agri Nuus/News
<<<page 36 environmental factors.” Hans Binswanger-Mkize writes in a 2014 article in the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics3: “Both restitution and PLAS use the willing-buyer-willingseller approach. Direct land acquisition at negotiated or market prices therefore is most unlikely to have been the major problem for SLAG and LRAD. Instead, SLAG was doomed by the small grant size, the emphasis on group farming, and the lack of post-settlement support. LRAD let some farmers operate individual farms, but still created many group farms and also suffered from poor post-settlement support. Furthermore, beneficiary groups under SLAG tended to acquire land of lower quality, one of the reasons for the change to LRAD (see Anseeuw & Mathebula 2008:10). After the first two years of implementation, LRAD was starved of budget and ultimately was side-lined.” The following conclusions emerge from this brief overview: • Many black people, including the black youth, are interested in farming; • The emphasis on creating successful commercial farms and the associated focus on a group or cooperative farming model rather than subdivision into family farms is probably the single most important cause of programme failure; • The lack or late delivery of postsettlement support for beneficiaries has clearly been one of the major impediments to better performance; • Poor beneficiary participation in all aspects of the programme has been a major source of beneficiary disaffection, and the failure of many projects; • The capacities of DRDLR, Daff and the RC are overwhelmed by the deep involvement of their staff in planning, management and implementation of all aspects of the programmes; • While the strategic partner model may work in some cases, its imposition on beneficiaries is inappropriate; • Unclear policies and procedures of the programmes and the lack of operational manuals contribute to the lack of understanding among beneficiaries and officials; and • The poor performance of the programmes is not due to the willingbuyer-willing-seller model of the purchase of land at negotiated or market prices.” In my experience a lot of this rings true. Other commentators have also done detailed budgetary analyses of the spending on land reform programmes
and it is clear that over time quite a small percentage of the national budget was allocated to land reform and the support of land reform beneficiaries. The group farming model has certainly been problematic, also from the perspective of those who try to render support to these groups as infighting and a lack of leadership and clear rules is often a feature of these groups. And I have personally experienced many times the lack of information and lack of knowledge of the programmes and what they entail among potential beneficiaries and provincial officials. The success or failure of the redistributive programmes cannot however be viewed in isolation, but needs to be evaluated in the context of the support programmes such as CASP (the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme) and other forms of government support to these beneficiaries. It seems that the lack of timeous and proper support was often the cause of the failure of projects. In 2006 PLAS was launched to replace LRAD. This strategy was aimed at speeding up the transfer of land through the proactive acquisition of the land in the market by the government for redistribution purposes. The implementation manual of the PLAS programme states that it is primarily pro-poor. It is implemented by using the Provision of Land and Assistance Act, Act No.126 of 1993, as amended. Land is warehoused within government. In theory the beneficiaries can get ownership after a period. In practice, anecdotal evidence
seems to point to permanent state ownership of the land acquired. E.N. Randwedzi did a thesis on “The potential and limits of the proactive land acquisition strategy”4 at the University of the Western Cape. He found, among other things, that DRDLR has been struggling to properly administer lease agreements entered into with beneficiaries under PLAS. He also found that: “When beneficiaries are not certain about who will ultimately own the land, it threatens their investments on the property, and similarly creates over-dependence on the state by the beneficiaries.” There seemed to be no clear strategy to link PLAS acquisitions to an area-based strategy as envisaged and that there was often a mismatch between the land and beneficiaries. He did however conclude that PLAS demonstrated positive results in terms of land delivery and has the potential to speed up the process of transferring more land from the white owned commercial farmers. It seems that state ownership of land i.t.o. PLAS, undermines agricultural investment and productivity, as the beneficiaries feel insecure with tenure arrangements under which the state exercised undue influence over their activities. Private sector investment is basically excluded as the commercial banks require that the land be put up as collateral for loans. Beneficiaries are forever dependant on the state, not only for tenure security, but also for production finance. Mercedes Stickler writes in an article in >>> page 41 “Focus on land in Africa” agri DES/DEC • JAN ‘17 bladsy/page
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