to developing a “truly integrated” redistribution 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”. This is exactly what Didiza is doing. Departmental staff members who are committed to an integrated programme have been working tirelessly with the Department of Agriculture in particular, as well as the departments of housing, public works and provincial and local government. Moreover, the department is currently designing a decentralised implementation system in which the provincial and local spheres of government will play a pivotal role.
Why are these facts not acknowledged? The decision, lamented by Cousins throughout his article, on the part of some senior staff members to leave the department because they disagree fundamentally with the shifts in policy initiated by the minister, is an honourable one in my view. When an individual decides to leave an organisation for this reason he or she opens room for the organisation to employ people who are loyal and committed to its policies. More than being a loss to the department, this is therefore actually a tremendous gain. And, of course, no one is indispensable, however much they can make themselves and their allies believe the contrary. Lastly, Cousins refers to what he calls “the bleak record of delivery since 1999”. A simple question would suffice in dealing with this one: does he seriously expect a responsible government and minister to continue on a road leading to the ruin of many African people merely for the sake of numbers and fancy statistics, rather than pursuing a properly considered and designed alternative?
Of course he can afford to descend to such levels of irresponsibility from the relative comfort of his ivory tower, but he must not expect to take the department with him. Indeed, the statistical picture of delivery on redistribution between 1994 and 1999 is not impressive, to say the least. For example, 439 projects have been completed over this period with 693E549ha being transferred and 52E068 households benefiting. Overall this amounts to 0,8% of the land that could be redistributed in our country. This then is the challenge and it calls upon us to come up with workable and sustainable alternatives.
Dr Gilingwe Mayende is director general in the Department of Land Affairs