Less than 5 percent of land redistributed since apartheid ended in S.A
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75127
SOUTH AFRICA: Land redistribution moves to the front burner
JOHANNESBURG , 2 November 2007 (IRIN) - The South African government has revealed that less than 5 percent of white-owned commercial agricultural land has been redistributed since the demise of apartheid in 1994, making the target of having 30 percent redistributed by 2014 seem almost unachievable.
Dealing with the skewed apartheid land legacy has been a constant refrain of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) since it came to power nearly 14 years ago, but progress has been stymied by a range of factors, including capacity constraints in the Land Affairs Department, steep rises in property prices, and political will.
Cultural and emotional imperatives often underpin land ownership in South Africa, as in much of the continent, where, beyond land as a resource or investment, It is also regarded as having social and spiritual value. The issue is fraught with all of these, and South Africa's neighbour, Zimbabwe, serves as a constant reminder of the dangers of not resolving it.
A Nigerian chief's submission to the West African Land Commission in 1912 is often quoted by government as encompassing the values of land ownership. "I conceive that land belongs to a vast family, of which many are dead, few are living and countless yet unborn."
During apartheid, 87 percent of the land was reserved for the white minority, while the remainder was parcelled out to the black majority. However, only 13 percent of South Africa's land, much of it in the hands of white farmers, is deemed suitable for crop production. South Africa's Department of Land Affairs noted in its annual report for 2006/2007 that it "faced a serious challenge" if it was to achieve its 2014 target.
The report's release coincided with the sacking of the land affairs director-general, Glen Thomas, with the official reason given as his failure to return timeously from watching South Africa's rugby world cup victory in Paris, causing him to miss a scheduled parliamentary portfolio committee meeting to address the qualified audit his department received from the auditor-general.
However, critics have cited Thomas's inability to pick up the pace of land reform as a consequence, according to reports, of staff spending only six days a month at their desks, and the remainder of the working month spent at workshops or meetings.
Thomas also managed to alienate himself from the white farming unions, who found his style aloof, as well as land activists, who reportedly felt patronised and angry that the department had failed to confront the growing number of agricultural workers evicted from farms.
Rising eviction rates of farmworkers
A recent report by the Nkuzi Development Association, a non-governmental organisation advocating land rights, claimed that between 1994 and 2004, 942,303 farmworkers were evicted from farms, 200,000 more thanwere evicted in the decade leading up to the demise of apartheid.
The report said farmers had listed their reasons for evicting farmworker as drought, international competition, deregularisation of the sector and the minimum-wage regulations. "Labour on farms is one production cost that can be cut or reduced, especially given the low level of unionisation and inability of farmworkers and -dwellers to defend their rights."
The land affairs annual report said 4.3 percent of land had been distributed to black beneficiaries since 1994. Spokesman Eddie Mohoebi told the media this week: "It is clear that, short of nationalisation of land, there is a need for drastic measures to be implemented to intervene in the land market to accelerate redistribution." Prof Ben Cousins, director of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western cape, told IRIN the 30 percent target was "not feasible at all", but then again, it was just an "arbitrary figure".
Agrarian reform
He said targets, dates and speeds were really not the issue; the focus should be on sustainability, and this raised questions of approach, budget and political will. "Land reform on its own cannot achieve rural poverty reduction," Cousins said, and a rethink of the extent of agricultural deregularisation was required.
All producers - small, medium and large – were competing in a difficult global market, and land distribution had to be carried out in concert with agrarian reform, where policies concerning subsidies and market protection could be considered, he said. In October, Land and Agricultural Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana blamed white farmers for the delay of land restitution because "They increase land prices so that the state cannot afford to buy it."
There have been calls from some quarters to cap land prices, but Cousins told IRIN that the market was buoyant, with land being bought and sold on a constant basis, but unfortunately "government is a very ineffective player of the [land] market" and did not match the supply of land to the demand.
Government was also sending contradictory messages on land distribution: on the one hand it touted land reform, although the national budget of about R3 billion (US430 million) for land and agriculture was very small, while on the other hand it relied on commercial farmers to produce the country's food.
Cousins said the land issue had the potential to be politically volatile: as in Zimbabwe, "it is a symbol for other sorts of things not working", such as reducing poverty and creating employment; and like in Zimbabwe, it can be "a vehicle for other kinds of frustrations".
A few months after Zimbabwean President RobertMugabe's ZANU-PF government lost a referendum on constitutional reform in 2000 - the first public vote the party had lost since achieving independence from Britain in 1980 - the government adopted a chaotic fast-track land reform programme that saw white-owned commercial farms expropriated for landless blacks.
Since then the country has experienced a seven-year recession, recording the world highest inflation rate - more than 6,000 percent - and 80 percent unemployment. International donor agencies conservatively estimate that more than a third of the population, or 4.1 million people, require emergency food aid.
SOUTH AFRICA: Land redistribution moves to the front burner
JOHANNESBURG , 2 November 2007 (IRIN) - The South African government has revealed that less than 5 percent of white-owned commercial agricultural land has been redistributed since the demise of apartheid in 1994, making the target of having 30 percent redistributed by 2014 seem almost unachievable.
Dealing with the skewed apartheid land legacy has been a constant refrain of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) since it came to power nearly 14 years ago, but progress has been stymied by a range of factors, including capacity constraints in the Land Affairs Department, steep rises in property prices, and political will.
Cultural and emotional imperatives often underpin land ownership in South Africa, as in much of the continent, where, beyond land as a resource or investment, It is also regarded as having social and spiritual value. The issue is fraught with all of these, and South Africa's neighbour, Zimbabwe, serves as a constant reminder of the dangers of not resolving it.
A Nigerian chief's submission to the West African Land Commission in 1912 is often quoted by government as encompassing the values of land ownership. "I conceive that land belongs to a vast family, of which many are dead, few are living and countless yet unborn."
During apartheid, 87 percent of the land was reserved for the white minority, while the remainder was parcelled out to the black majority. However, only 13 percent of South Africa's land, much of it in the hands of white farmers, is deemed suitable for crop production. South Africa's Department of Land Affairs noted in its annual report for 2006/2007 that it "faced a serious challenge" if it was to achieve its 2014 target.
The report's release coincided with the sacking of the land affairs director-general, Glen Thomas, with the official reason given as his failure to return timeously from watching South Africa's rugby world cup victory in Paris, causing him to miss a scheduled parliamentary portfolio committee meeting to address the qualified audit his department received from the auditor-general.
However, critics have cited Thomas's inability to pick up the pace of land reform as a consequence, according to reports, of staff spending only six days a month at their desks, and the remainder of the working month spent at workshops or meetings.
Thomas also managed to alienate himself from the white farming unions, who found his style aloof, as well as land activists, who reportedly felt patronised and angry that the department had failed to confront the growing number of agricultural workers evicted from farms.
Rising eviction rates of farmworkers
A recent report by the Nkuzi Development Association, a non-governmental organisation advocating land rights, claimed that between 1994 and 2004, 942,303 farmworkers were evicted from farms, 200,000 more thanwere evicted in the decade leading up to the demise of apartheid.
The report said farmers had listed their reasons for evicting farmworker as drought, international competition, deregularisation of the sector and the minimum-wage regulations. "Labour on farms is one production cost that can be cut or reduced, especially given the low level of unionisation and inability of farmworkers and -dwellers to defend their rights."
The land affairs annual report said 4.3 percent of land had been distributed to black beneficiaries since 1994. Spokesman Eddie Mohoebi told the media this week: "It is clear that, short of nationalisation of land, there is a need for drastic measures to be implemented to intervene in the land market to accelerate redistribution." Prof Ben Cousins, director of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western cape, told IRIN the 30 percent target was "not feasible at all", but then again, it was just an "arbitrary figure".
Agrarian reform
He said targets, dates and speeds were really not the issue; the focus should be on sustainability, and this raised questions of approach, budget and political will. "Land reform on its own cannot achieve rural poverty reduction," Cousins said, and a rethink of the extent of agricultural deregularisation was required.
All producers - small, medium and large – were competing in a difficult global market, and land distribution had to be carried out in concert with agrarian reform, where policies concerning subsidies and market protection could be considered, he said. In October, Land and Agricultural Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana blamed white farmers for the delay of land restitution because "They increase land prices so that the state cannot afford to buy it."
There have been calls from some quarters to cap land prices, but Cousins told IRIN that the market was buoyant, with land being bought and sold on a constant basis, but unfortunately "government is a very ineffective player of the [land] market" and did not match the supply of land to the demand.
Government was also sending contradictory messages on land distribution: on the one hand it touted land reform, although the national budget of about R3 billion (US430 million) for land and agriculture was very small, while on the other hand it relied on commercial farmers to produce the country's food.
Cousins said the land issue had the potential to be politically volatile: as in Zimbabwe, "it is a symbol for other sorts of things not working", such as reducing poverty and creating employment; and like in Zimbabwe, it can be "a vehicle for other kinds of frustrations".
A few months after Zimbabwean President RobertMugabe's ZANU-PF government lost a referendum on constitutional reform in 2000 - the first public vote the party had lost since achieving independence from Britain in 1980 - the government adopted a chaotic fast-track land reform programme that saw white-owned commercial farms expropriated for landless blacks.
Since then the country has experienced a seven-year recession, recording the world highest inflation rate - more than 6,000 percent - and 80 percent unemployment. International donor agencies conservatively estimate that more than a third of the population, or 4.1 million people, require emergency food aid.
Namibia: Land reform does not reach poor
The Namibian,
by Brigitte Weidlich
November 12, 2007
Land reform, including the expropriation of white-owned commercial farms, is very slow in reaching its targets, leaving over one million black Namibians in overcrowded and overgrazed communal areas compared to 3 800 mainly white commercial farmers occupying 6 000 farms, comprising just under half of the country's agricultural land, a new report says.
While this social order was inherited from the apartheid days of South African rule, nearly 18 years after Independence at the current land reform pace the process will take a hundred years to complete, states the report, titled 'No resettlement available – an assessment of the expropriation principle and its impact on land reform in Namibia'. The report was compiled by the Legal Assistance Centre with Willem Odendaal and US Law Professor Sidney Harring as authors and was launched on Friday.
"The political reality of Namibian democracy is that the Government must meet a popular demand for land reform in a timely way: it cannot wait 100 years without losing its own legitimacy. While the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme (AALS) may solve a small part of the problem of black land ownership, it cannot be a substitute for land reform because it does nothing to ameliorate poverty or to meet the legitimate political demands of nearly one million poor blacks," the authors stated.
Government has bought only 209 out of a possible 6 000 commercial farms for resettlement purposes on the willing seller, willing buyer principle, at a cost of well over N$200 million, the report states. "It may be that a little over 9 000 people are actually resettled on these farms, but the record keeping is so poor that we cannot determine the actual number," Odendaal and Harring criticised. "Many (resettled people) have already left the rural poverty of the resettlement farms, and more leave every day.
We do not doubt the honest intentions of the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, nor does any responsible party oppose land reform in Namibia as a necessity to counter the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. Even the Namibia Agricultural Union, the organised voice of the commercial farmers, officially supports land reform. To oppose it would be both reactionary and politically suicidal." The reasons for expropriation were also questioned, as the farmworkers hardly benefited, let alone being resettled on their former working place.
Ongombo West was the first farm to be expropriated, but because of a dispute between labourers and the farm owners. At least the farm labourers were resettled on some parts of the farm, but were left without equipment or funding. The farms Marburg and Okorusu were about to be sold to a mine operating on Okorusu, but Government withdrew the waiver and bought the farms for resettlement. However, the farm workers were still waiting to be resettled, living on Okorusu in limbo, surviving on their meagre pensions.
"Land expropriation will have an adverse impact on the lives of farmworkers and their families, who will be both displaced and impoverished if the programme proceeds as presently planned," the LAC report stated. "Specific legal provisions are needed to ensure that farmworkers such as those on Marburg and Okorusu are not displaced by expropriation. The simplest legal requirement would be to include farmworker resettlement and support for their own farming initiatives as a component of each expropriation plan.
Arguably, this is required by an emerging international common law concerning the rights of displaced and forcibly resettled persons, who are entitled to be resettled with dignity under conditions that are no worse than their previous living conditions." Farmworkers were not even assured of resettlement, but could apply to be placed at the bottom of the long and slow-moving waiting list. "But even prioritising displaced farm workers for resettlement is inadequate because they will still be displaced and forced into squatter camps as soon as expropriation occurs, and be left there for months," the report said.
"Sorting out all these matters is the role of law – a challenge that would strain the legal order of any country. "Even the first expropriations have demonstrated the need for an evaluation and amendment of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act 6 of 1995," the authors said. Changes were needed in the Act to provide for a transparent process of selection of farms for expropriation and allocating land to beneficiaries.
A well-defined legal role for the Land Advisory Board was necessary, simplified acquisition processes and a comprehensive land reform plan against which those criteria could be measured.
"The land reform and expropriation processes are grounded in eradicating the vestiges of apartheid and racism but they have to be clearly connected to a programme of poverty eradication for Namibia's poorest people, who form a substantial proportion of the population. This is a difficult task, but it has to be accomplished if land expropriation for such purpose is to succeed. "The plan for the recommended poverty eradication programme would have to provide for, at least, empowerment and training, and substantial social and economic support. This effort would cost as much as or more than land acquisition," the report noted.!
November 12, 2007
Land reform, including the expropriation of white-owned commercial farms, is very slow in reaching its targets, leaving over one million black Namibians in overcrowded and overgrazed communal areas compared to 3 800 mainly white commercial farmers occupying 6 000 farms, comprising just under half of the country's agricultural land, a new report says.
While this social order was inherited from the apartheid days of South African rule, nearly 18 years after Independence at the current land reform pace the process will take a hundred years to complete, states the report, titled 'No resettlement available – an assessment of the expropriation principle and its impact on land reform in Namibia'. The report was compiled by the Legal Assistance Centre with Willem Odendaal and US Law Professor Sidney Harring as authors and was launched on Friday.
"The political reality of Namibian democracy is that the Government must meet a popular demand for land reform in a timely way: it cannot wait 100 years without losing its own legitimacy. While the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme (AALS) may solve a small part of the problem of black land ownership, it cannot be a substitute for land reform because it does nothing to ameliorate poverty or to meet the legitimate political demands of nearly one million poor blacks," the authors stated.
Government has bought only 209 out of a possible 6 000 commercial farms for resettlement purposes on the willing seller, willing buyer principle, at a cost of well over N$200 million, the report states. "It may be that a little over 9 000 people are actually resettled on these farms, but the record keeping is so poor that we cannot determine the actual number," Odendaal and Harring criticised. "Many (resettled people) have already left the rural poverty of the resettlement farms, and more leave every day.
We do not doubt the honest intentions of the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, nor does any responsible party oppose land reform in Namibia as a necessity to counter the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. Even the Namibia Agricultural Union, the organised voice of the commercial farmers, officially supports land reform. To oppose it would be both reactionary and politically suicidal." The reasons for expropriation were also questioned, as the farmworkers hardly benefited, let alone being resettled on their former working place.
Ongombo West was the first farm to be expropriated, but because of a dispute between labourers and the farm owners. At least the farm labourers were resettled on some parts of the farm, but were left without equipment or funding. The farms Marburg and Okorusu were about to be sold to a mine operating on Okorusu, but Government withdrew the waiver and bought the farms for resettlement. However, the farm workers were still waiting to be resettled, living on Okorusu in limbo, surviving on their meagre pensions.
"Land expropriation will have an adverse impact on the lives of farmworkers and their families, who will be both displaced and impoverished if the programme proceeds as presently planned," the LAC report stated. "Specific legal provisions are needed to ensure that farmworkers such as those on Marburg and Okorusu are not displaced by expropriation. The simplest legal requirement would be to include farmworker resettlement and support for their own farming initiatives as a component of each expropriation plan.
Arguably, this is required by an emerging international common law concerning the rights of displaced and forcibly resettled persons, who are entitled to be resettled with dignity under conditions that are no worse than their previous living conditions." Farmworkers were not even assured of resettlement, but could apply to be placed at the bottom of the long and slow-moving waiting list. "But even prioritising displaced farm workers for resettlement is inadequate because they will still be displaced and forced into squatter camps as soon as expropriation occurs, and be left there for months," the report said.
"Sorting out all these matters is the role of law – a challenge that would strain the legal order of any country. "Even the first expropriations have demonstrated the need for an evaluation and amendment of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act 6 of 1995," the authors said. Changes were needed in the Act to provide for a transparent process of selection of farms for expropriation and allocating land to beneficiaries.
A well-defined legal role for the Land Advisory Board was necessary, simplified acquisition processes and a comprehensive land reform plan against which those criteria could be measured.
"The land reform and expropriation processes are grounded in eradicating the vestiges of apartheid and racism but they have to be clearly connected to a programme of poverty eradication for Namibia's poorest people, who form a substantial proportion of the population. This is a difficult task, but it has to be accomplished if land expropriation for such purpose is to succeed. "The plan for the recommended poverty eradication programme would have to provide for, at least, empowerment and training, and substantial social and economic support. This effort would cost as much as or more than land acquisition," the report noted.!
Publicité