Landing SA in trouble
Adding EWC to the mix of land reform failings will aggravate an already bad situation
OFFICIAL rhetoric on expropriation without compensation (EWC) has cooled somewhat. Perhaps the government and ruling party have realised how destructive it has been to South Africa’s economic standing.
This is not to say that EWC is off the table – far from it. There has been a recalibration of words rather than a reorientation of goals. But the attempt to focus on land reform invites a review of this (necessary) endeavour, and what has gone wrong with it.
This question is raised by the recent Special Investigating Unit report into “irregularities” in South Africa’s land redistribution efforts. The findings relate to some 146 land reform projects or grant allocations across the country.
Perhaps its most jarring finding, specifically in respect of qualifying criteria for grants, is “our investigations have indicated that the far greater majority of LRAD projects have failed.
“Grants to the value of millions of rand have been allocated to individuals who constituted part of the so-called rent-a-crowds; ie individuals who (in our view) were never eligible for grants.”
It details a system compromised by poor policy, non-compliance with the Public Finance Management Act, shortcomings in available skills in the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, inadequate monitoring and evaluation, and management failings.
The High-Level Panel under former president Kgalema Motlanthe pointed to governance pathologies as central to the land reform malaise. Testimony from members of the public captured in the panel’s report echoes that in the SIU report.
Said one: “Some community members who lodged complaints are kept in the dark by government officials, who fraudulently alter the names and numbers of people on the beneficiary lists.
“Some people who are supposed to be listed in court proceedings are deliberately and fraudulently left outside the process to dilute their claims or in order for corrupt government officials to personally benefit from the land claims.”
Research by Ruth Hall and Thembela Kepe into land reform projects in the Eastern Cape raised similar concerns. Central to the litany of failures they identified was apparent ineptitude – if not outright malfeasance – by officials charged with managing the process. These are often expressed in collusive deals with businesses to the exclusion of nominal beneficiaries.
We at the Institute of Race Relations have investigated and drawn attention to cases of collusion between
It is positive (as the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has noted) that misappropriated properties have been recovered – some 58 farms with another 37 under curatorship.
A number of officials are facing sanctions, but only one has apparently been sentenced to prison and several seem to have escaped censure by resigning.
It is difficult to imagine a successful land reform programme built on this sort of infrastructure. It is even more difficult to envisage the sort of expanded land reform effort. The provision of extensive support services, for example, assume an officialdom that for the most part does not exist.
Adding EWC will aggravate this state of affairs. It will do nothing to alleviate the problems.
There is every reason to believe that, with a troubled bureaucracy suitably empowered and emboldened by EWC, such pathologies would grow.
Requirements that the government compensate people for property it takes offers them some protection from abuse. It signifies a concrete obligation by the state towards those under its authority. Remove it, and the possibility for abuse grows.
With a state and society with South Africa’s afflictions, it is well-nigh certain that abuse will follow.
And it is likely that the most vulnerable will be those who are (purportedly) the intended beneficiaries.
This is a sad reality. To enunciate grand, visionary goals is futile and reckless in the absence of the basic infrastructure to make them function.
To give land reform any chance of success, the calibre and capability of the state must be enhanced. This is a slow process. It would also necessarily mean dispensing with much fondly-held ideological and political baggage. Nothing less will do. Whether there is a willingness to do this by the country’s leadership is uncertain – and the same is thus true of the prospects of making land reform a success.
It it is likely that the most vulnerable will be those who are (purportedly) the intended beneficiaries of the land reform process
Corrigan is a project manager at the Institute of Race Relations.