Research released last week has found that there has been almost no redistribution of white-owned land in Limpopo, one of South Africa’s richest agricultural provinces.
It paints a bleak picture of the pace of land reform in a province that stands at the centre of South Africa’s land reform programme.
Local activists accuse the government of a lack of political will. Farmers’ representatives insist, however, that the delays are the fault of land authorities in the province.
The report, by researcher Marc Wegerif of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (Plaas) at the University of the Western Cape, focuses on the performance of the first three years of the government’s land redistribution for agricultural development (LRAD) programme in Limpopo. The LRAD is the primary mechanism for land redistribution in the land reform programme.
Wegerif says that in its first three years, the programme only contributed 1% to land transformation in the province. The goal is to have 30% of farm land in black hands by 2015.
In addition, almost 82% of the land distributed by the LRAD is state-owned land which black farmers have been using for years.
Three-quarters of the province’s agricultural land remains in white hands. The transformation rate is so slow that it will take 90 years to achieve the 30% target in Limpopo.
However, vice-chairperson of farmer union AgriLimpopo Gert Raal told the Mail & Guardian that the slow pace of the government’s bureaucratic machinery was to blame.
”In some instances, farmers sold their farms four years ago and are still waiting for the money from government and the transaction to be completed,” he said. ”They are still on the farms hoping that someday they can move on.”
The land restitution programme, another leg of land reform, has also been struggling in Limpopo. Most black farmers received their land through land claims, yet only a quarter of the claims had been settled by the end of last year. This is the lowest number of settled claims of all the provinces, although Limpopo faces one of the highest number of claims.
Land claimants are getting impatient. Kathu Sadiki, spokesperson for Limpopo’s minister of agriculture, said some communities had threatened land invasions.
Sadiki said many of the delays were the result of multiple claims on one piece of land. One farm was subject to claims by 18 communities.
He said the attitude of some farmers was also hampering the process.
But, Raal said there was chaos in the Limpopo Land Claims Commission. ”Those people do not have a damned clue what they are doing.”
It was not in farmers’ interests to delay claims, as they were not allowed to make improvements or changes on their farms once a claim had been gazetted. ”Banks will also not touch that farm for financing,” he said.
A local land activist group, Nkuzi Development Association, says the government has been treating the farmers with kid gloves. The organisation agreed that the state was a poor buyer of land, was slow to finalise deals and often paid too much for inappropriate land.
The association said that part of the problem was the ”willing buyer, willing seller” approach, which allowed landowners to dictate which land became available. Although the state had the power to expropriate, it had not used this mechanism.
”There should be negotiations, but these should be within clear time frames. Government officials and land owners need to stick to agreements,” the association told Parliament at the end of last year. ”Where negotiations break down or there is a refusal to cooperate, expropriation needs to be used.”