Submission to the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs

Standing of the SACC

1. The South African Council of Churches (SACC) is the facilitating body for a fellowship of 26 Christian churches and associated para-church organisations. Founded in 1968, the SACC includes among its members Protestant, Catholic, African Independent, Pentecostal and Orthodox churches with a combined constituency of roughly 15 million members and adherents. SACC members are committed to expressing jointly, through proclamation and programmes, the united witness of the church in South Africa, especially in matters of national debate.

Land Policy as an Engine of Transformation

2. We commend the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture and Land Affairs for convening public hearings on land reform. It is difficult to overemphasise the urgency of the need for land reform. Land reform is central to the success of South Africa's political and economic transformation. Land represents the basis of economic activity in rural communities and is a vital resource to sustainable livelihoods. The alienation of people from the land was a central and recurring theme in South Africa's history of segregation and apartheid. Dispossession cut the majority of South Africans off from access to independent livelihoods, forcing them into overcrowded "reserves", and leaving them with few survival options other than selling their labour. The fundamental challenge for democratic South Africa is to restore broad-based access to productive resources, including land, thereby enhancing people's social and economic security and self-reliance. Equitable distribution of land and security of tenure are essential to justice, reconciliation and transformation.

The issue of pace is secondary to issues of vision and strategy

3. There is an understandable and legitimate frustration with the pace of land reform, not only among millions of poor and landless people, but also among public officials concerned about their situation. Justice and history demand that we press ahead with land reform as rapidly as possible. At the same time, however, it is important that land reform strategy be carefully planned with maximum participation by those communities that will be most affected by policy changes. Some of the most conspicuous failings of land reform programmes to date have been the result of undue haste, manifest in a lack of research, planning, consultation and follow-through. The success of land reform should not be measured in terms of how quickly the "task" is completed or even how much land is transferred, but rather how extensively and sustainably it advances the cause of justice and restoration of human dignity by enabling people dispossessed by apartheid to secure livelihoods and regain control of their lives.



4. While we welcome the opportunity to comment on the progress of land reform, we are concerned that any attempt to confine the national discussion of land reform to the narrow issue of pace threatens to stifle more fundamental questions about the role of land reform and the appropriateness of current land reform strategy. There is little point in assessing the pace of programme implementation if objectives are ill-conceived or if the strategy is ill-suited to the achievement of the intended goals.



5. Our perspective on land and its use is shaped by our understanding of key biblical principles that are generally applicable, including:
   • Land is a gift from God, to be equitably shared for the benefit of all humanity.
   • Land is the 'locus of life'; it gives life and identity and fulfils a critical social function as the place where life is lived and celebrated.
   • Ownership of land is never absolute because this social function of land is paramount. We are called to resist the propensity for commodification, accumulation and profit, which tends to exclude the poor and deny their rights in land.
   • The Jubilee tradition affirms the redistributive nature of God’s commitment to the poor, seeking to ensure just and equitable access to land and resources.
   • Human work on the land should express the dignity of human labour and the joy of participation and cooperation because it is a privilege to be co-creators with God in the unfolding story of creation.
   • We are stewards of the land, called to protect the integrity of God’s creation for the benefit of future generations and to ensure that we do not strip the land of its fertility.



6. In keeping with these principles, the SACC believes that primary objectives of state land reform policy should be to create a more just society by:
   • Redistributing land equitably and increasing people’s access to land in order to address historical legacies of dispossession and overcrowding;
   • Ensuring security of tenure for those people who have historically had the least secure land tenure, particularly for women and other marginalised groups;
   • Enabling those with access to land to use it productively, beneficially and in a sustainable manner, with respect both to supporting themselves and their dependants and to enhancing national food security;
   • Allowing communities to participate meaningfully in decisions about land allocation, tenure and use.



7. The pace of land reform has undoubtedly been impeded by insufficient funding, weak implementing institutions and the low political priority it has been afforded. These factors are reflected in the comparatively small amount allocated for land reform in the national budget: R1.1 billion - or less than 0,5 per cent - for land redistribution and restitution in 2004/05. This year, the amount designated for land reform grants (R308 million) actually diminished, bucking the trend in an otherwise expansionary budget.



8. However, it is also clear that even if government's current land reform package were well-resourced and speedily implemented, it would not fundamentally transform the basic social and economic structures that lock the poor majority of rural people into a life of poverty, marginalisation, serfdom and insecurity. Land reform in South Africa has been effectively subordinated to an economic development model that is not intended to transform land and agriculture in accordance with the ethical priorities identified above. Under enormous pressure from powerful economic interests and ideologies - globally and within the country - the real priorities of land and agricultural reform are being directed away from the interests of the poor. Restructuring of the agricultural economy, through dramatic de-regulation and market liberalisation, serves the interests of the corporate and agri-industrial elite. It will favour commercial farming enterprises that can compete in brutal global markets through mechanisation and mass, export-oriented production. It is likely to concentrate land ownership and power in fewer (and increasingly corporate) hands, displace farm labour, reduce household food security, and promote agricultural production techniques that are resource intensive and ecologically exploitative. Consequently, we do not believe that the shortcomings of the current land reform programme can be adequately addressed simply by accelerating the pace of implementation.



9. Indeed, the record of land reform efforts since 1996 highlights the need for a more comprehensive review of land reform policies, rather than a mere increase in pace.
   • There has been a lack of collaboration within the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) that has contributed to conflict within certain communities; in some areas, restitution and redistribution programmes compete, resulting in duplication of leadership structures and business plans.
   • The DLA has also lacked the capacity to engage in research and community organisation and consultation processes, resulting in the imposition of programmes unsuitable to the community. Communities are sometimes stuck with unworkable development plans that eventually inhibit achievement of the intended outcomes.
   • Officials responsible for land reform are often more worried about the quantity of land transferred and amount spent than they are about the impact of the programme on the well-being and livelihoods of poor and vulnerable households.
   • The broader needs of resettled communities are frequently ignored or inadequately addressed because land reform initiatives are not situated within integrated development strategies. In Boomplaas, for example, road and housing construction comprised part of the land reform package, but other vital support services, such as health and education facilities, have not been provided.
   The balance of this submission offers brief comments on each of the three major components of South Africa’s land reform programme: restitution, redistribution and tenure reform.

The overall pace of land reform

10. The introduction of a constitutionally-mandated land reform programme represents one of the major achievements of South Africa's first decade of democracy. Yet while the constitution and government policy provide a strong foundation for land reform, slow implementation has thwarted the achievement of the initial target, set by the Reconstruction and Development Programme, of redistributing 30 per cent of agricultural land within five years. The deadline for the achievement of this target was subsequently moved forward to 2015. In order to reach even this more modest objective, however, the current rate of land redistribution will need to increase dramatically. By the end of 2003, roughly 2.5 million hectares of land had been transferred through land reform as a whole (restitution and redistribution), amounting to less than three per cent of all land outside the former homelands. Nearly one-third of this has been transferred through restitution, with the remainder having been transferred largely through the Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG) and Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programmes. Although the pace of delivery has more than doubled during the past three years (as compared with the period 1996 to 1999), even at this accelerated rate, less than 0,5 per cent of agricultural land has been transferred each year.

Land restitution

11. After a slow start, the land restitution programme disposed of claims at a much faster rate during the last four years. Of the 63 455 claims lodged by the deadline in 1998, 48 340 - or just over three-quarters - had been settled by the end of March 2004 with more than 640 000 beneficiaries. However, focusing solely on the number of claims settled hides the fact that relatively little land - about three-quarters of a million hectares - has been earmarked for restoration through the restitution programme to date. The vast majority of urban claims have been settled through financial compensation, while the majority of the large and complex rural claims remain unresolved.



12. Given South Africa's history and the comprehensive manner by which blacks were robbed of land, restitution could - and should - have been a dramatic and healing intervention. In practice, restitution has had a negligible impact on overall patterns of land ownership. Paying cash compensation to a growing proportion of land claimants may appear to be "speeding up" the settlement of land claims, but it does not address the underlying scars and, in the long run, it may even compound the hurts of the past. With inadequate and inappropriate state support and flawed development planning processes, too many of those restitution projects that do involve the actual transfer of land, are destined to become rural slums with no developmental prospects and where 'communities' have no cohesion or vitality.

Land redistribution

13. By February 2004, a total of 1 683 275 hectares (ha) of land had been transferred under the land redistribution programme to an estimated 157 110 households. Despite important achievements and a steep learning curve for implementers, the early years of the programme were widely criticised for the slow pace of delivery, the small size of grants relative to the cost of land, and the resultant tendency for large groups to pool their grants.



14. Recently, there has been a steady increase in both the amount of land being transferred and the number of beneficiaries. This shift can be attributed to a change in policy from the earlier SLAG, through which poor people were able to access land largely for "subsistence" purposes, to the LRAD programme, which is more oriented to emerging commercial farmers. LRAD makes larger grants available to those able to contribute to the cost of land and investments in production. Ostensibly, the LRAD policy provides for a range of commercial and "subsistence" uses, but in practice the conditions attached to LRAD favour commercial agricultural uses of land. Other components of the redistribution programme, such as municipal commonage and the provision of land for settlement and other non-agricultural purposes, have been de-emphasised in recent years.



15. The emerging priorities within land redistribution graphically illustrate the subordination of land reform to the neo-liberal development model discussed above. The clear and overriding intention is to end the almost exclusively white racial character of the commercial land owning class, by implementing measures to support and grow a black commercial agricultural class. While this may produce a de-racialised commercial agricultural sector, it will not redistribute the land to the people on an equitable basis, and nor will it transform the relation of the rural poor and agricultural workers to the land.



16. At the same time, land redistribution thwarted by rigid adherence to the "willing buyer-willing seller" policy. Individuals or groups wishing to get land through the redistribution mechanism must first identify land available on the market and negotiate terms of sale with the landowner. Project planning only commences once an agreement in principle has been reached between the two parties. Only once the protracted planning cycle is nearly complete can a grant be released for the purchase of the land - and both the planning and the grant are then tied to that particular property. As a result, sellers are drawn into a process marked by prolonged uncertainty, beneficiaries cannot "snap up" property bargains, and the entire process must be abandoned if the owner ultimately rejects the offer price. The uncertainty associated with a market-reliant land reform scheme also inhibits the integration of land redistribution with other rural reform initiatives.

Tenure reform

17. Of the three main pillars of South Africa's land reform programme, tenure reform has made the slowest progress. Even its most progressive moments (e.g. legislation to protect farm workers from eviction) have proven less than effective against the powerful market forces of the dominant agricultural economy. In any case, the current programme attempts to do little more than to perpetuate the pattern of land distribution that prevailed at the end of the apartheid era.



18. In attempting to deal with the challenge of tenure reform, government began to consider a draft Land Rights Bill designed to vest rights in the people who use, occupy or have access to the land - and not in institutions such as traditional authorities or municipalities. This was later mothballed after six years of consultation and drafting, and a Communal Land Rights Bill was drafted instead. This legislation was enacted in early 2004, over the strong objections of the SACC and many civil society organisations concerned with land rights. Insofar as the legislation makes the State, not communities, the primary agents of tenure reform, it is likely to impede the assertion of tenure rights. Further, by entrenching the role of traditional authorities in land allocation, the Act may make it particularly difficult for women to secure land tenure. There was also considerable concern that the Bill did not provide for adequate levels of state support to land rights holders that is necessary if rights in law are to be translated into rights in practice.



19. The principle intention of the Communal Land Rights Act is not so much to secure tenure for the rural poor, but to divest the state of land and to draw communal areas into the land market. It does so without fundamentally altering apartheid settlement patterns, nor adding to pressure to transfer formerly "white-only" commercial farming areas. The likely result of this approach will be to weaken the qualified access to land that many poor people in these areas still retain, because it will place formerly common land onto the open market to be bought, sold and leveraged against raising debt. Inevitably these processes favour the better off and the money-lenders, and not the poor.

Conclusion

20. For these reasons we are not convinced by repeated calls to simply "speed up" land reform without asking where it is headed. The gulf between a comprehensive and just agrarian reform programme and government's limited, market-oriented land reform scheme remains too large. We believe that we are called, as churches, to adopt a prophetic stance and to uphold the interests of the poor. We take this opportunity to speak urgently now to those in power in the hope that our concerns will find a receptive and open hearing. It is not too late; we have the capacity to right the wrongs of the past and establish right relations of equity, justice and dignity. We urge the Portfolio Committee to seize this moment and to initiate a broad national debate on the vision and objectives of South Africa’s land reform programme.

This submission utilises material from the SACC’s November 2003 submission on the Communal Land Rights Bill, Land in South Africa: Gift for All or Commodity for a Few? (Church Land Programme, 2003) and the 2005-06 People’s Budget (published jointly by the SACC, COSATU and SANGOCO).