Land reform stalls when state refuses to sow seed
Losing Ground | Pretoria is more interested in political capital than empowering black farmers, says agricultural lobbyist
GRAIN SA CEO Jannie de Villiers says he doesn’t believe the government really wants to address the issue of land reform.
If it did it would give black farmers the title deeds to their farms, which are mostly owned by the government. And by now it would have carried out a proper land audit. It has done neither.
It prefers to use the issue as a political tool, he says. This is endangering the country’s food security, and preventing black people from becoming successful commercial farmers.
It suits the government to pretend that the agricultural sector is opposed to land reform, but this is not the case at all, he says. Grain SA, which the commercial farmers who feed the country belong to, accepts that land reform is absolutely necessary and desirable.
“The first thing I would love to see is a negotiated settlement around land reform. But the government hasn’t even bothered to do a proper land audit. So they’re not serious about it. They just want to keep on hammering us about it.
“If the government is buying land but keeps the title deeds it is making black farmer a squatter.”
Without owning the land, black farmers cannot access the finance they need to develop commercial farms, and they remain dependent on the government.
“It’s like the government wants to keep the people dependent,” he says.
“Because the moment you give them title deeds they will be able to become independent. They will be able to access finance, grow their own maize, sell it and become bigger farmers.”
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform is paying Grain SA to run a farmer-development programme for black farmers so that they can contribute to food security.
“We sit with a huge number of farms now that the government owns which are not productive,” he says.
“We can work with black farmers to make them successful commercial farmers, but they can’t get title deeds so nothing is happening with those farms.”
Black farmers are not investing because they cannot access loans. White farmers are not investing because the government has created so uncertainty that they don’t know how much longer they’ll still have their farms.
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Senzeni Zokwana said last month that there needed to be more investment in the commercial farming sector to ensure food security. He acknowledged that policy uncertainty around land was making this difficult.
Meanwhile, President Jacob Zuma says he wants the constitution changed to allow for expropriation without compensation in order to achieve land reform.
Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti, who has acknowledged the role of Grain SA in helping to develop black farmers, has supported Zuma’s call.
De Villiers says that linking land reform to expropriation without compensation is why many white farmers see land reform as a threat.
In order to survive as commercial farmers they need to upgrade their technology and grow for scale. But they’re reluctant to invest in a climate of uncertainty.
“If you don’t invest in smart technology you’re going to go down economically,” he says. “If you do invest you might lose your farm at the end of the day because of land reform.”
In addition to uncertainty about land reform, the regulatory burden on farmers has multiplied. This has been exacerbated by mistrust between farmers and the government officials who visit them to check on compliance, he says.
“You get difficult farmers who don’t like these guys and don’t want them on their farm.”
They feel government officials are all over them when it comes to compliance, but nowhere to be seen when it comes to offering support such as during the recent drought.
There are often occasions when a farmer has complied with everything, but the inspector “makes difficulties over hair-splitting issues”, says De Villiers.
When farmers at a recent congress were asked how many had had a South African Revenue Service inspection on their diesel rebate, 74% said they’d had a full audit, not just an inspection.
“That is a very high sample for an audit,” says De Villiers.
When farmers pass the audit they have to wait six months to receive their rebate. “This creates hostility. Farmers are saying: ‘Why do we have to finance government here? We’ve complied, you’ve done an audit, and now it takes six months to pay me my legal rebate?’ ”
He says that when the government and agriculture get together to talk about land reform, import duties or policy matters, “so many emotions get drawn into the debate that it is very difficult to find each other and find compromise positions where we can move forward”.
He accepts there is “still a lot” that farmers need to do to comply with labour legislation around working conditions, housing and wages. But the government could be more supportive, he says.
“We’ve just gone through this drought. One would have thought maybe government could have given commercial farmers a subsidy on wages to keep the farm workers gothe ing, but they didn’t.”
So instead of having a job today and maybe still a house, thousands were retrenched.
The National Development Plan looks to agriculture to provide a million additional jobs by 2030, he says.
Instead, jobs are being lost because of a “labour-unfriendly environment” perpetuated by the government.
A farmer is not allowed to evict a worker from his house even when he has been found guilty of stealing, and has been fired after all the correct procedures have been observed.
“So why would you employ another guy? Instead you buy a bigger tracmuch tor,” he says.
De Villiers says he communicates frequently with Zokwana, who even phones him at his house some evenings to discuss farming matters.
He is encouraged by his positive noises about the need for the government to create a conducive environment. But backing this up with action is something else.
“We talk a lot about the issues but when it comes to implementation there are still the same gaps.”
Another threat to the sustainability of commercial farmers is poor infrastructure, which hampers their efforts to get product to domestic and overseas markets.
South Africa currently has a maize surplus, which has driven the price down from R5 000 a ton during the drought to R2 000 a ton.
In order to survive, farmers have to be profitable at R2 000 per ton, says De Villiers. This means selling surpluses quickly through export and internal distribution. If farmers can’t do this then they won’t plant more next year and prices will be back at R5 000 per ton. This will lead to high food prices, inflation, interest rate hikes, political instability and riots, he says.
“To make them profitable at R2 000 per ton you need your export markets, you need the infrastructure to work. Your transportation and port systems must be able to take it away.”
He has been telling the government’s infrastructure committee that the ports in Durban need to be deepened to allow the use of bigger ships to make exports internationally competitive.
Lack of rail infrastructure is also making farmers less competitive, he says.
“In the ’80s we transported 85% of
If the government . . . keeps the title deeds, it is making the black farmer a squatter Given the labour environment, ‘why would you employ another guy? Instead you buy a bigger tractor’
grain by rail to the ports and for inland distribution. Today it is 85% by road, and still rising.”
Also making the country’s commercial agriculture less competitive is the failure of agricultural colleges to supply skilled labour.
“There is pressure on farmers to mechanise and invest in smarter technology, which creates a need for skilled labour,” he says.
“But because our agricultural colleges have gone down the tubes, this is in very short supply.
“They are not producing the students that can change agriculture at the moment. We have to almost retrain them when they get out of these colleges.”
De Villiers, 56, who trained as an economist at the universities of the Free State and Pretoria, doesn’t expect much improvement while the government is mired in its present controversies and pre-2019 turmoil.
He and his team are planning strategies to meet post-2019 election scenarios. His best-case scenario?
“Sitting down with whoever is in government to negotiate a land reform deal which is not just a political wish list that will take us to Zimbabwe.”