Reaction in agriculture circles to the recent motion to appoint a committee to study a constitutional amendment to allow for land expropriation without compensation, is still wary and muted. In his first Q&A session before parliament since his election this afternoon, Pres Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to provide more clarity on the matter.Much faith is placed in him who, despite having been in former President Zuma’s circle of enablement, has extensive business and agricultural interests. He is a stud breeder of the Ugandan cattle breed of Ankole and widely regarded as a person with more business acumen (and integrity) than his predecessor.
In his recent state of the nation address, Pres Ramaphosa noted the enormous economic potential of agriculture in South Africa. “Agriculture made the largest contribution, by a significant margin, to the improved growth of our economy in the second and third quarters of 2017.” He continued: “We will accelerate our land redistribution programme not only to redress a grave historical injustice, but also to bring more producers into the agricultural sector and to make more land available for cultivation.”
Just over two weeks later, the motion was brought to parliament by a controversial opposition party. Uncertainty hangs over everything, from what the motion’s impact will be on business and investor confidence in South African agriculture, to how such expropriation would work and what the definition of “unproductive land” will be. It should be noted that the ANC removed the reference to place property under “state custodianship” (ie, nationalisation) from the motion and introduced clauses stipulating that food security and agricultural productivity should not be harmed in the process.
Deputy President David Mabuza, President Cyril Ramaphosa and Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng (Photo: Government Communications and Information System)
A constitutional reform committee will report back at the end of August and wide-scale public consultation will take place on the matter.
Land tenure policies of current land reform process widely criticised; demographics of land ownership contested
The African Farmers’ Association of South Africa supports the development, but states that the lack of land tenure (ownership of land) for beneficiaries of the land reform process until present is an urgent hurdle that needs to be corrected. Government policy – much criticised from all quarters – has been to give commercial black farmers only limited freehold title to the land, and only after leasing the land for 30 to 50 years. Smallholder and subsistence farmers cannot own land obtained through land reform processes but must lease it from government.
There is much contention about the efficacy or not of the land reform process after 1994 as well as the amount of land that has already been either restored to its former black owners or transferred from white to black owners. AgriSA conducted a land audit last year which came up with a rosy picture: not only do areas of highest black land ownership coincide with the areas of highest agricultural potential, but that the freemarket system (private property transactions) was twice as effective as the state's land reform processes in transferring land from white to black owners.
However, analysts like Ben Cousins, professor at the well-regarded Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS, which also means ‘farm’ in Afrikaans) at the University of the Western Cape, have countered that the AgriSA methodology is flawed, counting state-funded transactions as private transactions, thus bolstering their claim that the unfettered free market system works best in effect.
The government’s recent land audit is equally regarded as “not particularly useful” by Prof Cousins. A common assumption is that agricultural land often falls into disrepair after being returned to its former owners, bolstered by anecdotal evidence, but there is no factual evidence of patterns of land use after land reform processes. There are well-publicised cooperative ventures between black communities and commercial farming entities (like ZZ2 and the Makgoba Trust) that have been successful.
Number of bills aimed at improving land reform currently in process
Furthermore, these developments take place in a fantastically convoluted legal space: the Regulation of Agricultural Land Holdings Bill was gazetted almost exactly a year ago by the then Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform. The bill, if accepted, would prohibit the sale of agricultural land to foreign nationals, only permitting them long-term leases. The bill would require foreign nationals intending to sell agricultural land, to first offer the land for sale to the Minister.
Also, the amendment to the original Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994 was found to be unconstitutional in 2016. The amendment intended to allow new claims on land to be lodged after the original deadline of 1998, but the Constitutional Court found that there were still unresolved land claims dating back 20 years.
South Africa functions within legal framework with an independent judiciary
South Africa is still a country functioning within a legal framework and an independent judiciary. Large commercial farming entities are well aware of the need to prove their indispensable economic worth to the communities within which they operate and commonly provide a wide range of socio-economic services to the surrounding communities (which can, of course, also be seen as a throwback to the paternalism of the apartheid system).
Legal experts feel that nationalisation of land and property is not on the cards and that throwing open the land question to vigorous debate is probably the best thing to happen after 25 years of land reform that appears to have been to the satisfaction of few.