South Africa has to make space for policy-making structures to avoid political unrest over land reform, the executive director of the African Institute of Agrarian studies said on Monday.
Professor Sam Moyo was speaking at a farmers’ summit held by the National Farmer’s Union in Pretoria.
”South Africa has to learn to make space for policy-making structures in order to prevent the unrest and political dynamics that will follow a failure to deliver on land reform,” he said.
Using his country, Zimbabwe, as an example, Moyo said that if the aspirations and needs of the poor are not met in South Africa, nothing prevents a similar situation of land grabs arising here.
However, not all the results of the land reform in Zimbabwe are negative.
”I say to you, South Africans, study the Zimbabwe situation better. Despite the fact that Zimbabwe’s land reform did not have the structure technocrats would have liked it to have, it has developed greatly expanded production,” said Moyo.
Dr Ruth Hall of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies said land reform is taking place fastest in places where farmers already want to sell land.
The Northern Cape is the province with the most farmers putting their land on the market.
”One of the reasons for land reform taking place slowly is because it depends on government’s ability to pay for the land. A backlog occurs because the government exercises fiscal discipline and cannot buy all the land at once,” she said.
Spending on land reform has, however, increased, Hall said.
”In previous years, the national Budget had never allocated more than 0,5% to land reform. This year we saw that figure rise up to 0,9%.”
The Agri BEE (black economic empowerment) draft charter does not outline the role of current land owners, Hall said.
”The charter is mostly relevant to larger farms owned by companies, similar to the way mining empowerment works.”
The impact of land reform on individually owned farms needs to be discussed, she said.
Earlier at the summit, South African Communist Party leader Blade Nzimande said it will take a hundred years to transfer 30% of agricultural land to black farmers at the current rate.
Joint action is needed to accelerate the land-reform process if the 30% target is to be reached within the next 10 years, as the Agri BEE draft charter stipulates, Nzimande said. — Sapa