If land reform does not happen fast enough, people will organise themselves and force redistribution to occur, a Zimbabwean professor said on Thursday.
”If the state does not move when it is challenged, it will be challenged,” Professor Sam Moyo, of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies, told the national land summit in Johannesburg.
”The social process leads and the state must then try to contain and conduct [land reform] in the correct way,” he said.
The South African government is facing mounting criticism over the pace of land reform, with some groups warning of Zimbabwean-style land grabs if reform is not speeded up.
Moyo said the government should adopt a structured, radical approach instead of a structured, conservative one for land reform to be productive.
People often think the Zimbabwean farm invasions were government-orchestrated because it wanted to win the elections. In fact, the invasions had social origins.
In 1975, Zimbabwe was selected as an experiment to resolve the settler issue through reconciliation.
This model failed and eventually Zimbabwe was in a position where its people wanted land but the government could not effectively deal with their needs, said Moyo.
This happened because of a lack of money, and the ”state-centred, but market-based approach”.
According to this model, the private sector decided what land should be sold through the market, and the central government was a reactive buyer to land on offer.
Moyo said the legal and policy framework and the market concept in Zimbabwe before the massive land grabs were very similar to South Africa at the moment.
The willing-buyer-willing-seller concept is the ”opposite of development” because farmers decide what land to sell, when to sell it and what it should cost.
”If you want to develop people, it won’t happen under this approach,” Moyo said to applause from delegates.
He said the landless in Zimbabwe were initially given farms with poor soil, which did not help their development, leading to social tension.
There had always been a rural struggle for land in Zimbabwe. All the war veterans did in spearheading the mass invasions after 1999 was to coordinate the struggle.
”This is a phenomenon if you have a policy framework that doesn’t work.”
Moyo said the Zimbabwean government took about two-and-a-half-years to gain control over the land invasions.
The fact remains that extensive redistribution occurred, ”unfortunately not according to the technocratic niceties”.
Frans Tseehama, the Permanent Secretary for Land in Namibia, told the summit the willing-buyer-willing-seller principle has also failed in his country.
Since independence in 1990, only 145 farms, about 913 488ha, have been redistributed in Namibia. Only 1 538 households of a waiting list of about 240 000 have been resettled.
According to the Namibian Constitution, like in South Africa, land can be expropriated if necessary.
Tseehama said his government has decided to do so and the land of foreign absentee landlords will be the first to be expropriated. — Sapa