In 1880 a leader of a Swazi secessionist group allowed a white businessman to settle on his group’s land. Forty-one years later the tenant had become the landowner and the former landlords were mere serfs.
This week 123 years of this anomaly were corrected when the descendants of Mdluli Matsafeni and those of the businessman HL Hall agreed that 6 000ha of the Hall family’s farming conglomerate’s land in Mpumalanga would be returned.
About 1 100 members of the Mdluli clan and 4 100 legal occupiers of the company’s properties in Mpumalanga this week became part owners of one of the best-known South African farming operations, HL Hall & Sons, when the company, the provincial land claims commission and the national Department of Land Affairs agreed to the R63-million restitution deal.
The deal, described by HL Hall chief executive Rob Snaddon as a “hefty empowerment deal”, gives the rural community access to some of the worlds’ biggest consumer bases.
The company produces avocados, pecan nuts, litchis, sugar and timber. Its clients include top European supermarket chains such as Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury. Locally, retail giants Pick ‘n Pay and Spar are among clients.
They also supply most of the Coca-Cola company’s sugar. In terms of the deal, HL Hall & Sons has agreed to lease the land from the new owners, providing them with
a cash flow and time to acquire the necessary managerial skills to run the farms.
Snaddon, who is a descendant of the founder, said HL Hall & Sons had long looked at ways of redressing the historic wrong.
“We are delighted with the outcome. We believe it is a win-win deal for all and a positive step for the South African land-reform process that is essential if we are to redress the inequalities of the past and have a stable political future in this country,” said Snaddon.
The land struggle started in 1921 when the railways and the mines considered Hall’s company the legitimate owner of the lands where he had sought refuge in 1880 and the farms on the land were registered in his name.
The Mdluli people had to comply with the provisions of the Transvaal Squatter Act, which empowered the farmowner to use the people as farmhands and to evict them if they refused.
The 1913 and 1936 land laws entrenched the position, because the farms did not fall into areas that were designated for blacks.
In the 1950s members of the clan, unhappy about the work conditions on the land they considered their own, would not work for the company and were evicted.
Mpumalanga Land Claims Commissioner Nceba Nqana said the Hall family had agreed to a R63-million buyout for the land after lengthy negotiations that started in 1999.
Land rights activists say the figure highlights the high cost of land restitution.
Zakes Hlatshwayo, director of the National Land Committee, said the deal was encouraging, but similar ones occurred too infrequently.
“It is a good thing when claims involving restitution of rights happen. But we bemoan their rarity.
“It does not seem like something the government is preoccupied with. The government seems preoccupied with urban cases, which normally are about monetary compensation, and not rural ones, which are about land resettlement.
He also said the high price suggested that the government might not reach its target of settling land restitution claims by 2005.
“It [R63-million] is a huge amount. We have always been critical of the huge amounts paid to farmers as unjustifiably high. The willing-buyer, willing-seller principle leads to exorbitant prices and if this continues the government will be unable to provide land reform.
“Instead of paying market value prices, the government should only pay for the improvement on the land, given the fact that white farmers were given land by the apartheid government and then [received] huge subsidies and support systems. That should be taken into account and deducted from the current value of the land,” Hlatshwayo said.
The land restitution budget for the 2003/04 financial year is nearly R855-million, which would cover only 14 similar land-restitution cases.
Ruth Hall, a researcher at the University of the Western Cape’s Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (Plaas) who is not related to the farming family, said the budget for land restitution needed to be increased if the programme was to succeed.
“We don’t know exactly how many claims are left, but the conservative estimate is that rural claims alone would cost R2,5-billion to settle. That is based on the fact that we have 10 000 rural claims, and according to the Land Commission the average cost of a claim is R250 000.
“Unless the budget is increased, we need to look at how to minimise the cost of restitution, including exploring expropriation as an option. Even though the government has the [constitutional] power to expropriate land, it has chosen not to. We do not mean that expropriation is necessarily a cheaper way of land reform,” said Hall.
Hlatshwayo and Hall said the government had in the past failed to help resettled communities, which had then failed to enjoy the fruits of restitution.
Hlatshwayo said the provincial government and the national departments of land affairs, housing and health needed to coordinate their activities to ensure that the restitution became successful.
Peter Jacobs, another Plaas researcher, said many newly resettled land claimants had to depend on a once-off R3000 grant if they encountered problems.
Said Hall: “Land reform is only meaningful when people get more than just the land.”
A representative for the claimants, Terry Mdluli, said: “It’s been a long, and at times challenging, journey, but we are happy with the way HL Hall & Sons conducted the negotiations and look forward to this spirit of cooperation continuing into the future as neighbours.”
Snaddon added: “Our efforts to find a solution started long before the Zimbabwe situation. We believe that the meaningful transfer of good land must take place if we are all to enjoy a future here.”
He said the company agreed to negotiations only after the Mdluli claimants agreed to include the other farm workers.
“Though the settlement came about through the Restitution Act, in the bigger scheme of things it is actually a redistribution and land-reform settlement because it includes the occupants as well as the claimants.”
He acknowledged that the post-settlement assistance might not cover all the resettled community needs.
“We are skilled at farming. We are not change managers or authorities. We are sure that the government will provide that assistance.
“The new owners have no funding for working capital or equipment and no managerial capacity. We have permanent tree crops on this farm which cannot wait for people to organise themselves.
“The simplest way to provide management through the transition is to lease [back] the land. That will ensure that the beneficiaries get money out of the scheme and that the assets are properly looked after.
“You can use any words you like, but if you look at our willingness to part with a large section of our assets and provide interim assistance and long-term sales and marketing services, it is quite a hefty empowerment deal.”