This year could be the most difficult for farmers in all of South Africa’s history, a grim AgriSA president, Lourie Bosman, said this week. The burden was getting too heavy for many farmers and they “want out”, he said.
“The year has already started poorly,” he said. “Weather conditions are adverse and there is the politics that farmers have to deal with. It is not easy and, even before this cut-throat year, farmers were already struggling.”
Bosman’s comments come in the context of a strained relationship between white farmers and Luluma Xingwana, the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, escalating expropriations to deal with land reform and land restitutions and a proposed new land tax.
Land activists are encouraged by the minister’s apparent “take charge attitude”. But Ruth Hall, a land analyst at the University of the Western Cape’s Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, believes the challenge confronting the minister is to convert big talk into action and to invigorate the programme of land reform and resuscitate her understaffed department.
Xingwana said last week that the government is considering imposing “farm taxes” to accelerate land distribution in South Africa. The land tax is aimed at landowners with two or more properties, or land that is not being used.
“We are already going to pay a municipal land tax and now the government wants to introduce yet another tax,” Bosman said. “This new tax is not viable. Is it going to be provincial or national government that will tax farmers? And what about being taxed for the use of land? How will they determine that? There is no existing database in South Africa about how land is being used.”
Many land analysts also believe that as the March 2008 deadline for the resolution of all restitution cases approaches, expropriations will have to increase. However, Bosman believes that the government merely intends to gazette all restitution cases that have merit by March 2008 and any disputes or negotiations resulting can continue after that date.
In her parliamentary briefing last week, Xingwana said that the government hoped to finalise a new policy on expropriations by June.
February has seen a flurry of expropriation activities. This week the land claims commissioner for Mpumalanga, Peter Mhangwani, announced that he had six expropriation notices awaiting approval from the land commission’s legal advisers. He told the media that lengthy negotiations over the sale price of farms were stalling the restitution process.
Until now there has been no direct expropriation of farmland for land reform purposes, although several expropriation notices have been served. A North West farmer, who was due to become the first expropriated farmer in South Africa, came to an agreement with the government at the last moment.
But last week the government made its intentions clear when it announced that it was, for the first time, directly expropriating a white-owned farm. The department of land affairs gave the go-ahead for the March 15 expropriation of a 25 200ha farm in Northern Cape, owned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The two parties have been negotiating for more than two years.
Relations between AgriSA and Xingwana have been strained since she made comments before Christmas accusing farmers of abusing and raping farm workers and of illegally evicting them. AgriSA and other farmers’ organisations reported her to the Human Rights Commission for hate speech.
She has refused to apologise for what she calls “the truth”.
Although Bosman says the rift is starting to heal, it is clear there is still a lot of distrust between the minister and AgriSA. “There has been dialogue and we are working to repair the relationship.”
But, while the minister has not been popular among white farmers lately, the National African Farmers’ Union is enthusiastic about her comments. Chairperson Motsepe Matlala said: “For the first time the government is taking the plight of farm workers seriously.” He said there was a need for a code of conduct in the industry.
The department of land affairs had not responded to questions from the M&G by the time it went to print.