Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 S C H O Oof L GOVERNMENT UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE Ruth Hall Research report no. 20 Norwegian Centre for Human Rights Research report no. 20 Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 Ruth Hall Norwegian Centre Programme for Land for Human Rights and Agrarian Studies December 2004 i Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 Ruth Hall Ruth Hall is a researcher at the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape. Published by the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, School of Government, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535, Cape Town, South Africa. Tel: +27 21 959 3733. Fax: +27 21 959 3732. [email protected]. www.uwc.ac.za/plaas Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies Research report no. 20. ISBN: 1-86808-600-3 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission from the publisher or the author. Copy editor: Stephen Heyns Cover photograph: Ruth Hall Layout: Designs for Development Typeset in Times Printing: Hansa Reproprint ii i Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 Contents List of tables, boxes and figures ii Acronyms and abbreviations iii Acknowledgements iv Preface v Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Research methods 3 Chapter 3: A retrospective of ten years of land reform 4 First period: 1994–1999 4 Second period: 1999–2004 6 Chapter 4: Restitution 12 Progress with land claims 12 Land or cash? 14 Rural claims 15 Post-settlement support 19 Land availability and expropriation 20 Betterment claims 21 Claims on state land 22 Deadline for claims 23 Chapter 5: Redistribution 25 Achievements of land redistribution 25 LRAD 28 Settlement 32 Farm worker equity share schemes 32 Municipal commonage 35 Chapter 6: Farm tenure reform 37 Trends 37 Interventions 39 Eviction orders 40 On-site and off-site settlement 41 Labour tenants 43 The future 46 Chapter 7: Communal tenure reform 47 The need for communal tenure reform 47 Communal Land Rights Act 49 Communal property associations 51 TRANCRAA: Reforming the ‘coloured reserves’ 53 Chapter 8: Moving forward: Debating the future of land and agrarian reform 55 Matching supply and demand 55 Budgets 57 Post-settlement support 58 BEE 59 Chapter 9: Conclusions 60 References 61 Published sources 61 Interviews 65 Appendix A: Semi-structured interview schedule for PLRO directors 68 Appendix B: Semi-structured interview schedule for NGO directors 69 ii i Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 List of tables, boxes and figures Table 1: Land reform legislation 1990–2004 7 Table 2: Claims lodged by province 2004 13 Table 3: Land restitution claims settled by province 2004 13 Table 4: Land redistribution and tenure reform by year 2004 26 Table 5: LRAD project data by province 2004 29 Table 6: SLAG project data by province 2004 33 Table 7: Equity scheme project data by province 2004 34 Table 8: Commonage project data by province 2004 35 Table 9: ESTA project data by province 2004 42 Table 10: Labour tenant applications submitted 2001 44 Table 11: Labour tenant projects by province 2004 45 Box 1: Gender equity and land reform 7 Box 2: The regional context 10 Box 3: HIV/Aids and land reform 10 Box 4: Interrogating the restitution statistics 17 Box 5: Redistribution grants and services 27 Box 6: State land disposal 27 Box 7: Foreign land ownership 30 Box 8: Land Bank projects 30 Box 9: Transformation in the sugar industry 31 Box 10: Monitoring and evaluating land reform 33 Box 11: Local government and land reform 36 Box 12: Selling tenure rights 39 Box 13: Women’s farm tenure rights 41 Box 14: Service delivery to farm dwellers 43 Box 15: Transfer of title and service delivery 51 Box 16: Steps towards implementing the CLRA 51 Box 17: Review of communal property institutions 52 Box 18: Subdivision of agricultural land 56 Box 19: Land taxes 56 Figure 1: Land transfers by project type (ha) 11 Figure 2: Cumulative restitution claims settled 14 Figure 3: Urban and rural restitution claims by type of settlement 15 Figure 4: Land transferred through land redistribution and tenure reform (ha) 26 Figure 5: ESTA eviction orders on review at the LCC 40 Figure 6: Cases at the Land Claims Court 45 ii iii Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 Acronyms and abbreviations Act 9 Rural Areas Act 9 of 1987 Agri-SA Agri South Africa AgriBEE Agricultural Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment charter ANC African National Congress BEE black economic empowerment CASP Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme CLRA Communal Land Rights Act 11 of 2004 Contralesa Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa CPA communal property association CRLR Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights DLA Department of Land Affairs DoH Department of Housing ESTA Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 Gear Growth Employment and Redistribution macroeconomic strategy ha hectares IDP integrated development plan IPILRA Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31 of 1996 ISRDP Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme KZN KwaZulu-Natal LCC Land Claims Court LPM Landless People’s Movement LRAD Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development programme LTA Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act 3 of 1996 M&E monitoring and evaluation NDA National Department of Agriculture NGO non-governmental organisation NLC National Land Committee PDoA provincial department of agriculture PLAAS Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies PLRO Provincial Land Reform Office (of DLA) RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme Restitution Act Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994 RLCC Regional Land Claims Commission SLAG Settlement/ Land Acquisition Grant TRANCRAA Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act 94 of 1998 ii iii Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) for funding this report and the research that made it possible, through the partnership between PLAAS and Noragric (the Department of International Environment and Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences). The Department of Land Affairs, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights and their respective provincial and regional offices were supportive by providing information and access to officials. The Land Claims Court kindly made available its records. I also wish to thank all those people interviewed in the course of this research, who shared their time and experiences so generously, as well as Stephen Turner at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and my colleagues at PLAAS who provided valuable feedback on drafts of this report. iv v Land and agrarian reform in South Africa: A status report 2004 Preface his is the third in a series of ‘status programme as government’s primary means reports’ on land and agrarian reform of redistributing land. Chapters 6 and 7 deal Tin South Africa published by the with the attempts to enact land tenure Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies reform in two distinct contexts – among (PLAAS). These reports set out to assess farm workers and farm dwellers resident on progress, problems and emerging perspectives commercial farms, and among people living within the land sector. The first status report under communal tenure regimes either on (Turner & Ibsen 2000) discussed the period land reform projects, in the former ‘coloured from 1994 to late 2000. The second status reserves’ or in the former bantustans or report (Turner 2002) discussed developments ‘homelands’. in the sector from 2000 to 2002. The report identifies the following as the During 2002 and 2003, PLAAS undertook key achievements in South Africa’s land and a wide-ranging study to evaluate progress in agrarian reform: each of the key policy areas of land reform. • The transfer of over 2.6 million hectares The ‘Evaluating Land and Agrarian Reform of land to black South Africans through in South Africa’ (ELARSA) project resulted all aspects of land reform. in the publication of a series of nine reports. • The settlement of 56 650 land restitution These are downloadable from the PLAAS claims. website: www.uwc.ac.za/plaas. • The enactment of legislation to regulate This report updates the analysis and data tenure relations between landowners and presented in the ELARSA series. While much farm workers or others residing on farms. of the data here is cumulative, the focus of • The introduction of a Comprehensive this report falls on developments in 2003 and Agricultural Support Programme (CASP) 2004. The report reviews the achievements to provide training, inputs, infrastructure and shortcomings of land and agrarian and market access to new farmers. reform in South Africa in the first decade of • Increases in national budget allocations to democracy and provides a description of the land reform over time, and improvements status of these initiatives as at 2004. in expenditure of these allocations. Chapter 1 presents a brief historical • Decentralisation of implementation and background and describes the challenge broader participation in project approval. of land and agrarian reform faced by Shortcomings of the programme highlighted the democratic state in 1994. Chapter 2 in the report include: describes the research methods used in the • The slow progress towards redistributing preparation of this report. Chapter 3 is a brief 30% of commercial agricultural land by retrospective of the past decade of land and 2015 – only 3.1% was transferred by agrarian reform, noting the shifts during 2004. this period and distinguishing between the • The limited impact of restitution on ‘Mandela era’ (1994–1999) and the ‘Mbeki patterns of land ownership, as most era’ (1999–2004).