On April 17 1919 the SA government gazetted 28 farms — totalling more than 7.64-million hectares — that were offered for lease for five years with an option to buy at any time during the lease period. The gazette also offered conditional purchase arrangements over a 20-year period.
These farms — all arable and pastoral — were in Dundee (northern KwaZulu-Natal) and Colenso (the upper KwaZulu-Natal Midlands). The lessee paid nothing in the first year and the lease fee was fixed for years two and three, escalating substantially — by more than 75% in some instances — in years four and five.
This is just one example of the distance the then government was prepared to go to enable entry into commercial farming of white people who didn’t have the money to buy farms.
It stands in stark contrast to the failure by successive ANC administrations to create a path for aspiring black farmers. Long on pronouncements about transformation, ANC administrations have been short on implementation of what appears to be simple transformative measures — the low-hanging fruit of transformation.
Economists Wandile Sihlobo and Johann Kirsten provide one such example in their recently published book. They point out, not for the first time, that the government has since 2006 bought more than 2.5-million hectares of farmland.
These farms were bought in terms of the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy that was introduced in 2006, ostensibly to achieve a speedy transfer of land to black South Africans, who were to be integrated into commercial farming. Most of these farms have been leased out for periods of up to 30 years, though some farmers have yet to receive signed agreements.
Sihlobo and Kirsten write in their book, The Uncomfortable Truth about SA’s Agriculture, that the nature of the leases and limited access to production finance, as well as the inappropriate selection of the lessees, has meant that most of these farms are underutilised. Some have been vandalised.
There are some outlier cases in which these farmers have become successful. But even the successful ones are hamstrung by a lack of security of tenure, which is key to raising the funds that are necessary to improve the farms and increase their production capacity.
But as Sihlobo and Kirsten note, tenure is not the only problem. These farmers “have faced bureaucratic hurdles and, at times, cavalier attitudes among government officials”.
In one case, which Sihlobo and Kirsten describe as typical, a black lessee was struggling to get his lease renewed, “and some politicians and bureaucrats were trying to chase him off the land”. This is an indicator of the predatory nature of the SA state.
Another successful farmer of Merino sheep on a leased farm decried the slow response by government officials to his requests, including permission to repaint the farmhouse and install solar energy on the farm.
The Merino farmer’s case illustrates the administrative burdens the government imposes on citizens when they seek to access public services. These burdens are heaviest on the poor, who are most reliant on public services, often lack the knowledge of their entitlements and lack the financial means with which to challenge the state.
Instead of drawing lessons — positive ones as illustrated by the 1919 gazette — from its pre-1994 predecessors, the government now would rather blow hot air to justify a seemingly never-ending stream of new laws and regulations in the name of transformation.
• Sikhakhane, a former spokesperson for the finance minister, National Treasury and SA Reserve Bank, is editor of The Conversation Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
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