More black farmers take to the land
How to get ‘stolen’ land back is central to leadership contest
● More than 100 years since its passage, the Natives Land Act continues to haunt South Africa — its lingering impact is at the centre of this weekend’s ANC elective conference.
In the year the law was passed, to strip Africans of their land and turn them into wage labourers, Sol Plaatje travelled to see the effects.
“‘Pray that your flight be not in winter,’ said Jesus Christ; but it was only during the winter of 1913 that the full significance of this New Testament passage was revealed to us,” Plaatje wrote in his book, Native Life in South Africa.
“We left Kimberley by the early morning train during the first week in July, on a tour of observation regarding the operation of the Natives Land Act; and we arrived at Bloemhof, in the Transvaal, at about noon.”
Compulsory unsettlement
What did the young activist and journalist see?
“A native sufferer sold his stock for a mere bagatelle and left with his family by the Johannesburg night train for an unknown destination. More native families crossed the river and went inland during the previous week, and as nothing had since been heard of them, it would seem that they were still wandering somewhere and incidentally becoming well versed in the law that was responsible for their compulsory unsettlement.
“Well, we knew that this law was as harsh as its instigators were callous, and we knew that it would, if passed, render many poor people homeless, but it must be confessed that we were scarcely prepared for such a rapid and widespread crash as it caused in the lives of the natives . . .” wrote Plaatje.
After the colonial occupation, the Natives Land Act was the first of the displacement and dispossession laws, and 24 years after apartheid ended, how have Plaatje’s heirs in the ANC done at land reform?
What would he see if he got on his bicycle and came here today?
Most accurate portrayal
The irony would not be lost on Plaatje to learn that the most accurate portrayal of change is a survey of transactions released earlier this year by AgriSA, the organisation of largely white commercial agriculture. The government promised to release its land audit this year but failed to do so.
The graphics show the story but AgriSA notes too that: “Our analyses show that the market is quite effective in changing land ownership patterns.”
From 1994 to 2016, black people and the government bought 8.9 million hectares of land at a total value of R90.3-billion — 12.9% of the traded land.
The percentage of land owned by black people and the government is 29.1%, according to AgriSA, which said in the land audit: “These statistics compare favourably against an ownership share of only 14.9% in 1994.
“These broader statistics indicate a greater level of ownership by PDIs [previously disadvantaged individuals] than is commonly suggested in debates arguing for extreme transformation policies and laws.” AgriSA advocates market-led land reform, using its audit as evidence of why this works.
By its measure, black farmers and state land ownership account for 26.7% of agricultural
Redistribute the land belonging to 80% of commercial farming enterprises Ben Cousins Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies
land holdings out of a total available of 76%. This figure is close to targets set by successive ANC governments.
The available agricultural land has declined because of mining and other use rights granted since 1994.
Not as successful
Ruth Hall, a professor at the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (Plaas) at the University of the Western Cape, said AgriSA’s data showed that the government’s spend on land for black South Africans had failed to transfer into significant ownership.
She suggested that this meant the current model had in fact not been as successful as AgriSA claimed, with the government and black people spending significant amounts but black people claiming little ownership of the land, the Daily Maverick reported.
Ben Cousins of Plaas has proposed a fresh MILLION hectares of land were bought by black people and the government between 1994 and 2016 start for land reform in a recent paper. Cousins proposes, among others, “redistributing the land belonging to 80% of commercial farming enterprises to marketoriented smallholder farmers”.
“The increasingly concentrated agricultural economy has shaken out a large number of white farmers who in the past depended heavily on state support.
“However, many relatively unproductive farmers remain on the land, and their farms constitute a key resource for land redistribution.”
ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa’s campaign plank on land is aligned with the government’s policy position now, which is willing buyer, willing seller according to targets set out in the National Development Plan. But if ANC MP Nkosazana DlaminiZuma wins, she will make more muscular land reform a key part of her party and governing agenda.
At one of her final prayer meetings ahead of this weekend’s election, Dlamini-Zuma said that white people had looted and stolen the land from black people.
“We are not talking radical economic transformation because we want to steal. We want people to get their land back,” she said.