Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon on Friday questioned the wisdom of Lulu Xingwana’s appointment as Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister.
”As Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy, Xingwana achieved little aside from her racist and xenophobic diatribes in Parliament, which were viewed with alarm by both local and foreign investors,” Leon said in his weekly newsletter on the DA website.
In September 2004, Xingwana had railed against ”rich white cartels that are continuing even today to loot our diamonds, taking them to London, that are continuing today to monopolise the mining industry”.
”Not content with attacking multinational mining companies, Xingwana purported to tell them whom to appoint to senior management positions,” he said.
She had also attacked another of South Africa’s most important companies and defended Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government, arguing last year that it was unnecessary to have international monitors observe Zimbabwe’s elections.
”What on earth was President [Thabo] Mbeki thinking when he promoted her, and gave her a portfolio in which she will be managing the delicate issue of land reform?” Leon asked.
He speculated Mbeki wanted to send a signal to farmers and to property owners in general that ”he is willing to use radical means to achieve a racial redistribution of land — that the expropriation that is looming in parts of South Africa could soon
accelerate if owners do not yield to the government’s demands”.
However, private landowners were not the major obstacle to land reform, Leon said.
The greatest problems were the lack of capacity in the government to carry out the process, and the lack of agricultural support programmes to help new black farmers succeed.
Leon said the government promised, for example, to release nearly one million hectares of state-owned land for redistribution by 2001, but just over 500 000ha had actually been provided.
Last November, a delegation from the National Council of Provinces visited several farms in Limpopo province that were redistributed to communities between 1997 and 2002 at a cost of R100-million.
”The delegation found that all of the farms they visited had collapsed due to a lack of funds, skills and expertise.
”Other stories of commercial farms that have been redistributed, only to fall into ruin, abound.
”Land reform can be of immense benefit to our country — to landless families and to the economy as a whole — but it must promote, not undermine, property rights.
”Abandoning the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ principle, will have dire consequences for our common future,” he said.
Property rights are the key to successful land reform. One cannot simply expropriate land and redistribute it, as tempting as that might seem to some. If the property rights of some landowners are not protected, then the property rights of all landowners will be insecure, said Leon.
”That is the lesson of Zimbabwe’s self-destructive land reform programme. The key will be careful management. One hopes that the president has explained this to Minister Xingwana,” Leon said. – Sapa