The land and agriculture sector is waiting with bated breath to see if the new Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Lulu Xingwana, lives up to her fire-eating reputation in this sensitive portfolio.
Reacting to her public statements as the former deputy minister of minerals and energy, Xingwana’s critics branded them ”naked racism”, ”anti-capitalist” and ”anti-white”. But her supporters say her passion for transformation enables her to tackle thorny issues head on.
Many see her promotion to the department as a reaction to sidelined minister Thoko Didiza’s lack of tangible achievements during her seven-year tenure. It has been suggested that President Thabo Mbeki, on the back foot in the African National Congress, is playing to the grassroots by appointing her.
”We’ve heard about her reputation and are looking forward to our meeting on Monday to see what our relationship will be,” said AgriSA president Lourie Bosman. ”We don’t know anything about her, except what we have heard through the press.”
Xingwana, who grew up in the Transkei and rose through the ranks of the ANC Women’s League, has described mining giant De Beers as a ”rich, white cartel” that was ”looting” South Africa’s diamonds. In a speech in Parliament on transformation in mining last year, she lambasted the diamond company for replacing one white, male MD with another. She said its board of directors was ”lily-white and male-dominated”.
Anglo American also received a tongue-lashing for appointing one executive for whites and another for blacks. She singled out Sasol for lagging behind in racial transformation.
One of Xingwana’s first tasks will be to sign off the black economic empowerment (BEE) charter in agriculture. Insiders say the charter is days away from being finalised.
The first draft was rejected by both sides of the industry — farmers because its land acquisition and business participation targets were unrealistic, and land activists because it conceded too little. It has been under renegotiation for two years.
Bosman said one of the changes farmers insisted on was less stringent targets for small, family-owned farms to ensure their continued survival. ”The new minister may have to decide whether the charter is up to scratch, although we are hoping Didiza has already approved it.”
Marc Wegerif of the Nkusi Development Association said one of the government’s key failures was the lack of follow-up to last August’s land summit. ”There seems to be no sign of action from the department,” he said. ”The minister will have to provide leadership.”
Mpho Lekgoro, ANC parliamentary caucus spokesperson, described Xingwana as a hard-working official who was passionate about the rights of women. Lekgoro said Xingwana had taken up the issue of transformation and given it the high profile the ANC wanted, adding that she was a ”people’s person” and, as an MP since 1994, an experienced leader. ”No one has ever told her that she drives them mad,” he said.
But the farming lobby is not alone in taking exception to her public statements. Enyinna Nkem-Abonta, the former Democratic Alliance MP who defected to the ANC, is known to have been outraged by what he viewed as xenophobic comments about him in the House. She told the former Nigerian citizen not to run away from his own country, as millions of black people there needed him. It is said the two have since buried the hatchet, and that Nkem-Abonta has accepted the jibe as party politi-cal jousting.
Ruth Hall, a researcher at the University of the Western Cape’s programme for land and agrarian studies, said the government’s ongoing failure to secure the tenure rights of farm workers was another key challenge for the new minister. Tenure legislation has been on the drawing board for almost a decade.
Xingwana has been caught up in other controversies. In 2004, the Mail & Guardian reported on her stake in a R860-million BEE mining deal while she was a director of Section21 company Malibongwe. The mining deal was between Malibongwe, Zwelakhe Sisulu’s Savannah Resources and Australian mining giant Aquarius Platinum, and aspects of it had to be approved by her department. She denied any conflict of interest.
Later that year she was fined R1 000 for failing to disclose her directorship of Citycat Trading, which trades as Lebone La Sechaba. When the issue flared again this year, her spokesperson, Yvonne Mfolo, said Xingwana had resigned from Citycat in 2004.
From the frying pan into the fire
After seven years as land minister, Thoko Didiza will need some time to clear her office. She will also leave plenty of baggage for her successor.
The heaviest suitcase newly appointed Land Affairs and Agriculture Minister Lulu Xingwana will have to unpack is that of land acquisition. The government has set the target of transferring 30% of South Africa’s arable land into black hands by 2014. Some analysts believe Didiza’s failure to register significant progress on this objective underlies her perceived demotion to the public works portfolio vacated by Stella Sigcau.
Land researcher Ruth Hall said one of Didiza’s most important contributions was to stage a land summit last year that got all interested parties in the land affairs field talking. However, leadership was now needed to take forward the summit’s decisions.
Political analyst Jabu Dada of the Centre of Policy Studies argued that Didiza’s move should not be seen as a downgrading. ”The public works department is the flagship of the government’s Asgisa [Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa],” he said. ”The president has entrusted Didiza with the running of this huge programme.”
AgriSA president Lourie Bosman agreed, saying that public works might have been a Cinderella portfolio in the past, but that it now carried one of the biggest budgets in the Cabinet.
”Didiza was under a lot of pressure from activists on land reform,” he said. ”But to her credit, she always acted within the legal structures.” He added that organised agriculture had built up an excellent relationship of trust with her.
Some of Didiza’s critics suspect that her cosy relationship with organised agriculture might explain her redeployment. Land activists felt that she was being too accommodating to white farmers, while moving too slowly in expropriating land and reviewing the willing-buyer, willing-seller system of land acquisition. — Yolandi Groenewald