Land-024

The Complex And Contentious Land Reform

This is the story behind a picture that flashed around the world during the infamous land seizures in Zimbabwe in 2000. It won then-Reuters photojournalist, Howard Burditt, an award but the picture did not tell the implied story of a farm invasion.
“They asked me to lead them to the farmhouse adjacent to the dam, so I cycled while they followed behind on foot.”
“I thought they had come to take over my farm, but not that day, they were looking for accommodation,” says Tommy Bayley, the farmer on the bike.
“They were not violent and when I took them to the house located close to the dam, they saw it was not the right place to sleep over, so they left,” he adds.
It would take two years for Bayley to lose his father’s farm, 30 kilometers from Harare; where he was born.
Bayley tells his story cautiously, saying the farming world of Zimbabwe is not for the faint hearted nor outspoken.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3993" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Visagie-De-Rus-farm-greenhouses-destr-Feb-15-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" />
“I live a simple life and I would not want to draw attention,” he says while casting his mind back to the day the Bayleys lost their farm.
“We went to town and when we returned, they had barricaded the road so we could not get back to Danbury Farm, Mazowe area. This was 14th April, 2002,” Bayley recalls.
“We did not have a total loss of equipment but there was some looting of the equipment.”
For over half a century, the Bayley family owned Danbury, a farm set in the mountain which had 350 hectares of seed maize, soya beans and cattle.
Its loss was tragic for the Bayleys – one of the most successful families in Zimbabwe.
His father, Tom Bayley, an 88-year-old British-born farmer, died in misery. Bayley senior was under siege by land invaders for 35 days during which he broke his leg. He “died of a broken heart”, the family claimed at his funeral.
Bayley says Danbury is a shadow of itself.
“The production is getting less each year. The new farmers do not have inputs; I estimate that there is about 10 percent production,” he says.
“The gates and fence are gone at the farm that used to employ about 100 permanent workers.”
The Zimbabwe government has hinted the country could be backtracking on its chaotic land reform program that began in 2000.
The country’s land minister, Douglas Mombeshora, was reported in the state media to have told provincial leaders to come up with names of white farmers they wanted to remain on their farms. The minister is reported to have said the farms should be “of strategic economic importance”.
The director of Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers’ Union, Hendrik Olivier, says his organization is unaware of any reversal of the land reform.
At its peak in 1997, the agriculture sector employed more than 500,000 people, contributing 30% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Since 2000, Zimbabwe has seen production of maize declining by 79%, wheat by 90%, soya beans 66%, citrus 50%, fresh produce 61%, dairy 59%, beef 67%, coffee 92% and tea 40%.
So could Bayley, the farmer on the bike, return to farming if his name appeared on a list?
Despite the loss, Bayley says he would go back, if the government allowed him, but warns that financing would be one of the hurdles.
“You can’t borrow everything from inputs to farming equipment. Farming is a business. I am still young enough to get back into farming,” he says.
After a couple of minutes of our telephone conversation, I have to let him go back to work in Harare. His last words are: “Life is too short. I am trying to enjoy the life I have.”

Whatever Happened To The Farmer On The Bike?

Land reform has been as controversial an issue in post-colonial Africa, as it has been emotive. Not surprising given the sheer scale of poverty and inequality that countries had to deal with once they attained freedom.
The last country to be liberated, South Africa, is finding itself in this unavoidable position- having to take land from mostly white farmers and giving it to large numbers of disadvantaged. In its attempt, South Africa is haunted by the chaos and misfortunes of neighbouring Zimbabwe.
This is not a policy unique to Africa, however. Colombia is working towards an accord on land reform. Some socialist movements in China, Mexico and Cuba, as well as democratic regimes in Chile, Puerto Rico and Venezuela have gone through it.
<div id="attachment_1745" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1745" class="size-medium wp-image-1745" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/John-du-Plessis-CEO-of-TSB-Sugar-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />ohn du Plessis, CEO of TSB Sugar</div>
The reason South Africa’s land reform process has become urgent is the 100 year anniversary of the Natives Land Act, on June 19. The act limited black land ownership to 7%, later increased to 13%. It restricted black people from buying or occupying land, except as employees.
Between 1994 and 2011, 6.8 million hectares (ha) were transferred to claimants. This land is allocated on a 99-year leasehold. The minister of rural development and land reform, Gugile Nkwinti, said that 4,813 farms had been transferred, between 1994 and January 2013 and that his department had spent R12.9 billion ($1.43 billion) on land reform.
Political pressure is growing to speed up South Africa’s tortoise-like land reform in the face of unrest among the poor.
The reasons the land restitution progress has dragged range from corruption to government inefficiency. The bigger question is whether allocation of this land means it will be put to work. The reality is that some claimants have opted to take cash instead of title deeds. South Africa’s department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (DAFF) and the department of rural development and land reform (DRDLR) failed to respond to questions about these issues.
The DRDLR has spent R1.8 billion ($200 million) on the redistribution and recapitalization programs and has set aside R3.2 billion ($355 million) for land reform.
This has been carried out under South Africa’s Restitution Land Rights Act of 1994, which was amended to redefine the ‘restoration of a right in land’ as ‘the return of a right in land or a portion of land dispossessed after June 19, 1913 as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices’.
The government is hoping to finalize the thousands of outstanding claims in the next year. The process has taken 18 years. To complicate matters further, the laws are being rewritten, which is likely to cause even more uncertainty.
The willing-buyer, willing-seller model was scrapped and in November President Jacob Zuma created a stir when he proposed that land be bought from white farmers at “just and equitable” prices. He has also suggested a land policy barring foreigners from owning land in South Africa, in favor of long-term leasing. The policy has yet to be finalized and passed, along with the auditing of privately-owned land.
A good case study of the land reform initiative is the sugar industry in Mpumalanga, in northern South Africa. The country is the world’s eleventh largest sugar producer. According to the DAFF’s February 2013 newsletter, Mpumalanga contributed almost a quarter of the national sugar production, during the 2010/2011 season. The South African sugar sector made around R8.2 billion ($910 million), the bulk of which goes to the local market. The growers get around 64% and the millers get more than 35% of the industry’s divisible proceeds.
In 1998, TSB Sugar began work with the government on land reform. TSB gave up around 90% of its land, which the company is currently in joint ventures (JVs)—with communities—over. The land used to be owned by the company, to secure its cane supply.
The company’s CEO, John du Plessis, has been in the sugar industry since he left university. He says the industry has been through tough times due to drought, land reform initiatives and pressures on margins. Du Plessis feels that land reform initiatives caused feelings of uncertainty, leading to lost efficiency in the milling sector and lost production in the agricultural sector. Pressure on margins has been caused by competition from imports, inflation and rising input costs, mainly due to electricity and fuel increases.
Du Plessis says that the biggest problem with the transference of land was high expectations by those who receive it.
“There is a huge expectation that ownership and management can be taken over, sooner rather than later, and we know that’s not a reality,” he says.
Land reform has definitely caught on in the sugar industry. Sixty seven percent of the 49,598ha in the Nkomazi cane area, in Mpumalanga, is owned by beneficiaries and 88% of this percentage is functional.
TSB and its JVs contributed 34% of the cane for the Nkomazi area during the 2012 season. The area has exceeded the national ownership target, while productivity on some of the land has increased slightly, largely due to the fact that some farms were run down. Small growers are a concern. These growers operate as sub-economic units, some producing only 35 tons per hectare against an industry norm of 100 tons per hectare. They are trying to solve the issue by forming co-operatives but this is often hindered by squabbles among owners.
“Sometimes it’s social issues that are undermining the sustainability of land reform and not production,” says Dave Thomson, the manager of land reform at TSB.
The global reality is that there are fewer farmers farming larger areas. The National Development Agency and the South African Sugar Association (SASA) raised R2.8 billion ($310.5 million) last year to improve the competiveness of small-scale sugar cane farmers.
One of the new cane farmers on the block in Mpumalanga is Petros Silinda, who used to teach agricultural science and biology in the province. He held numerous positions including commercial manager, company director and chairman of a trust. His three children are also learning the business.
Silinda believes that new farmers need to work with the old.
“There’s no chop and change in farming,” he says.
Each community in the area formed a trust in 2004, TSB has no say over how the trust manages its finances. The trust in charge of Silinda’s community’s interests has a 22-year deal with TSB, which was signed in 2008. The first 11 years are a 50-50 partnership and the next 11 will be in a 60-40 split between the trust and the company respectively. The trust represents around 1,464 households.
New political party leader, Mamphela Rampele, who was speaking at the opening of the Land Divided Conference 2013, said that there needs to be a balance between the need to redistribute land and retain existing commercial farmers.
At the sugar fields of Mpumalanga, Thompson says that trying to tinker with land prices isn’t going to speed up land reform. He thinks that government needs to look at the process and red tape. Land waiting to be transferred is in the hands of the government but who is there to manage the farms and ensure that there isn’t a dip in production before the beneficiaries receive it.
In Mpumalanga, they tell the story of how the owner of the 576ha Outeniqua farm sent government an offer to purchase the farm but the officials were slow. The farm fell into ruin as the farmer walked away. It was looted and vandalized and by the time the government made its R13 million ($1.4 million) purchase and transferred it to Silinda’s community, it was nothing but fallow land.
When Zimbabwe pushed through the Land Acquisition Act in 1992, the government was entitled to designate mainly-white commercial farms for resettlement.
Little happened until 2000, when the ruling party lost a referendum over a new constitution, that would have absolved the government of paying compensation. Bands of war veterans took the land by force, effectively paralyzing the industry. Professor Sam Moyo, from the African Institute for Agrarian Studies, feels that the downfall of the sector was due to the three droughts that occurred between 2002 and 2008, along with the economic meltdown.
The other issue is that when experienced commercial farmers leave, they take their skills with them. This was the case in Zimbabwe.
SASA is trying to make sure that doesn’t happen to its industry. What some fail to see is that having worked the land for generations is very different from being in charge of a business. If the sugar industry can embrace an adapt-or-die mentality, then there may be hope for the rest of the country. The road is long and the squabbles plenty.
Silinda’s parting words speak volumes.
“The moment you start fighting, over nothing, this business is going to perish and when it perishes, it perishes with us.”

Tag: Land reform

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