A closer look at land reform numbers

Johann Bornman, chairperson of Agri Development Solutions, recently released a report to set the record straight about land reform in South Africa. He spoke to Glenneis Kriel about the results.

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Land reform statistics have been a source of controversy and confusion in South Africa. Why is this?

Deductions are often wrong, either because the data on which assumptions are based is incorrect, or the people who gathered and analysed the data have limited insight into land reform. Then, you also have people who manipulate information to suit their political agendas.

How or why might data be wrong?

A good understanding of agriculture, the geography, economics, history and politics of an area is required to spot and avoid mistakes. A person with such understanding would know that a farm in the Karoo might constitute over 1 000ha, while one closer to Stellenbosch in the Western Cape would probably be smaller than 100ha.

I have seen in some reports that 'metres' were erroneously replaced by 'hectares' without conversion, resulting in impossible numbers.

Can you give examples of such reports?

Statistics South Africa's (Stats SA) census on commercial farmers, which is done every few years, is flawed with mistakes because it does not accommodate the possibility that a farmer might own more than one farm or be registered for VAT for more than one property. Instead, each farm and VAT-registered entity is counted as a different farmer.

The same applies to government's land audit of 2017, which argued that only 4% of privately held land was in black ownership. This data has been broadly quoted and used to illustrate the discrepancy between black and white ownership and to support arguments that land reform was taking too long.