allAfrica.com: South Africa: Private Initiative Gives Small Farmers a Foothold (Page 1 of 1)

ON A hill overlooking the celebrated Spier wine estate, near Stellenbosch in Western Cape, 12 farmers work the land on small 5ha plots. Here they eke out a living, growing produce for the market, but though hard-won, their tenure is neither secure, nor particularly profitable.

The 65ha they farm belong to Stellenbosch and is a fraction of the land the town owns in commonage estimated to be worth about R2bn. The land was granted to the municipality by the state, at no cost to the town, as a public commonage in 1883 . It is part of about 2000ha of municipal commonage that is leased to white commercial farmers, portions of which could be considered potentially available to emerging black farmers within a land reform programme.

The 12 farmers are market gardeners from historically disadvantaged communities in the district and the remnants of an earlier organic land- reform project sponsored by Spier. The estate had a 50-year lease on the land.

In 2002, the farmers formed the Stellenbosch Small Farm Holdings Trust, a non-profit body whose sole aim is to promote, support and facilitate access to land and use of land on an equitable basis for its beneficiaries.

The trust defines the beneficiaries as "small farmers from historically disadvantaged communities within the Stellenbosch area who are seeking to farm sustainably, using organic methods wherever possible, and whose tenure is insecure as a result of past discriminatory laws and practices, as identified by the trustees ".

It is important to note that the trust has nothing to do with official structures at any level , but that its founding statements are in keeping with the constitution's charge to all tiers of government and to society to effect land and agrarian reform.

As SA's experience with transferring access to land to historically disadvantage people has shown, the process is fraught with difficulty. A major problem is defining which community or individuals qualify for access to land as a consequence of being deprived by "past discriminatory laws ". The other big difficulty is finding suitable land.

Wresting it from white landowners, either through market-related acquisition or expropriation, has received the most attention from the land affairs department. The most strident criticism of this approach is that expropriation sales, particularly those in relation to price, are likely to constitute new injustices perpetrated by an all-powerful state. This view is usually accompanied by the charge that productive farm land would become fallow in the hands of inexperienced farmers and farms become derelict during the seemingly interminable handover process.

A way out may be to use land under administration by traditional authorities (the former black homelands) and municipal land. The trouble is, SA's cadastral survey is incomplete and the extent, location and encumbrances of the land are largely unknown.

Better known are the municipal commonages used by poor people for farming across the country, but now they are the subject of inter-tier government rivalry for their disposal for the purposes of land reform.

The proposed new legal framework of the Municipal Finance Management Act clearly contradicts the law under which commonages have been established. It has replaced the previous legal frameworks that apply to the land they own and they are now disposing of land to land claimants despite the fact that it had been specifically donated for use in the general public interest.

In the view of the director of the Legal Resources Centre, Janet Love, it is an inappropriate "quick fix" for land reform and amounts to taking land from the whole community and giving to one section of the community.

The changes have also pitted the needs of the housing department against those of the land affairs department. Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has been reported as saying the government's housing programme in Limpopo has virtually ground to a halt because of land claims against municipal commonages.

The fact that the Stellenbosch Trust farmers occupy the land at all happened only because Spier Estate ceded its lease to the trust. It should, nevertheless, serve as a model of how municipal commonages could be used equitably for land reform and poverty alleviation.

But a further problem for the Stellenbosch Trust farmers is that by bypassing the agriculture and land affairs department, their access to support under the department's Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme seems to pass them by.

"We have not seen one cent from the government," said Peter Stone, one of the farmers . "The government came here and started building a packing shed, but then the money ran out and they left. Where has that money gone, I ask you? Our biggest problem is we have no support."

The question land reformers should ask is, why is it so difficult? There seems to be plenty of suitable land available for farmers prepared to take a chance, yet structures intended to help them are their greatest impediment.

'The government came here and started building a packing shed, but then the money ran out and they left. Where has that money gone, I ask you? Our biggest problem is we have no support'

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