IRIN Focus on land reform

Recent events in Zimbabwe have highlighted the issue of land reform across southern Africa and specifically in South Africa where, despite good intentions, the government's land reform policy has been described as "flawed". What is the SA policy? There are two approaches to land reform in South Africa - land restitution and land redistribution. Land restitution basically involves giving land back to those people who where forcibly removed from their land under apartheid or before. In terms of the land restitution route, there was a fixed deadline whereby people could have applied to have their land returned. The Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994 that established the restitution program gave victims from the beginning of 1995 to 31 December 1998 to lodge complaints. In terms of the act, restitution can take the form of; restoration of land from which claimants were dispossessed, provision of alternative land, payment of compensation and priority access to government housing, and land development programmes. The act emphasises that the parties must negotiate and that parties must arrive at outcomes that are not only mutually acceptable, but practical and sustainable as well. All claims for land restitution are lodged against the state and not the people who occupy the land. Land redistribution is about an overall government policy of poverty alleviation by giving poor people access to a secure piece of land for sustainable development. A spokesman for the Department of Land Affairs told IRIN that redistribution was part of a strategy to bring about land equity and bring "balance to an unbalanced situation where 13 percent of the population own over 80 percent of the land". The criticism Overall the criticism has been that the actual process itself is too slow. Analysts told IRIN that in theory there was no problem with the policy, it was the implementation that has proved to be the difficult part. One of the difficulties has been that South Africa has no general policy directives, the specifics of each case has often required that it has to be dealt with on an individual basis and this slows down the process. In 1994 the government set a target of redistributing about 30 percent of the country's land. According to a survey by the South African Institute of Race Relations, between May 1995 and May 1998, 63,455 claims of land restitution were lodged before the Land Claims Commission. According to statistics from the office of the Chief Land Claims Commissioner in the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, a total of 4,925 claims have been settled involving 16,015 households. "The policy gets bogged down by process and red tape issues," Thobias Schmitz, a researcher with the Centre for Policy Studies told IRIN. "Take the example of urban land that is being claimed. One finds that whilst the victim is waiting for a decision, in the interim that land has been developed and people have been given the property deeds. And so instead of getting their land back people end up getting some form of compensation," Schmitz said. "Both Zimbabwe and South Africa have lost their chance in this sense. New urban elites have emerged in the post-apartheid period without breaking the power of the previous rural elite and now the land reform process is much slower or difficult because government does not want to disrupt the relative stability of society," Schmitz noted. Meanwhile, the office Chief Land Claims Commissioner told IRIN: "The Department of Land Affairs and the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights has been criticised for the slow pace of delivery since the inception of land reform legislation. However, a significant increase in finalising restitution claims has happened since the appointment of Minister Thoko Didiza." But last week, protestors from the northern town of Wakkerstroom picketed outside the office of Didiza, threatening land invasions if the minister failed to meet with them. In a letter to President Thabo Mbeki, a group known as The Restitution Forum of the South Cape and Karoo (in the southern part of South Africa) said: "Communities in our region are considering mass action and we want to avoid at all costs the same situation as currently in Zimbabwe." The group said that it had written directly to Mbeki because it "had exhausted all official channels with no response". Presidential spokesman, Parks Mankahlana was quoted in news reports as saying that Mbeki regarded the issue as "serious" and was "convinced" that if there were any delays this was because the question of restitution was "very complicated" and had to be handled with sensitivity. Didiza said in a recent interview that the government wanted to build a "core of successful black farmers". "We want to move away from the perception that only white farmers in this country can make it commercially and that subsistence farming is only for Africans." Another criticism of the reform process is that the various parties involved do not completely understand the process, which slows down negotiations between landowners and claimants. "Tensions that may exist at the onset of negotiations are attributed to a lack of understanding of the restitution process. [However] clarity helps to alleviate most tensions that have existed," the Chief Land Claims Commissioner's office noted. Critics have also argued that there are large tracts of under-utilised government land that could be redistributed. Analysts estimate that there is over 20 million hectares of government land that is idle and which could be used to settle small scale, yet commercially viable farmers. However, despite these shortcomings critics and the government seem to be in agreement that South Africa is unlikely to experience the same kind of events that are currently unfolding in Zimbabwe. "The South African government has had its foot in the door from the word go with the first election in 1994, and has been one of the more actively pursued policies, even with its problems," one critic noted. When asked if a similar scenario could develop in South Africa as in Zimbabwe, the Chief Land Claims Commissioner's office said: "It is very unlikely. Land reform in South Africa is both a constitutional and legislative issue as provided by the Constitution and the Land Restitution Act of 1994. Plans in place make provision for the finalisation of land restitution by 2005."