A land reform project in Worcester is on the brink of collapse after nature and bureaucracy conspired against the 52-strong community. They say the Land Bank has been a major cause of their woes.
“We’ve been able to keep other creditors at bay, but the bank is demanding its pound of flesh,” said community member Niklaas Prins. “If we don’t get help in seven weeks, we’ll have to start selling our land.”
The community formed the Winola Park Trust and obtained a Land Redistribution Agricultural Development grant and a Land Bank loan. But they say the grant, and operational funding from the bank for the first season, came two years late.
The community missed its first harvest and could not repay the loan, and drought worsened its plight.
The crisis at the Worcester project was highlighted at a media conference on land reform two weeks ago by Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung researchers.
Prins told those present, including senior land official Glen Thomas, that his community’s farm was “a little black dot in a sea of white. People were watching us to see if we would make a success. So were the vultures.”
At the conference, the Land Bank came under fire from more than just Prins for shirking its developmental duties and enforcing strict payments on struggling communities. Its tough stance could scupper several land reform projects with teething problems, critics said.
Researcher Bertus de Villiers urged the bank to show greater understanding of the harsh conditions new landowners faced.
He said an interest-free period of two to four years should follow each bank-supported acquisition, to enable new owners to find their feet, set objectives, gain experience, improve infrastructure and buy equipment.
De Villiers argued that the cost of failure was ultimately far higher than keeping operations going during the transitional phase.
Land Bank spokesperson Herman Moeketsi conceded that the bank was getting tougher with emerging farmers. “We have to — we have an obligation to ensure solid risk models, debt management and recovery. We’re improving our systems, to give us a better sense of how emerging farmers are coping. But we’re firmly committed to ensuring a fair deal for clients.”
The bank had to be financially sustainable to deliver on its development mandate, he said.
“This is no easy task in a sector affected by unpredictable issues like adverse weather, international commodity pricing and interest and exchange rates,” Moeketsi said.
Another project mirrored Prins’s frustration. The African Flower Trust’s Suraya Cassiem said that at first the Land Bank had been their “angel in disguise”. But funding delays meant that her family had to dig deep to keep the farm afloat.
“If we didn’t have family flower shops, we would have sunk,” she said. “The Land Bank became big headache for us.”