Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s announcement this week that the ”willing-seller, willing-buyer” system is to be reviewed is unlikely to bring radical changes to land purchases in South Africa, land specialists say.
But Mlambo-Ngcuka’s announcement, at the National Land Summit in Johannesburg, was a shift in policy and a clear sign that the government realised South Africa’s land-reform programme was not yielding the desired results, said Ben Cousins, director of the University of the Western Cape’s Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (Plaas).
”It is highly unlikely that the government’s new stance will lead to mass expropriations,” Cousins said. ”It is rather a small modification, but a modification that could make the state a more effective player.”
Cousins said the devil would be in the detail of what was recommended by the review committee appointed by the government. Few detailed alternatives had been proposed. ”But I think the proposals will come together during the debates at the summit over the weekend.”
An alternative to the existing system, backed by many land stakeholders including Plaas, would take account of the way the land was acquired in the past, past government assistance to the landowner, current use of the land and its future earnings prospects, and its current market value.
”Past subsidies provided to commercial farmers [under apartheid] could be discounted from the market price,” Plaas researcher Ruth Hall told the M&G.
The Alliance of Land and Agrarian Reform Movements (Alarm), a grouping of 18 land NGOs and movements, cautiously welcomed the government’s announcement. But Chris Williams, of the Rural Action Committee, said NGOs would not be convinced of the government’s intentions ”until we see concrete proposals and action”.
At almost every provincial summit held before this week’s National Land Summit, delegates called for the abolitiont of a purely market-based approach to land reform.
The ”willing-buyer, willing-seller” system rests on landowners’ willingness to sell at prices state valuers consider reasonable, and to make their land available for sale. Despite a recent legal amendment allowing the minister of land affairs to expropriate, the government has been hesitant to expropriate farms where negotiations have broken down. Only one farm in North West has been expropriated for land reform purposes.
In 2002 the total value of land in South Africa was estimated at R57-billion. To purchase 30% of this by 2015 would cost R17-billion, or R1,5-billion a year. The Department of Land Affairs’s budget — which allocated R345-million for land acquisition this year — falls far short of this.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said the state was the only buyer, and often farmers were asking exorbitant prices for their land. The government was concerned about the high price of land and would have to ensure that the markets did not lead the process.
”The government has to use the power of the markets decisively to make sure sellers work with the state and not exploit us.”
Minister of Land Affairs and Agriculture Thoko Didiza remarked that ”markets by themselves do not redistribute land at scale, quality, location and price from rich to poor and white to black participants”.
In a submission to Parliament’s land affairs committee, Plaas proposed that the government carry out a land-need analysis on specific districts, identify the land needed and then negotiate fiercely to get it, using expropriation where necessary.
Cousins insists that specific land targets are needed for specific districts.
Reacting to the Minister’s announcement, AgriSA director Hans van der Merwe warned that ”a skewed distribution of land-reform cost could easily result in efficient farmers being bought out at a price that will not allow them to invest elsewhere in equal or similar economic opportunities”.
He added that land reform was a national priority whose cost should be borne by the Treasury.
”Present landowners should not have to contribute more than other taxpayers. It is only reasonable for landowners to expect a market-related price for land that they have to part with, and that is best determined by the ”willing-buyer, willing-seller” approach.”
Plaas’s Hall observed that the potential savings to the fiscus of a revised system would need to be weighed against the potential backlash from farmers and investors.
Apart from reducing the cost of the land, selective expropriation might also have the advantage of sending a clear signal to landowners that negotiating reasonable prices was preferable to protracted legal battles with the state.
One concern is that a failure to introduce changes now could force more radical measures in the longer term. Already, the militant National Land Committee has proposed that the government pay a flat rate to farmers for their land.
Land committee official Andile Mngxitama pointed out that there was nothing in the Constitution to suggest that market rates must be paid for redistributed land.