An armed mob, angered over the slow pace of land reform benefits, has launched a Zimbabwean-style invasion of one of South Africa’s new multimillion pound showpiece agricultural reform projects, the biggest yet in value instituted by the post-apartheid government.
Government sources said a mob, armed with knives and machetes, had seized control of Forana farm in the rich farming area of Mpumalanga province over the Easter weekend after threatening and driving off local managers and staff employed by the new owners, a black-run farming cooperative.
The 3,200 hectare farm is part of Tenbosch estate, a R10 billion (£740 million) land-restitution project. It is made up of several farms handed back to four local communities who, since 1923, progressively lost their historic land.
Invaders, mirroring complaints in rural communities across the country, are angry over the few benefits they have seen from the much-heralded land transfer although the new owners made clear it would take several years to turn around land that although originally seized from locals, has been abandoned and neglected for years.
Agribusiness Umlimi, which controls the joint-venture farm management company Makhombo for the Lugedlane community, condemned the action as irresponsible and said that it compromised farming operations and jeopardised the ultimate flow of benefits to the community.
Fifteen years after the end of apartheid, land reform remains one of the country’s most sensitive issues. Government attempts to redress an imbalance that saw whites holding 83 per cent of all land, have largely failed, angering all sides.
Critics say the programme has simply contributed to destroying viable commercial farming sector by drastically reducing the amount of land available for commercial agriculture without bringing any benefit to rural communities.
“I would say that 95 per cent of land transferred under the scheme so far has simply resulted in once productive farms being turned over to subsistence farming,” Chris van Zyl, deputy general manager of the Transvaal Agricultural Union, told The Times.
He said the situation had not been helped because the new owners were frequently denied title deeds without which they found it difficult to raise the necessary investment. In addition, white farmers who are keen to sell sometimes have to wait more than two years to receive promised funds from the Government. In the meantime they make no investment on the land.
The land bank that organises such purchases under the current “willing buyer, willing seller” scheme is bankrupt after successive corruption scandals.
“All this has led to a decrease in production and a crisis of food security,” Mr van Zyl added. “You can’t just take land away from one group and hand it to others and expect it to stay productive. The issue is far more complex. Unfortunately it is a very sensitive issue and needs to be handled with care but politicians take advantage of that and whip up expectations that cannot be met.” Emotions are running high in South Africa as the country is in the midst of the most closely contested election campaign since democracy in 1994. Opposition parties are highlighting the failure of the ruling ANC to deliver on previous pledges to end poverty and improve life for the black majority – 85 per cent of the population.
Land, land reform and agricultural production are some of the areas where the Government has failed most dramatically to the extent it recently warned black farmers that they risked losing the land again under a new “use it or lose it” policy.
Farm invasions stoke fears that South Africa could go the same way as Zimbabwe where a “fast-track” programme, aimed at meeting local people’s frustrations, saw white farmers losing their farms violently – without compensation – with disastrous consequences for the broader economy.
Richard Spoor, an attorney who acted for a group of concerned members of the Tenbosch beneficiary community, told the Business Day newspaper that the Tenbosch project was a shambles because certain of the new trustees had abused the trust of the community.
Through Makhombo, Umlimi has disbursed hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Lugedlane community in the past three years, but none of the income was passed on to the community, according to the group behind the “invasion”.
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