An out-of-court settlement between a farm owner and an occupant in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape recently is certain to attract attention from stakeholders in South Africa’s rural reform policies.
Sarah Sephton, director of the Grahamstown-based Legal Resources Centre (LRC), says it is the first time that the centre has handled a case in which there was ”such a favourable outcome” for the evicted occupant.
At the heart of the issue is the right to security of tenure of farm occupants, which has seen the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (Esta) become a bone of contention.
Commercial farmers, while not uniformly hostile to the Act, have not embraced it wholeheartedly either. Last year Agri-South Africa, the country’s largest commercial farmers union, embarked on a fund-raising campaign to contest land reform legislation, and Esta in particular.
Agri-SA opposes both the granting of permanent rights to occupants (including the right to create cemeteries) on farms without compensation to owners and Esta provisions requiring that farmers provide evicted workers and occupants with ”suitable alternative accommodation”.
Agri-SA spokesperson Annelize Crosby told African Eye News Service last year that farmers had to ”dig deep into their pockets” to provide suitable alternative accommodation for evicted workers. She said that in consequence ”the greater the number of occupants, the less sought after a farm will be”.
Others believe that Esta has done little to protect the rights of farm workers and occupants and needs to be given stronger teeth.
Underlying the debates surrounding Esta lies the reality, recognised in the government’s Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy document released in November 2000, that ”rural society is not homogenous”.
Recognising the competing interests of rural society and the truism that ”change can cause conflict”, the government has opted for a developmental approach based on a ”participatory process designed to be as transparent and broadly inclusive as possible”.
The government wishes to manage rural transformation in a reconciliatory manner that runs the risk of ending up between a rock and a hard place: between the apparently irreconcilable bottom-line priorities of commercial farmers and the rights-based agenda of more radical activists.
Last week’s Eastern Cape settlement, in which the purchaser of the farm Lilly Valley in Sidbury provided Wilson Mani, a 73-year-old long-term occupant of the farm, with alter-native accommodation valued at R165 000, hints at the possibilities of a tenure security policy built on reconciling economic and social needs.
Significantly, the buyer of Lilly Valley, Yusuf Jeeva, is the first black person
to enter the tourist-oriented game reserve market in the Port Elizabeth-Grahamstown area.
Jeeva purchased Lilly Valley from Alan Hart in order to develop the Kwantu Game Reserve. As is so often the case with the conversion to game farming, labour became redundant.
In March 2001 Hart brought an urgent application in the Grahamstown Magistrate’s Court to evict occupants of the land, saying that the farm had been sold and the new owner planned to convert it into a game farm.
LRC advocate Mark Euijen argued that the application did not meet Esta’s provisions for urgency, and the magistrate cautioned the parties to settle.
Hart then offered short-term occupants R16 000 to leave the farm and long-term occupants (those who had lived on the farm for more than 10 years) R18 000.
According to the LRC’s Mzuphelele Maseti, Mani ”was the only occupant to decline the offer”.
Mani said: ”The new owner … offered money for 10 head of cattle. I told him I would not sell my cattle and that all I wanted was a place of my own.”
Mani said Jeeva then offered to buy him a 3,7ha piece of land with a 14-roomed house in Salem in which he could live permanently. Mani accepted the offer and on August 9 he and his family moved into their new home.
”I am over the moon,” said Mani. ”I didn’t expect this. I am very happy, even if I die my children have a home where they cannot be removed.”
Maseti said that an occupant who is over the age of 60 and has been on a farm for more than 10 years cannot be evicted except in very limited circumstances — only if suitable alternative accommodation is provided.
For rural occupants this usually means access to grazing must also be provided.
Cynics may dismiss the Mani-Kwantu settlement as an exception to the rule, but others will view it as a forerunner of better deals for rural dwellers denied for so long the right to housing, security and comfort. — East Cape News