IRIN Web Special on land reform in Southern Africa

Land reform was one of the main promises made by the African National Congress when it came to power in South Africa in 1994. It has proved a complex and slow moving process, and nearly a decade after the first democratic elections, the government has found itself defending its record on delivery.

In her 2002/03 budget speech, Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza underlined the complexities of addressing colonial and apartheid legacies regarding land. "Lest we forget, land reform was - and remains - one of the most onerous challenges facing post-apartheid South Africa... This process has involved engaging with a variety of stakeholders to build a broader buy-in on the noble vision of land reform in South Africa."

South Africa's land reform programme has three pillars: restitution, which seeks to restore land ownership or compensate those forced off land during white rule; redistribution, of mainly agricultural land, to redress the discriminatory colonial and apartheid policies by providing the disadvantaged and poor with access to land; and land tenure reform, which seeks to secure tenure for all South Africans, especially the more vulnerable such as farm labourer tenants.

The land reform programme is based on a fair price under a willing buyer, willing seller system.

During the past year the department of land affairs had transferred a total of 295,024 hectares to 140,227 beneficiaries.

In her budget vote, delivered in April, Didiza claimed "enormous" progress had been made "under our flagship Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development" (LRAD) programme. "In the past financial year, the [department] transferred, through the LRAD, 214 farms yielding 185,609 hectares to 6,769 beneficiaries, including labour tenants ... this financial year we have planned to work on the transfer of 438 farms which will yield 130,810 hectares to 6,179 beneficiaries, among them 133 labour tenants."

In terms of the government restitution programme, the total number of claims settled by April 2003 was 36,488. "This has involved 22,760 households over the past financial year, 25 percent of which are female-headed," the minister added.

On Saturday, 28 June, a total of 41 farms, worth around R56.2 million (about US $7.5 million) were handed back to claimants in the Eastern Cape province. They were the descendents of people forcibly removed from their land under the Native Land Act of 1913, whose land had been sub-divided and handed over to white war veterans to farm. Along with restitution of their land, the claimants received grants totaling about US $592 per household.

The department of land affairs has announced that its focus was shifting towards settling rural claims.

DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED

Didiza observed, however, that "some of the challenges in processing the rural claims include the difficulty we face in getting relevant documentation and information, the construction of family trees, resolution of disputes, unregistered and unsurveyed land".

The notes of a think-tank meeting in Pretoria, the capital, organised to seek ways out of the impasse on land reform in the region, reflect the results of these difficulties: "Land redistribution to provide land for the landless in rural areas has been very slow, and falls far below the government�s target of transferring 30 percent of agricultural land by 2015."

"At the current rate, it is unlikely to reach 5 percent by that date," the meeting concluded. Also noted was the "general failure to deliver post-transfer support services to land reform farmers". The recently announced budget of R1.9 billion (about US $253 million) over 2003/04 and 2004/05 for the land sector was welcome. However, it was not clear "how this relates to the plans for land reform".

"The failure to make substantial headway against the large number of outstanding rural claims (reported as 10,040 by the minister in her budget speech of April 2003) is a growing cause of concern, because this is where grievances are most likely to spill over into violence," the think-tank commented.

Last year IRIN visited the northern Kwazulu-Natal town of Nonoti, where land grievances had spilled over into violence. For the full report go to: Potential for conflict over land

An example of the challenges Didiza noted in her budget speech is the claim being made by the Bakgaga Bamuapa community in the northern Limpopo province. The total claim affects some 500 farms involving around 30,000 hectares of land, said Bakgaga Bamuapa claim chairman Rupert Ramaselela.

When IRIN spoke to him in the Limpopo town of Tzaneen recently, Ramaselela was upbeat about the restitution claim. "So far 225 farms have been gazetted [for restitution] by government. We have a group of farmers who say they are willing to sell, but at the same there are some who are not willing," he said.

"In some instances we are not going to push them [farmers] out, we want to go into partnership with them so the workers on the farm are trained, so that they will be able to run the farm after the [restitution] settlement is made and the land is transferred [to claimants]."

Training was important to the sustainability of the farms after restitution. "We don�t want to see the economy plunging down, we want to make sure people have food security and financial security." For example, "those working with avocados must be able to select very good quality seed [and be able to manage] right up to when the product is in the hands of the consumer - they must understand the whole process," Ramaselela stressed.

The community had identified three farms for relocating claimants on as soon as possible. In the main, commercial agriculture in Limpopo is focused on forestry, but bananas, avocados and cut flowers are also produced.

When IRIN had last spoken to Ramaselela he was eagerly awaiting valuations of farms by the department, as a market-based price has to be negotiated with prospective sellers. However, the office of the land claim commissioner in Limpopo has encountered some problems with the claim.

BACK TO SQUARE ONE

Land claims official David Sello told IRIN that the commission might have to scrap the Bakgaga Bamuapa community claim and redo the validation process, because other claimants had also lodged claims seeking restitution for land gazetted for the Bamuapa. As a result, there would be no further action on the Bamuapa claim until "we settle the problems that are there ... we might cancel the gazette or amend it".

"There are people who claimed the same piece of land, [which] we have gazetted that for a particular community [the Bamuapa]. So we are saying an error has been made, we might need to amend or cancel the gazette and start [the validation process] afresh, with all the claimants that are claiming the same land," Sello added.

Another factor affecting the Bamuapa claim is that several farmers have filed a counter-claim disputing the Bamuapa's claim on their farms, and making it clear that they would not be willing to sell.

This could be a significant challenge to Didiza�s promise to validate all claims on the books of the land claims commission.

LONG ROAD AHEAD

In his paper, "Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa", Wellington Didibhuku Thwala, a research coordinator with an NGO called the National Land Committee (NLC), noted: "for the sake of long-term political stability, it is better for a country like South Africa, with the highest income disparity in the world, to face the pain of radical redistribution of assets through land reform now, than to face the long-term instability which emanates from delaying the resolution of the land question".

Thwala argued that in choosing a market-based approach to land reform, the South African government had failed to fulfill its obligations to the landless.

Land reform activists are currently reviewing the status of all three land reform programmes in South Africa.

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