The 2011 Green Paper on Land Reform: Opportunities and Challenges - The National African Farmers Union (NAFU SA)

Motsepe Matlala (President, National African Farmers Union) gave an illuminating oratio on "The 2011 Green Paper on Land Reform: Opportunities and Challenges – The National African Farmers Union (NAFU SA)".

constitutionally sanctioned three-pronged programme of land reform namely restitution, tenure reform and redistribution. 3 In sync with the Constitution and the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the formulation of policies and laws on land reform was done and consolidated in April 1997 when the South African White Paper on Land Policy 4 was published. The 1997 White Paper on Land Policy aptly articulates a series of outcomes ranging from dealing with questions of redress, equity, security of tenure, nation building and national reconciliation and sustainable land use patterns. 5 The White Paper on Land Policy 6 further notes that: We envisage a land reform which results in a rural landscape consisting of small, medium and large farms; one which promotes both equity and efficiency through a combined agrarian and industrial strategy in which land reform is a spark to the engine of growth.
From a policy perspective, the provisions of the 1997 White Paper were largely expansive and from the outset created an overburdened expectation that land reform was able to accord redress on the one hand, while conterminously dealing with the crisis of underdevelopment and economic growth on the other. Despite the acknowledgement in principle of the linkages between land and agrarian reform to rural development and poverty alleviation, the implementation of the policy in South Africa was in the previous past narrowly confined to transfer of land, often exemplified by the ubiquitous statistical target of 30%. Notwithstanding the noble goal of such a target, engendering agrarian transformation remains one of the Achilles heels of our rural transformation agenda.
18 years into South Africa's democracy, changing the apartheid social geography through a programme of land reform has proven a mammoth task for the state.
Despite the "negotiated and reconciliatory" framework that underpinned the 3 Kariuki "CRDP". constitutional and institutional framework of land reform, rural transformation and development as an attribute of a successful land and agrarian reform leaves much to be desired. The transformation and progressive growth of South African agriculture has not materialised as expected. Indeed, the dual character of our agriculture, namely large-scale capital-intensive farms and an under-developed small scale/subsistence farm sector, exemplifies the levels of structural inequalities that we must overcome within the agricultural sector. Creating opportunities for black commercial farmers to integrate within the value chain (upstream and downstream) of South Africa's agricultural system should indeed be the optimal goal that should inform our rural agenda in advancing transformation.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the developmental goals of land reform cannot be achieved within the current institutional framework, fiscal and human resources, and the support infrastructure that is in place. A new paradigm of land and agrarian transformation is required to engender substantive transformation in the agricultural sector and to create more opportunities for the growth of black commercial farmers.
Such a paradigm should seek to overhaul the land administrative system, regulate aspects of market transactions within the framework of land reform and the law, and institute enabling amendments in some of the existing legislative frameworks (eg enabling subdivision of the agricultural Act, imposing restrictions on land use conversion, etc). These reforms should be accompanied by the development of enabling economic frameworks that stimulate the growth of agricultural development.
Myriad attempts to reformulate policy programmes in the last 18 years within the prevailing institutional and legislative framework have generated limited outcomes in the transformation of land and in the agrarian landscape of South Africa. In essence, the noble goals of rural transformation could not be actualised with the policy tools we deployed in this regard. In addition, these reforms were embedded within a disenabling agricultural economy that could not nurture the sustainable growth of black commercial farmers.
Resultantly, the imprints of the Natives Land Act 27 of 1913 are a constant and stubborn reminder of the "unfinished business" of our democratic project, which amongst others, must seek to reverse the legacy of apartheid's "accumulation by dispossession" that continues to underpin rural residents' struggle for social reproduction. As we marked the centenary of the 1913 Land Act in 2013, we must as a nation confront the question of rural transformation with utmost urgency as we seek to build an inclusive society devoid of our triple ills of underdevelopmentpoverty, inequality and unemployment. Ending the structural marginalisation of rural economies predicated on a broad and effective programme of rural development that encapsulates on-farm and off-farm agricultural investment should inform our national development imperatives.
In consonance with the principles underpinning the 2011 Green Paper, namely deraciliasing the rural economy, enforcing production discipline whilst engendering a democratic and equitable land allocation and use across race, class and gender is yet to be attained. As will be noted later in the article, the Green Paper proposes a paradigm shift that will facilitate significant changes in South Africa's tenure system and an enhanced land administration system. Eighteen years into democracy, South Africa has managed to redistribute approximately 7% of arable land against an ambitious target of 30% by 2014.
Redistributing 30% of land by the year 2014 is equivalent to about 24.6 million hectares. Post-settlement support has been inadequate, and the incorporation of new black farmers into the mainstream agricultural system has not been successful.

Consequently, the noble vision of South Africa's Reconstruction and Development
Programme (RDP) that envisioned land reform as a catalyst for rural development has not materialised. A major shift that has occurred from 1994-1999 and into the post-2000 period was the transition from a welfare-based land reform programme (pro-poor focus) to a commercial production-based land reform programme with a focus on de-racialising the agricultural sector and generating black commercial farmers.
Common problems such as inadequate support to beneficiaries, a hostile and liberalised agricultural economy, the inability to implement business plans, and an inadequate grant structure are some of the commonly cited factors that have encumbered the programme's success. This set of challenges created an impetus for the emergence of the 2005 Land Summit. In hindsight, the Land Summit attested to the general frustration that centers on the slow pace of land reform. The Summit called for a review of the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle and called for a much more pro-active approach by the government to land reform. Despite the political and rhetorical shifts noted in the trajectory of land reform debates, the structural and legal model remained largely unchanged. 7 However, current efforts as exemplified in the Green Paper are affirming signs that indeed the structural and legal model underpinning land reform must be changed for meaningful tenure reforms to be realised. In its current form, the progressive growth and development of our agricultural sector will not be realised.

3
The state of South African agriculture In South Africa, as in many other developing economies, the tourism-related business has become a leading industry, with agricultural production consequently on the decline, 8 resulting in commercial farmers turning to game farming. Therefore, the estimated 12 000 privately owned game farms in operation in South Africa 9 is a disconcerting figure, particularly when considering that statistics related to the industry are not centralised, but provincial, with some farms not recorded as game The effect on the latter is that, through claiming to be part of the conservation estate and adopting the mantra of "sustainable utilization", game farmers can hold on to their land without ceding power to government and land reform beneficiaries.
Several reasons can be propounded for the decline of agriculture in South Africa, some of which could be attributed to the transition in farming patterns against a wider context of rural development; increased rural unemployment in South Africa; and loss of skilled and experienced local white farmers who believe their expertise is not being appreciated and valued enough by the current government, and hence relocate to neighbouring African states. As a result the out-migration has contributed to the potential threat to agricultural production and food security. The rapid increase of white farmers turning to game farming adds to the losses in food production, which results in food imports to meet the country's domestic food needs.
When considering this fact, the reality of food imports is not as far-fetched as one would think, especially considering that "in the nine years between 1993 and 2002, the number of commercial farming enterprises decreased from 57 980 to 45 818". 12 Meanwhile, it has to be borne in mind that the South African economy is a-typical of the rest of Africa because of its very strong commercial, mining, service, manufacturing and industrial sectors which make up 96,9% of GDP. 13 Thus it was not and is not entirely dependent on agriculture like some third world economies.
With the current expansion in urbanisation, commercial agriculture has been waning from contributing about 20% of GDP in the 1920's to just 3.4% in 2004. 14 One explanation for the above is that SA's agricultural subsidies are among the lowest internationally, having progressively dropped to about 4% compared with

Migration of African farmers into the African continent
While for the past two decades small numbers of South African farmers have moved to Mozambique, Zambia and several other countries, this trend seems to be undergoing both a quantitative and a qualitative shift. In the past, their migration was largely individual or in small groups. Currently, it is more centrally organised and this process as a basis to reverse the 'push' factors that are leading to the current flight of farmers. We would like to emphasise the need to 'domesticate' these skills at home and to create enabling conditions that would 'arrest' this phenomenon of 'farmers exodus' into the continent, especially given the dire skills retention and transfer we need to infuse across the entire value chain of our agricultural system.
Engendering land and agrarian reform should therefore be conceived as a 'collective enterprise' whose goal is the diversified and progressive growth of South Africa's agricultural sector.
Commercial farming in present day South Africa is proving to be a difficult enterprise in as far as optimal production and profitability is concerned. The de-regulation of South Africa's agricultural sector in the 1980s and 1990s through removal of subsidies, state controlled marketing boards, increases in prices of farming inputs, and removal of cheap credit and tax breaks, have substantially decreased profitability and optimal production thresholds that would permit sustainable production in the sector. In a context of land reform programmes (eg restitution) and laws such as the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (ESTA) that seek to regulate relations between farm owners and farm workers, commercial farming as an enterprise has experienced a sustained decrease as most farmers opt to exit the sector. 25

Shift in farmers' thinking
Commercial agricultural organisations are grappling to find a meaningful niche in the broader 'social order', which may explain the significance of these associations in the farming community and the authoritative position they wield in negotiations with the state. 28 Additionally, it can be said that since "agriculture has undergone deregulation, agribusinesses have been empowered in South Africa", 29 ensuring the simultaneous disempowering of agriculture. Following this line of thinking partly explains the failure of emerging new farmers, who, without government support, cannot make productive ends meet in a rapidly globalising competitive environment where commodities' prices are subject to the vagaries of the market economy which South Africa is open to. In saying this, 30 The country's agricultural exports and net trade balances have declined precipitously in more recent years. The rate of growth in agricultural output has also slowed since the 1980s, largely as a result of a slowdown in the rate of growth in field crop production. Indeed, agricultural output growth in South Africa … has lagged behind the rest of Africa in recent decades, even though the country's agricultural productivity growth has historically outpaced production. 26 Du Toit Great South African Land Scandal 168. 27 Coleman 2011 in Farmer's Weekly. 28 Fraser 2008 Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 26. 29 Fraser 2007 Social & Cultural Geography 841. 30 Liebenberg and Pardey "South African Agricultural Production" 404-406. creation through investment in agriculture and expansion of agricultural production must be preceded by firstly dealing with the unresolved question of land ownership and distribution and secondly, the economic hardships commercial agriculture is facing and its consequent outcomes (eg land concentration etc).
In advancing these substantive reforms, the 2011 Green Paper proposes wide ranging institutional changes within the land reform sector.

The Green Paper on Land Reform (2011)
The Green Paper on Land Reform of 2011 firmly acknowledges land and agrarian reform as a fundamental constituent to the democratisation process in a bid to resolve racial, gender and class contradictions in South Africa. Pursuant to this recognition, the Green Paper defines sovereignty in terms of land and implies that the debate about agrarian change, land reform, and rural development should and must begin with a frank discussion on land tenure relations if the apartheid spatial geography is to be dealt with. Thus, the need to provide security of tenure for all South Africans regardless of race, gender and class is considered a fundamental aspect of development.
The broad developmental thrust of the Green Paper is evident in its invocation of concepts such as "shared growth and prosperity, full employment, relative income equality and cultural progress", 46 which the Green Paper is intended to achieve. Other key elements of this vision is the formulation of clearly defined property rights and effective land use planning and regulatory systems which promote optimal land utilisation in all areas and sectors; effectively administered rural and urban lands; and sustainable rural production systems. 48 This vision is underpinned by three key principles: (a) de-racialising the rural economy; (b) democratic and equitable land allocation and use across race, gender and class; (c) a sustained production discipline for food security.
A four tier tenure system is proposed, namely leasehold (owned by the state), Of significance to our discussions and to NAFU SA is the extent to which the proposed tenure system will enhance the growth of South Africa's agriculture. I would therefore like to focus my attention on leasehold as a form of tenure system that can be used to advance the goals of agricultural reforms in the country.

Leaseholds
A land lease is an agreement where a landowner allows someone to use his property for a set period of time in exchange for periodic payments of money. For a longterm lease term, 99 years is intended to convey the idea that the lease runs for the life of the tenant as most individuals don't live longer than 99 years. There are several reasons why someone would want to enter into such a long-term lease. A person enters into a long-term lease to acquire the security of property ownership, which is theoretically indefinite, without actually having to purchase the property. 49 The 99-year lease guarantee the rights holder a longer period of certainty to the extent that they want to finance whatever investments they are making. Lenders are also typically reluctant to finance leaseholds for fewer than 30 years, and thus a longer-term lease gives the lender reasonable guarantees of recouping their money in that given period. For owners, these leases offer a way to pass down their assets to their children, especially if it is prime land like commercial farms which have been successfully claimed, but where the occupier has agreed a leasing arrangement with the claimants.

Case study: leases in Namibia
The Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act 6 of 1995 (ACLRA) also provides for the granting of 99-year leasehold rights to allocate farming units and subsequent registration of such lease agreements in the Deeds Office. The Act provides for the possibility to buy an allocation after five years, subject to certain conditions. In terms of the Act, however, these rights are circumscribed in so far as rights to assign, sublet, mortgage or in any way encumber a farming unit allocated by the MLR is subject to the written approval of the Minister. However, in a legal opinion, the office of the Attorney General expressed the view that a mortgage could be registered on any lease agreement registered in the Deeds Office.

Leasehold agreements in Namibia
Two key developments that have a bearing on issuance of leaseholds and postsettlement of beneficiaries of resettlement programmes in Namibia: 1.
In 2009, the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement (MLR) and Agribank in February. This agreement entails that each of these institutions will contribute N$10 million (in total N$20 million) annually to a special account which they would jointly establish, to be administered by Agribank, with the aim of ensuring that resettled farmers are able to acquire the equipment necessary to increase their agricultural production.

2.
The ACLRA -the MLR commenced with issuing leasehold agreements to resettlement beneficiaries. The 99-year leasehold agreements will secure tenure for resettled farmers and enable them to access loans from Agribank, as well as commercial banks in the future. 51 51 Odendaal and Werner 2010 www.lalr.org.za.

What has been the experience with leaseholds?
Before a leasehold is granted, and before any land registered, the OVG has to value the surveyed land. The Directorate of Resettlement, responsible for the allocation of

Recommendations
Within the context of the Green Paper, it is our earnest hope that indeed the overhaul of South Africa's land administrative system will enhance state capacity to upscale land acquisition and augment state capacity to provide an enabling environment and support to land reform beneficiaries. This will indeed herald the dawn of a new transformative agrarian order, one that is able to reverse the unabated tide of rural-urban migration often occasioned by the inability of rural economies to enhance citizens' capabilities to eke out viable livelihoods from access to and ownership of agricultural resources. Spatial reconfiguration of our apartheid geography through a programme of land and agrarian transformation indulges us to think boldly and innovatively by establishing durable institutional and legal frameworks that allow us to give effect to our vision of rural transformation. Indeed, the limitations of our past reforms have enlightened us to move beyond a narrow 54 Agreement of Lease, 2009, 4. programme of land redistribution to one that is aligned to the broader question of rural transformation.
In pursuit of this new and developmental approach, NAFU SA wishes to contribute to the debate on the Green Paper by raising three concluding points:

De-racialise land reform discourse
From a historical point of view, NAFU SA has always championed the need to deracialise the agricultural sector through a set of legislation, programmes that would support the emergence of the black commercial farmers and other aspiring farmers. As a country we acknowledge that racially instigated laws and practices led to massive land dispossession of our people, for which the current programme of land reform is seeking to redress. However, over-emphasis of 'race' as a primary axis of reform can potentially compromise the exercise of creative innovations in dealing with the crisis of underdevelopment in rural South Africa. Indeed, the principle of 'deraciliasing the rural economy', as noted in the Green Paper, must be commensurated with a simultaneous deracalisation of our policy discourse on land reform. As we begin to embrace multi-forms of tenure regimes, intra-and interracial dynamics that intersect with class, gender and regional disparities/specificities (eg communal tenure systems) exemplify the need to transcend restrictive racial binaries in our discussions on the land question. The extent to which 'race' has shaped debates on land reform is a concern I raised 8 years ago in 2004, responding to the then growing perceptions of the suitability of black farmers to succeed, and I quote: 56 In the past 60 years many thousands of white farmers have failed miserably, not only because of climate and markets, but also the inability to farm and adapt to changing conditions. However, they are not judged on this. They are rightly judged on their successes. But black farmers are only judged on their failures. The farming ability of every black producer is predicted by the failures of the past, whereas the ability of a white farmer to farm is predicted by the success of the past. The Green Paper proposes a number of far-reaching reforms intended to enhance the land administrative system and other proposed institutions such as the OVG, the LRMB and the LMC. As NAFU SA we support the extensive overhaul of the institutional reforms, but caution that we should make a realistic institutional assessment of our capacity to absorb these expansive changes in a manner that advances the cause of reform and not stymie it. In developing new institutional configurations, we must ensure that effective rationalisation takes place, training/reorientation of personnel, and re-engineering of the departmental systems and processes are undertaken speedily. In essence, we argue that these justifiable policy reforms must be strengthened through the development of an effective and efficient implementation programme that seeks to give effect to the vision and goals of the Green Paper reforms.

We fully support the 99-year lease period
The Green Paper affirms a statist discourse that equates national sovereignty to land ownership: 57 National sovereignty is defined in terms of land. Even without it being enshrined in the country's supreme law, the Constitution, land is a national asset. This is where 57 DRDLR Green Paper 1.
the debate about agrarian change, land reform and rural development should, appropriately, begin.
Pursuant of this approach, as NAFU SA we advocate the 99 year lease as the basic tenure system to be adopted in South Africa. We propose detailed research be undertaken to assist in developing an appropriate leasehold tenure system that will facilitate capital investment inflows from the private sector (finance etc), whilst protecting land as a sovereign national asset. Land belongs to the people of South Africa and the state. As a finite asset, its protection in advancing our nation's sovereignty is of paramount importance. The example of Namibia's leasehold system is insightful in this regard.

Provide comprehensive agricultural support regimes and an enabling economic framework
Land reform should form part of a policy for poverty reduction within a framework of rural development. Land resettlement should, therefore, be buttressed by the provision of infrastructure (eg roads, access to agricultural inputs and markets).
However, the formulation and execution of land reform policy has been sector based and silo in approach. A normative gap identified thus far is that land reform was in the recent past narrowly conceived and implemented in isolation from other core development functions such as extension services and agricultural credit reforms.
Given the aforementioned, the misfit between land policy and rural development is most evident where land reform is pursued by a government primarily as a 'quasiconstitutional right' or a means of redressing past injustices, rather than as a basis for sustainable rural livelihoods that aim to redress gross racial imbalances in land ownership and access; recreating sustainable livelihoods on the land is infinitely more difficult. 58 For land reform to have a significant impact on poverty reduction, it must be part of a broader process of political, social and economic change, rather than a narrow intervention simply to redistribute land. Various initiatives have been undertaken to address the challenge of post-settlement support, such as the introduction of the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP) etc. However, we need to upscale and rationalise the provision of post-settlement support to land reform beneficiaries. The proposed Green Paper on Rural Development, which is yet to be released for public engagement, will hopefully augment the varied attempts Government has undertaken to provide support services to land reform beneficiaries and, more generally, rural development interventions. We need to implement extensive training programmes for our targeted beneficiaries of agrarian reform and where appropriate, change the overall economic orientation (eg reconsider subsidy systems for farmers) so as to facilitate their optimal production. With the current deregulated agricultural economy, which South Africa first undertook in the 1980s and 1990s, the liberalised agricultural sector compromises the sustainable growth of new entrants into agricultural production.
About 7 years ago in my capacity as the President of NAFU SA, I remarked as follows at the 2005 Land Summit. Its relevance to date remains compelling: 60 ... the major challenge of land reform is on the inability of small and upcoming farmers to participate at par with established corporate agriculture (both local and international) who dominate the agricultural value chain ... Our members ... have very little land, they face almost insurmountable obstacles in acquiring land, and when they do acquire land they find themselves so far outside the agricultural value chain that competitive production seems impossible. In addition to this, the 59 Moyo Land Question. survival of a small farmer, whether he is in fact black or white, has become ... irrelevant ... ultimately farming feels more like a punishment than a reward.
As reviewed earlier in the paper, reversing the current trend of white farmers' flight into the African continent necessitates that we reform the agricultural sector in order to retain farmers, and more importantly, skills. As NAFU SA, we are calling upon government to seize the current opportunities on reforms proposed by the Green Paper, to create certainty and progressive reforms that cater for all categories of farmers intent on remaining in farming. Indeed, this latter concern we raise is aptly captured in one of the three principles of the Green Paper on Land Reform, namely, attaining "a sustained production discipline" through the envisaged tenure reforms.

Conclusion
In conclusion, we wish to express our sincere support for the government's commitment to overhaul the land and administrative system as espoused in the wide-ranging reforms it has proposed in the Green Paper. NAFU SA has participated in a number of the National Reference Groups (NAREG) meetings and we are encouraged at the participatory and inclusive framework that has defined this process thus far. The developmental approach taken in the Green Paper on Land Reform is indeed one that we welcome and we are certain will be replicated into future policy formulation processes.