A call by South Africa’s chief land commissioner for more post-settlement aid to land reform beneficiaries has been welcomed.
The lack of sufficient post-transfer support for beneficiaries of land redistribution in South Africa could derail the country’s land reform programme, analysts have said.
On Wednesday the chief land commissioner, Tozi Gwanya, was quoted as saying in This Day: ”We need a statutory body separate from land affairs that deals specifically with post-settlement support.”
In her 2004 budget speech the Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister, Thoko Didiza, noted that between June 2003 and March 2004 the department had settled 1 655 black farmers through its Land Reform for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme, and 19 736 black farmers in total had been settled since the launch of the programme in 2001.
However, she noted that ”our experience of implementing the LRAD and the [land] restitution programme over the past 10 years makes it clear that it is not sufficient to provide prospective farmers with access to land without also providing government support for production inputs and technical advisory services”.
Gwanya’s call for the establishment of a separate statutory body to deal specifically with post-settlement support made it clear that government has now realised that this was ”a key weakness” of the land reform programme in South Africa, said Professor Ben Cousins of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), based at the University of the Western Cape.
”The concerns about whether government has the capacity to supply post-settlement support are well founded. What is required is a firm commitment from the top — from ministers and director-generals [of national departments] — to providing post-settlement support and integrating this into the work of the two departments [of land affairs and agriculture],” Cousins commented.
Two recent studies have pointed to a gap between land redistribution and agrarian development as the country attempts to address the land ownership imbalances of apartheid. The first, funded by the British Department of International Development (DFID), found that ”beneficiaries identified a critical need for agricultural training, finance and funding for production, farming equipment and greater access to project-related information”.
A second study, a report compiled by PLAAS, noted that ”agrarian restructuring is not sustainable if post-settlement support to land reform beneficiaries is lacking. At the policy level there has been virtually no progress, beyond acknowledging the need for such support”.
Didiza has made provision for R210-million (about US $32,3-million) in this year’s budget for the initial rollout of the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme.
Money will be made available to individuals and groups for use in setting up infrastructure to facilitate the handling and marketing of livestock. And, through its Integrated Food and Nutrition Security Programme, the state hopes to make agricultural starter packs available to poor people. — Irin