Land Reform For Sustainability

The government’s Land Reform Programme aims to achieve four main outcomes, namely increased black land ownership, increased employment, improved farm productivity and improved livelihoods. Livelihoods are most often measured through dietary diversity, food security and improved household income.

- Izak Hofmeyr

Land reform is furthermore split into two pillars, namely restitution, which seeks to restore the rights of black people who have been deprived of land since the Natives Land Act, 1913 (Act 27 of 1913), and redistribution, which is focused on increasing black participation in the agricultural value chain.

Issues hampering land reform

Evaluating the success of land reform, the Financial and Fiscal Commission’s 2016 report on the National Land Reform Programme and Rural Development paints a dismal picture. According to the report, employment and agricultural activity at a commercial level on farms, had dropped by as much as 90%. The beneficiaries of land reform farms were worse off than their contemporaries who did not ‘benefit’ from land reform. There is, without doubt, a crisis in the land reform space.

According to John Flanagan of the Land Desk at the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (Kwanalu), the crisis is not primarily due to a lack of land. It is complex, and issues include:

• Social and institutional challenges on restitution farms.

• A lack of skills.

• Business process (e.g. a consultant being paid to complete business plans for government versus a new farmer completing his or her own research and growing through the process).

• Access to finance (lack of surety and credit for state-owned farms, a lack of secure title for farmers on state owned land, and an inability to raise working capital if famers do not own the land and do not have a track record).

• A non-transparent allocation methodology regarding state land.