Delivering his speech during the ANC’s 103rd birthday celebrations in Cape Town this week, Zuma spoke directly on land reform.
Describing the “willing buyer, willing seller” model of land reform as “unsuccessful”, Zuma explained expropriation will be on the cards for South Africa in 2015.
Why is this necessary?
South Africa has already spent in excess of R29 billion on land reform…
Of the total available South African agriculture land, only 8% has been transferred in 20 years.
According to some media reports R29 billion would have been sufficient to buy approximately 37% of the agricultural land in South Africa. This means the current 8% could have been 37%.
One of the main reasons for this slow progress is the actual ancestral right principle, where individual farms are being targeted for redistribution following land claims.
How can Zuma describe the “willing buyer, willing seller” model of land reform as “unsuccessful” if this model is not used for land reform in South Africa?
Dr. Theo de Jager of Agri SA states that approximately 5% of all farms in the country are in the market during any given year. This means that government could have procured much more land on the open market in only a few years that was transferred in the preceding 20.
Why did the South African government not considered an approach similar to the Namibian example?
Ancestral land rights are not acknowledged in Namibia. This decision was taken way back in 1991 where it was decided that redistribution would be based on the willing seller/willing buyer principle and that there would be no recognition of ancestral land rights.
Namibian government has the right of first refusal on all land sales. If a Namibian farmer wants to sell his lands, he or she needs to first offer it to the state.
Unfortunately, it seems as if this proposal was rejected on two occasions by the South African government.
According to the ANC Freedom Charter “The Land shall be shared among Those Who Work It!”
Statistics tell the sad story. By government’s own estimate three quarters of resituated land is unproductive.
White farmers are of course enticingly vulnerable targets. Especially since the other group critical to restitution is politically untouchable.
As Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille points out, 30% of the most fertile land lies in the former homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, where agricultural production is virtually non-existent.
Of 1.1-million hectares of high to moderate potential agricultural land, a paltry 40,000 hectares are currently planted.
“The real reason the ANC won’t grasp the nettle of underdevelopment in the fertile former homelands, is that the current communal system under the control of traditional chiefs delivers millions of votes to the ruling party…,” writes Zille.
“The government is using land as a solution to the problem, but land in itself is not. It has to be worked effectively to be a solution.” – Brent McNamara, beef farmer.
South Africa Today
