Minister of Land Affairs Thoko Didiza is a charming person and no fool. But even she must concede the deeply worrying shortcomings of the government’s land reform programme.
South Africa is not Zimbabwe and there is no real possibility of violent, large-scale, land-related upheavals in this country. But the Bredell invasion and sporadic illegal land occupations in the countryside have brought home the extent to which land grievances can disrupt South Africa’s delicate political balances. Inevitably, any land seizure is read by the outside world as an echo and possible forerunner of Zimbabwe’s chaotic “reforms”.
An analysis by researchers at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), reported in our pages this week, sheds harsh light on how little has been achieved. Didiza’s clearest success is the sharp increase in land restitution settlements for people dispossessed under apartheid. From the pathetic total of 40-odd under her predecessor, Derek Hanekom, 12000 claims have now been settled. But the UWC analysis shows that many have been cash settlements, with no impact on racially distorted patterns of landownership, and that most large and complex rural claims have yet to be addressed. The redistribution programme, directed at land hunger, has been bogged down since Didiza froze new projects after taking office. The amount of land distributed has fallen while lower expenditure has led to shrinking budget allocations at a time when the government says it wants to accelerate reform. Tenure reform, affecting the land rights of millions of people in the former homelands, has also ground to a halt.
The researchers say that without a far-reaching policy reassessment, which gives the state a spearhead role, land reform in South Africa cannot succeed. Given the achievements to date, this is hard to dispute. If the government is serious about land, it must substantially increase the budget allocations of land affairs, historically a Cinderella department. A key goal would be to enhance national and provincial capacity, gravely undermined by the “transformation” of the department under Didiza that sparked an exodus of experienced, often white, officials. Market transactions are vital to land reform, but the scale and speed of the required changes leave the state no option but to play a more interventionist role. Didiza is correct to float the idea of targeted expropriations to ensure that the right kind of land is available in the right place at the right price. The risk of an investor backlash would be partly offset if expropriations were selective and carefully motivated, if market-related prices were paid for expropriated land, and by driving home to the outside world the longer-term economic and political dangers to South Africa, and the region, of ineffectual half-measures.
Long-delayed land tenure legislation must be passed post-haste, to secure the land rights of the millions living under traditional leaders and encourage private investment in the impoverished former homelands. The interests of chiefs, who fear losing power over land allocation, cannot be allowed to eclipse those of their subjects.
Apparently driven by powerful officials in the agriculture department, Didiza’s policy is centrally focused on using land reform to promote black commercial farmers. The growth of black agriculture is obviously desirable. But that goal, also, cannot be pursued at the expense of millions of poor and landless people who either have no interest in commercial farming, or lack the necessary skills and capital.
The present policy seems to put the rural and urban masses at the back of the queue. Whatever the political risks, the government must serve its prime constituency.
Poor old Gatsha
There are few politicians who have a worse relationship with this newspaper than Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Since the Mail & Guardian’s inception, Buthelezi has been a regular quarry. With our sister newspaper, The Guardian, we broke Inkathagate the sensational story of how the apartheid regime funded Inkatha hit squads. More recently we incurred Buthelezi’s irritation by exposing his peculiar habit of ferrying large amounts of cash around KwaZulu-Natal in plastic bags.
It is therefore a momentous occasion for us to come clean and admit that we are starting to feel sorry for him. Something is terribly wrong with the government of national unity. Does the African National Congress have it in for Buthelezi and Inkatha? Has it decided they are disposable now that the killing fields of KwaZulu-Natal have given way to peace?
Buthelezi’s immigration Bill has become one of the longest-running jokes in Parliament, as the ANC comes up with increasingly devious ways of blocking it. One recent device was labelling it a “money Bill”, which generally retards a law’s progress through Parliament by, among other things, making the finance minister introduce it. Strangely, the government did not label the controversial mineral development Bill thus the Bill self-evidently has much more to do with money than Buthelezi’s, but the ANC wants to ram home its new law.
Buthelezi is one of our shrewdest political survivors. Since 1994 he has to an extent secured redemption for his odious role in our past. Perhaps it is time for him to quit and hit the older-statesman circuit. That said, it is impossible to imagine either Inkatha or South African politics without him.