Afasa warns land reform failures are setting black farmers up to fail

It is ironic that, as the government blasts through the contentious Expropriation Bill, it is at the same time seizing land from black farmers who were some of the first beneficiaries of land restitution programmes. The African Farmers’ Association of South Africa (Afasa) is going to court to prevent the department of Land Reform and Rural Development from evicting the current landholders from some farms and then putting these farms on the market, or leasing them to others. The land was originally granted to the holders as part of some of the first land reform deals after 1994 – and, by all accounts, this particular part of that process has been a failure.

Firstly, although the beneficiaries were given 30-year leases on the land, they were never given title deeds. According to Afasa, this meant they were unable to put up their land as security for loans from finance houses. Agriculture in this country is heavily dependent on borrowed money and many farmers, even successful large-scale commercial ones, rely on these cash injections to tide them over from planting to harvest.

Another complaint Afasa had was that the department had failed to provide real support. In one case it spoke to us about, the department had allegedly brought in “mentors” – presumably former farmers or finance experts – and these people had run the farming operations with little reference to the beneficiaries. In one case, claimed Afasa, beneficiaries had been left with nothing, a debt of R8 million and no equipment or assets with which to continue farming.

There have been a number of promising black farmers who have been thrown under the bus like this, giving fuel to racist arguments that only white people can farm. This system needs a radical overhaul – or the whole land reform edifice will crumble to dust. The African Farmers’ Association of South Africa (Afasa) believes the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development is setting back the whole process of land restitution by not providing sufficient support to black farmers.

Many who have been given farms as part of restitution programmes have not been given the title deeds they were promised, meaning they cannot use the land as surety for bank loans – and therefore are being set up for failure, says Afasa. It claims a number of black farmers have already been evicted from farms they were given – a process carried out without their knowledge or consent – and that the land has, in some cases, being leased to others. One of the farms that was recently targeted by the department was Zandfontein Farm situated in Moqhaka local municipality in the Free State, but the lease advert was withdrawn after Afasa released a statement stating it intended to approach the court to stop the leasing out of the farms without following proper process.

Afasa threatens legal action Afasa’s land reform committee head Piet Mothepu has welcomed the move and said the association was ready to work with the government and all stakeholders to find a solution to the problem. Mothepu said the government’s tendency of abusing farm owners by advertising their farms to attract investors and later evicting them has been happening for a long time. “We are talking about the owners who claimed their land and are using it to create jobs and make a living,” he said.