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No land grabs for SA
14/02/2008 09:37 - (SA)
Verashni Pillay
Cape Town - The ANC resolution to "immediately discard" the market-driven land reform programme may have property owners eyeing neighbouring Zimbabwe in panic, but experts say chaos is far from imminent.
"I don't think we could ever go the Zimbabwe route," said Western Cape Land Claims Commissioner, Beverly Jansen. "We'd have to suspend the Constitution if we went the Zimbabwe route."
The systems in place in the land reform programmes means that willy-nilly land grabs are not likely, even though ANC president Jacob Zuma said at the Polokwane conference that "the principle of willing-buyer, willing-seller may have be reviewed to accelerate equitable distribution of land".
Zuma "reiterated"
Jansen pointed out that the 2005 national land summit had reached the same conclusions, and that the ANC conference resolutions in December 2007 "just reiterated that".
But given the 2014 deadline for 30% of agricultural land to pass into black ownership, the pressure is on the land reform programme to better the four percent that has currently been transferred.
"My guestimate is that ten percent of agricultural land, through historical reasons and transfer, are in black hands," said Terence Fife, Director of the Western Cape Provincial Land Reform Office.
With more than 70% of the country's population owning only ten percent of agricultural land, the department is under pressure to produce a more equitable distribution of land. But Fife maintained that authorities must- and have- remained cognisant of the lengthy process involved in transferring land effectively.
"There's always pressure to do it faster, but doing it faster and more effectively? that's the big issue," said Fife. "I think politicians understand that."
Fife pointed out the checks and balances in the constitution safeguards current property owners "very well".
"In fact I think many farmers when they deal with government and they're paid for the land, they're actually getting a good deal."
Powers of expropriation
"Effectively government can only offer more money above market price, expropriate or say okay if you won't sell, then the claim won't go ahead," said Ruth Hall, a senior researcher at the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape.
To date government has used it's powers of expropriation only twice: once in the Northern Cape last year and again in Limpopo this year after negotiations reached a deadlock.
Hall noted that government had not tested the parameters of what it is allowed within the constitution. "Government can expropriate- it's chosen not to. It can pay below market compensation when it expropriates, it hasn't done so. It's only paid market related price," said Hall.
This could change if the private sector doesn't get onboard to help the process, according to Fife.
But he maintained that land reform was likely to remain a market-driven process. "I can't see massive levels of expropriation in the near future," he said. "You're likely to see more organised agricultural companies and individuals coming and providing their services which will then obviate the need to go for mass expropriation."
Already equity schemes are fast gaining popularity in the Western Cape, where black partners can buy into an existing operation.
"Land reform is everybody's business," said Fife. "It's not just government's problem neither is it only in the interest of the poor. If we don't deal with the land question effectively in South Africa we're going to have much longer and bigger problems in the long term."
- News24
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