President of Nadel,
Mr Max Boqwana,
The General Secretary, Ms Faathima Mahomed,
Ladies and gentlemen
Thank you for inviting me to be part of this very important dialogue on a very emotive topic. I have remarked elsewhere that this Act cannot be celebrated; but cannot be ignored either, because of its social, cultural, economic and political consequences.
What we should not lose sight of is the fact that the Natives Land Act was meant to be a solution to socio- economic and political problems of the time. It was not just an accident of history! In her book: 'Working for Boroko: The origins of a Coercive Lanour System in SA. Marian Lacey summarizes these problems as follows:
- how to inhibit further the growth of an independent African peasantry, so as to force all Africans to become migrant workers
- Dependent on the wage sector for their survival;
- the second, linked to the first, was where to settle African share- droppers, half-share farmers and cash tenants said to have been squatting illegally on white-owned farms;
- the third problem was the mass influx of Africans to the towns, which created a new and urgent problem for the state; one which reached a crisis point in the early 1920s; lastly,
- linked to the third, was the build-up of untrained, unskilled whites as more and more of them streamed into the towns. Like African peasants, small farmers and bywoners had been squeezed off the land with the spread of capitalist farming.
The first three of these problems are still facing the democratic government, which took control of state power in 1994, almost a century since the establishment of Union in 1910. Successive colonial and Apartheid regimes dealt with the fourth one. The Land Bank, established in 1912, was one of the effective instruments in supporting the development of white commercial agriculture.
What is the democratic government doing to reverse the terrible legacy of the Natives Land Act?
The democratic state operates within the framework of the constitution - Sections 25, 26, 27 and 36 are particularly pertinent in the current debate.
The government has, in addition to agriculture, introduced two key strategies: a) rural development; and, b) land reform.
Rural development has three pillars:
- meeting basic human needs
- rural enterprise development
- rural industrialization, supported by rural markets and credit facilities.
Land reform has four pillars:
- restitution of land rights
- redistribution
- tenure reform
- development
The Green Paper on Land Reform defines three principles underlying land reform:
- deracialising the rural economy;
- democratic and equitable allocation and utilisation of land across race, class and gender
- sustained production discipline.
The strategic thrust underlying land reform is that land reform should be carried out with minimal or no disruption to food security.
Key transformational programmes, linked to the constitutional, legal, strategic and principle framework outlined above, which are either in execution or in various stages of development are:
- land tenure reform: the four-tier system; I. state and public land: leasehold;
- privately owned land: freehold with limited extent;
- land access to foreign nationals: a combination of freehold with limited extent and leasehold; and,
- communal land: communal tenure with institutionalized use rights.
Institutional support:
- the Land Management Commission;
- the Office of the Valuer-General; and,
- the Land Rights Management Board, with Local Committees.
During the State of the Nation Address, the President announced that the lodgment of land claims would be re-opened to accommodate people who did lodge claims during the first window; and, to create Exceptions to the 1913 cut-off date, for heritage sites, historical land marks and to accommodate the descendants of the Khoi and the San.
On the development front, there are several programmes conducted by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Recapitalisation and Development Programme, conducted by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.
Each one of these programmes has made a mark, but there many challenges facing all of them. On the legislative front, three Bills have just concluded public comments:
- Land Valuation Bill
- Expropriation Bill
- Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill.
The amendment to the Communal Property Association Act and the consolidation of the Esta and the LTA are in the pipeline. Both should serve before Parliament before it rises at the end of this Term.
With respect to the consolidation of the two Acts - Esta and the LTA - we need a system of incentives and disincentives which recognizes the relativity of rights between the owner and the workers / dwellers. The entry point for the system is a combination of the current Share- equity Scheme and Co-management to create a new system of collective ownership.
Briefly, the proposals are that a maximum of 50% equity, depending on each situation, split among farm-workers should be developed. This Scheme should recognize rights accumulated by workers on a farm, based the number of years worked on the farm.
The ten years prescribed by the Land Tenure Act should be used as the baseline. The proposals are that ten years should earn the worker a maximum of 10%; twenty-years should earn the worker a maximum of 25% and those who had worked on the farm for fifty or more years should earn a maximum of 50% equity.
This is a formula, the actual percentages of which could be worked in support of the system which must (a) recognise the historical contributions of the worker to the development of the farm; and, (b) the relativity of rights between the farm-owner and the farm-worker, based on the historical investments he/she made in developing the farm over time.
This proposed system could be financed through a combination of state contribution and the recognition of the historical contribution of the workers to the development of the farm over time. Because of the recognition of the historical contribution of the workers to the development of the farm, any contribution by the state should go to an Investment and Development Trust to be established for that purpose.
Such a Trust should be jointly owned and managed by the farmer and the workers. Its function is the development of the social condition of the workers and the further development of the farm. Moving forward, the farmer and the workers would sustain the Trust through dividend contributions, and other appropriate means.
The department has, as part of its current programmes, a Sustainable Rural Settlements Programme. This is meant to ease the pressure on farm-dwellers and farm owners alike, by creating these settlements adjacent to individual or a collective of farms for farm-workers to reside and sell their labour-power across the fence. The state would take responsibility for providing basic human needs on these settlements.
The land for these settlements could be bought by the state from an individual farmer or from a collective of farmers, or, could result from the sub-division of a farm or adjacent farms as a result of accumulated rights from equity holdings.
Programme Director, let me allow space for engagement.
Thank you!
