Much of the ‘land reform’ expropriation debate relies on hypotheticals or predictions – but in the last quarter of 2019 I had a glimpse of the reality of a future under expropriation without compensation (EWC), and it wasn’t encouraging.
Proponents of EWC contend that, besides the moral arguments justifying expropriation, the state would also be endowed with the ability to reverse the so-far poor results of land reform, revolutionize land ownership and improve productivity.
Critics of EWC meanwhile point to the dire economic and political consequences of undermining property rights and the destructive effect on people’s livelihoods as well as investment.
For some, international comparisons and economic theory are enough to prove how disastrous the idea of EWC is. Its defenders counter that these are not applicable to South Africa.
To get an idea of the reality of what may lie ahead when the state can own whatever land it chooses and black farmers lease land from the state, I had only to travel to Ekurhuleni.
I was following up on a story which had appeared on IOL announcing a new land reform project in Ekurhuleni that promised to hand ‘56 farms’ to small and emerging farmers.
What was unique about this project was that all the land already belonged to the City of Ekurhuleni and could be handed over to up-and-coming black farmers simply through a tender process.
The project also undertook to provide state support to the small farmers who received the land, to ensure their financial success. The tender process had already opened, according to the IOL report, and the city would soon be reaping the economic bounty of newly productive farmland.
Our suspicions that this may not be the storybook tale it purported to be were first raised when I looked at the tender document itself. It was 116 pages of bureaucratic sludge which could not have been accessible to the tender target of subsistence farmers by any stretch of the imagination.
After contacting a local DA councillor, Khetha Shandu, I received the council documents, which showed that rather than there being 56 ‘farms’ as had been reported, a significant number were tiny four-hectare or smaller plots, which were to be used as ‘social farms’.
Others, of between four and 30 hectares, were intended for ‘emerging farmers’ and there were a few plots which were marked ‘commercial’.
Councillor Shandu and I set out to see for ourselves what these pieces of land actually looked like.
The plots are a seemingly random collection of city-owned land scattered around Ekurhuleni, which range from a steep slope behind Alberton Dam, to small patches of grassland near the N17.
Although I am not an agricultural expert, it was clear to me that significant investment and know-how would be required to make any of these small plots profitable. One of those we visited had sandy ground suspiciously similar to an old mine dump.
As part of our tour, Councillor Shandu took me to a social-cooperative farm that had already been in operation and was undoubtedly the model for the new farms the city would be handing out.
Esselen Park farm in Tembisa proudly displays a sign at its entrance with the logos of sponsors and the names of the managers of the co-operative. Created by the Ekurhuleni Department of Economic Development as part of the Expanded Public Works programme, this social farm’s aim was to employ local people in raising chickens, under the management of a cooperative, with no single owner and with financial and training support from the city government.
From the outside, the small farm is impressive; it has many shiny JoJo water tanks and some large chicken sheds for housing thousands of birds.
Unfortunately, the buildings are almost completely empty. About 20 chickens peck forlornly at the ground next to one of the huge sheds.
The workers say there’s a lack of water which prevents them from being able to do much, while almost all of the bright green water tanks on the property stand empty.
Without any hope of producing at scale, the workers have instead planted maize and a few vegetables in the empty space near the chicken sheds and now spend most of their days sitting in the sun watching over their crops with their few chickens.
There’s not much promise being fulfilled and there doesn’t seem to be much bounty in the offing. Is this what South Africa’s farmland could look like in a world in which the state owns the farms?
One can at least take comfort in the fact that while the City seems to have set up the ‘social’ and ‘emerging’ to fail, at least no currently productive farmland is at risk.
But in the case of the commercial farms on the list of 56, the potential for damage is much worse.
If history is any guide, government promises of support to emerging farmers are unlikely to produce good results. Study after study into the effects of land reform have shown a high failure rate, with farms more than halving their productive output once transferred to new owners. In 2017, Mathews Phosa claimed that 90% of land reform projects had failed, added: ‘You give me land. I have no skills. I have no capital. I only have an emotional joy towards the land.’
The few commercial farms on the Ekurhuleni project list vary in productivity, but one of them has been worked by the same farmer, leasing the land from the city, since the early 90s. His farm is a typical example of a productive commercial farm. But the lease on the farm is due for renewal in 2020 and, with the city’s intention to privilege black farmers in the tender process, it’s unlikely the current occupant will be able to hold on to this land.
The council documents also list each erf of this farm separately, implying that the large productive farm may be broken into smaller less commercially viable pieces. Without ownership of the land, the current farmer has little legal recourse to challenge the looming change.
As such, almost 20 years of successful business may be undone and, most likely, will be replaced by desolation and poverty. This has nothing to do with the complexion of those to replace him and everything to do with the character of ‘custodial land’.
When people don’t own their land, as will be the case under EWC, they are vulnerable to the whims and favour of the state. In the case of commercial farmers, this can lead to the loss of all of one’s investments in an instant if the state decides to cancel a lease or not renew it.
In the case of aspirant black farmers, it leaves them at the mercy of state support and on land that may not even be viable. Time and again we have seen this will do naught but retain the supposed beneficiaries of land as little more than serfs, hardly better off than they were, if at all.
The only way that real land reform can work is if people are given freehold no-strings-attached title to land so that they can borrow against it, sell it or buy it as they wish. The only way land reform can work is if politicians are removed from the management of businesses based on land.
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