‘Zimbabwe’ land option mooted by SA officials

[G72]

16 October 2006

RADICAL changes to government’s land reform policy are proposed in discussion documents which emerged from recent workshops held by officials of the land affairs department.

If accepted, the changes would see the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle in the state’s land reform acquisitions largely abandoned in favour of expropriation and what the documents call the “Zimbabwean model”.

SA’s land reform programme aims by 2008 to restore land rights to people forcibly dispossessed of their land under apartheid legislation, redress lost land-tenure rights and by 2014 to redistribute 30% of white-owned commercial agricultural land to emerging black farmers.

A joint discussion document produced by land affairs officials and the World Bank in August after a tax workshop included a proposal for a new land tax from which emerging farmers would be exempt. “The overarching goal should be to design this tax in such a way that it supports land reform and the creation of a fiscal base for local government,” the document says.

The documents were leaked to Farmer’s Weekly magazine. A report on the third draft of a document about a revision of willing-buyer, willing-seller appeared in its Friday edition.

Government has blamed the slow pace of land reform largely on adherence to the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle. Land affairs has said that principle inflates the price of land and delays negotiations.

The discussion document proposes that the principle be abandoned in favour of the Zimbabwean model.

The Zimbabwean model, or forced-sale principle, preceded land invasions in that country and there are fears it could happen here if employed. It meant that farmers who wanted to sell their land had to offer the government right of first refusal. If the government did not want the land it would issue a notice of “no present interest” which meant the landowner could sell the land.

Landowners could refuse an offer if the government wanted their land, but they would not be able to sell on the open market.

A further significant departure from policy among the proposals was that expropriation as a coercive instrument would not be confined to the restitution of land in settlement of land claims, but would also be used for acquisition of commercial farms in the pursuit of government’s 30% redistribution target.

In a policy development earlier this year, Agriculture and Land Affairs Deputy Minister Dirk du Toit announced that government would begin buying land for redistribution “proactively” by identifying suitable land and settling black farmers there, instead of waiting for applications.

The willing-buyer, willing-seller document was discussed by land affairs officials at a workshop in Midrand at the end of last month. Organised agriculture was not invited. A land affairs spokesman said, however, that the document was intended for internal discussion only and as part of the process of developing the department’s policy position, following recommendations made at last year’s land summit.

He emphasised that it did not reflect official policy and dismissed the suggestion that there was a division between land affairs officials and the department’s political leadership. He said the minister had not yet reflected on the contents of what was at this stage a “rudimentary” document.

Willie Lewies, vice-president of the white farmers’ union, TAU SA, said the proposed tax was not new, but that its exemption of emerging farmers reflected “increasingly blatant discrimination against white farmers”. A race-based tax would “invite international condemnation,” Lewies said.

It was no longer clear who made policy. “Ministerial statements about land claims do not concur with what is happening on the ground,” he said.

FYI

G72

[BeeTee]

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[Sulona]

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