by Chris Barron
Food security, capital, legislation, government support and tenure are some of the burning issues fuelling heated debate among agricultural leaders in South Africa.
A: Organised agriculture has admitted there are instances where it has happened, but not on the scale the minister says. If there are illegal evictions, they should be brought to court and prosecuted. What is upsetting...are untested allegations of illegal evictions.
Q: Are evictions happening out of economic necessity or deliberate “ethnic cleansing”?
A: There may be cases where it has happened on racial grounds, but for the major part, evictions are for economic reasons. The farmer has financial problems and he has to cut down, or he decides to change the structure of his business to remain competitive. And he is sometimes unaware of the right procedure to follow.
Q: In an increasingly competitive environment, do reforms make evictions an economic necessity?
A: The way agriculture is developing means there are fewer employment opportunities than before. In many instances, you do not want to part with people on your farm, but they’re simply not equipped or trained to use sophisticated machinery.
Q: To what extent is this about farmers not playing fair?
A: There are elements of that, but they’re a decreasing minority. It’s the increasing pressure on them in terms of correct labour practices. Some farmers say: ‘I cannot afford having a guy who starts work at 8am and has to leave at five in the afternoon, and who needs to get minimum wages and stuff like this, because farming is a biological process. It starts at sunrise and stops when the sun sets.’
There are these demands for different managerial practices. So, for farmers, it’s becoming better not to have permanent labour on their farm, but to use labour brokers. It costs them more, but they’re satisfied. If on Monday morning half his workers don’t turn up, it’s not his concern. He has a contract. Also, because of the high incidence of HIV/Aids, farmers are seeing a decline in terms of the productivity of their workers. It’s a huge concern because now they have to employ more people to do the same work, and that is jeopardising the economy of their whole operation.
Q: Is government giving the agricultural sector enough support?
A: No. Government can partner to a much greater degree with agriculture to keep us competitive. A farmer cannot be expected to take sole responsibility for the well being of people if he cannot afford to have them living on his farm. All these new laws giving workers the right to stay on, etc, adds risk to a farming environment and sometimes it becomes ungovernable.
Q: Why are so many land reform projects failing?
A: The new farmers are ill-equipped. They’re not trained, there is a lack of support. They pledge all their collateral to become the owner, leaving them without any operational capital.
Q: Should white farmers play a bigger role in mentoring?
A: Absolutely. And there are excellent examples of how it can work. There are a lot of commercial farmers who pledge their support in this regard. I think they should be given more credit for what they want to do, and I think government should make a more deliberate attempt to involve them. The majority of commercial farmers are not concerned about the colour of their neighbour. As long as he’s sustainable and adds to the stability and well being of the community, they will support him. I get a lot of pledges from farmers who say: ‘Give us the opportunity, help us to do this.’
Q: Do you see the ongoing loss of white farmers as a threat to South Africa’s food security?
A: Ultimately, if significant numbers leave, yes. If their place is taken by emerging farmers who are not competitive, then food security could be under threat.
Q: Government has promised to put 30% of white-owned farmland into black hands by 2014. Is this feasible?
A: A concern of mine is: Why must one link farming to land ownership? My biggest concern is that government transfers highly productive land which then lies idle. The concern should be how to integrate emerging farmers and let them share in the income-generating capacity of agriculture — without jeopardising food security. Merely transferring land will not transfer wealth to the extent the government is hoping for.
Q: What is your view on the requirement that race and gender be recorded on title deeds?
A: I read what one ANC MP said in Parliament the other day, and I fully support him. Being white and male may make me sound biased, but I think we can do away with racial reference in terms of land transfer.
Dirk du Toit, Deputy Minister of AgricultureQ: If there have been so many illegal evictions, why have there been so few prosecutions?
A: Because of the practical problems in regard to prosecutions.
Q: Not because the evictions have not, in fact, been illegal?
A: It’s about the concept of occupation and how it should be dealt with. We have a legacy of people dwelling on farms — I don’t even use the word farm workers, but farm dwellers — and somehow the discourse has shifted the underpinning of evictions to a purely economical and labour question and not to a legal or constitutional question as I believe the Constitution requires.
Q: Are farmers evicting workers out of economic necessity, or is it deliberate “ethnic cleansing”?
A: I think it is a continuation of old practices. It’s a result of labour disputes — a farmer telling the worker you don’t work well enough: ‘You didn’t come in on Sunday to milk; I don’t want you to work for me any more’ — or the farmer saying: ‘I can’t afford these minimum wages any more, my input costs must come down.’ And so, he will make life difficult for the person to stay on the farm.
The second case is when there is a sale and the prospective buyer says he will buy only if the farmer first gets rid of the farm dwellers. To do a criminal investigation into this kind of thing is very difficult.
Q: Is the government’s threat of expropriation an admission that the laws are not working?
A: I don’t think the laws are not working. It’s just that I think the laws were a bit overly optimistic. They attempted to create a land- rights culture ... that people must behave in certain ways which then will have a security- of-tenure type of result.
It’s more a regulative type of legislation instead of really proscribing.
Q: Isn’t it a fact that, in an increasingly competitive environment, reforms do make evictions an economic necessity?
A: If it is simply an economic-labour problem, then of course we don’t even need the constitutional requirements on this, because industrial relations legislation could take care of it. But there is far more to the situation in South Africa.
Q: Farmers are not playing fair?
A: Well, you know, you can do many things in life without it really being a crime. The agricultural sector is the least transformed of all the economic sectors. There must be a reason. Apartheid is not just a theory or a political system, apartheid is an activity. You don’t have to call it apartheid and, of course, you must be able to say: ‘I am strongly against it. It belongs to old, historical times’ ... but the effect is that people of a certain race are being moved out of certain areas. The way in which farm dwellers are kind of not wanted is fundamental to the problem.
Q: Is government giving the agricultural sector enough support?
A: Very little, at the moment. But, if there is sufficient land reform, because that is the priority, I am sure far more support will grow.
Q: Do you see the ongoing loss of white farmers as a threat to South Africa’s food security?
A:No, because I hope that a lot of these farmers who are selling to government will still be involved in support services in agriculture — mentor ships. There are many places where this is done very well.
Q: In spite of this, a land reform specialist at the University of the Western Cape says 95% of land reform projects fail.
A: I don’t know about 95%. But, mostly, success must be due to continued support after the acquisition of the property.
Q: From government?
A:Mostly from government, but government can’t do it alone without the agricultural sector’s wholehearted support.
Q: And that is not happening?
A: Well, there is a lot of politically correct rhetoric. But, if you ask what the organised sector is doing to propagate non-eviction of farm dwellers and see what programmes they’re running among their members you’ll see some of them are against it. The environment is unfriendly on some very faraway farms, and that is not conducive to success.
Q: Government has promised to put 30% of white-owned farmland into black hands by 2014. Is this feasible?
A: There is a lot of work being done to improve the management of the process, but it will depend on co-operation from the sector, because you just work against the stream all the time.
There is something fundamentally wrong in the sector.
Q: What is your view on the requirement that race and gender be recorded on title deeds? A: You must look at the purpose for which the inclusion of data needs to be put.
Sunday Times-South Africa
