Tiro Ramatlhatse
Farmer Gerry Tshitangano feed his goats and sheep at his farm in a country where most new black farmers are struggling to get funding for their enterprises. The writer says that a sizeable portion of land and farms are lying fallow and thereby not contributing to economic growth. Giving military veterans arable land is a viable solution to the plight of those struggling in the new South Africa. Photo: Tiro Ramatlhatse
The government should give large-scale compensation to military veterans who fought and sacrificed for the freedom of all South Africans, writes Gilingwe Mayende.
Johannesburg - The recent publication of the report on a land audit conducted by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) marks a significant development in recent times around the vexed and complex issue of state-owned land.
The audit’s major finding in this regard is that the state owns at least 14 percent of the land, which translates to some 17 million hectares.
Of these, 4 million hectares consist of agricultural land.
The audit report also states that a further 8.3 million hectares (or 7 percent of the total) are classified as “unaccounted for”.
A significant proportion of the agricultural land registered in the name of the government consists mostly of land held by lease-holders, the overwhelming majority of whom are white. Many of these farms are situated in areas that at some point had been part of the so-called black trust lands.
This land had been expropriated by the apartheid government from white farmers and earmarked for incorporation into the Bantustan territories.
For all intents and purposes, a deeper process of research into the land categorised as “unaccounted for” would reveal that it is also part of state land. This land is also largely in the hands of lease-holders who are sitting pretty in the knowledge that the records which would reveal their identity and status mysteriously disappeared around 1994. This is a major challenge that has dogged the DRDLR continuously in its work of administering state land, since the days of its predecessor, the then-Department of Land Affairs (DLA).
Land redistribution is necessary in order to level the playing fields by fostering equitable access to this key resource to the landless and poor, and to facilitate meaningful access to benefits that can be derived from the agricultural economy. Another deserving category who should benefit comprises many of those who as young men and women left the country at the prime of their youth to join the ranks of armed liberation formations such as Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla) and the Azanian National Liberation Army (Azanla).
It is now something of a cliché that as freedom fighters the members of these formations risked life and limb, and sacrificed a substantial part of their lives, for the liberation of their country.
It is also indeed true that there are significant numbers among their ranks who have since 1994 somehow managed to improve their lot and today live relatively comfortable lives, mostly as military officers, government officials, and business people. However, for many military veterans who are former freedom fighters, life continues to be a daily struggle to survive.
This category is defined here to refer to freedom fighters in the liberation struggle who received military training and spent a considerable length of time living in camps in neighbouring countries, whether they saw action or not.
The ongoing efforts by the government to improve the levels of pension and other benefits and opportunities designed to enhance the socio-economic well-being of former freedom fighters, have to be acknowledged. The most important step in this direction is to be found in the provisions and activities around the implementation of the Military Veterans Act, 18 of 2011.
Importantly, this legislation provides for the establishment of the South African National Military Veterans Association (SANMVA).
It also provides, in section 5, inter alia, for state-assisted benefits for military veterans in areas such as “education, training and skills development; facilitation of employment placement; facilitation of or advice on business opportunities; subsidisation or provision of public transport; pension; access to health care; housing; and burial support”.
However, land is not mentioned explicitly in the act, although it could be subsumed under the provision on “facilitation of or advice on business opportunities”.
These developments have come about partly in recognition of the inadequacy of the rather low “special pension” that is available.
In the light of the work pioneered by the Department of Defence and Military Veterans, this contribution is aimed at highlighting the role that land allocation could play as an additional component to buttress the compensation package for military veterans who are former freedom fighters as contemplated in the MVA. What better way is there of compensating people who fought for the liberation of their country than to give them access to some of its land, however little? The clarity that the land audit has provided on the availability of state land should be seen as providing an important opportunity in this regard.
The need to consider the redistribution of state land to former freedom fighters is also supported by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the holders of the government-issued farm leases, of which the 4 million hectares highlighted in the report form a major part, are in fact deficit producers.
Many of them have debt levels beyond the critical levels. They have reached the point of no return, as it were, as they have proved incapable of operating their farming enterprises as going concerns. These “producers” have been under-performing for many decades and are adding no value to the economy.
Indeed, many have left large chunks of their land lying fallow and unutilised for several decades.
These “farmers” are therefore an unnecessary administrative burden on the government and a drain on the national fiscus, and clearly do not deserve to be kept in the government’s books any longer. To add insult to injury, many default regularly in the payment of their leases and have done so with some sense of impunity over many years. These facts should make the case for the outright expropriation of this group more than convincingly.
It goes without saying that the mechanisms that would be required for the selection of the beneficiaries of such a programme could best be worked out by the Department of Defence and Military Veterans, in conjunction with the DRDLR, and the SANMVA. The SANMVA in particular would be better placed to work around issues such as length of service and rank, within the context of determining who would be more deserving of a plot of land.
One positive factor about this is that the names of the overwhelming number of these ex-combatants are recorded on an official database of serving or demobilised members of the SANDF and have force numbers.
This would ease the process of identifying them.
The allocation of land to combatants returning from war is not a new phenomenon, and has actually been a common practice since the dawn of time.
Colonial history is replete with examples of large numbers of soldiers being given land as spoils of war or as compensation for the time they spent outside meaningful employment while involved in combat and related duties.
In South Africa, many of the initial beneficiaries of the conquest and dispossession of Africans were soldiers who served in various colonial armies.
Many towns in our countryside bear names that honour the leaders of such groups such as Major-General Charles Von Stutterheim and Major-General George Cathcart (who also served as the governor of the Cape Colony in the 1850s) in the Eastern Cape, Lieutenant-General Harry Smith in KwaZulu-Natal, and Komandant Louw Wepener in the Free State.
These towns are surrounded by vast tracts of farm land that were parcelled out to military men in relatively large chunks.
Needless to say, not everyone who qualifies under the category of former freedom fighter would receive some of the state land, mainly because its availability would be limited.
Even on the basis of a conservative calculation based on the allocation of 200ha to each beneficiary out of the 4 million, the total would amount to about 20 000 beneficiaries. This would cover less than half of the potential beneficiaries. However, this would also serve as a significant starting point that could have a snowball effect, and set in motion the identification of other ways of accommodating former freedom fighters within the broader land reform programme.
It also goes without saying that not every ex-combatant who would meet the qualification criteria to benefit from the land allocation process would be interested in farming.
The situation of those falling in this category would clearly have to be addressed through a different approach.
This land should be made available free of charge and must be held under a long-term leasehold system of 99 years, as well as on the basis of the “use it or lose it” principle, so that it is not allowed to lie fallow.
Needless to say, it would also be necessary for the government to provide support to the beneficiaries in the form of training, information, extension of credit on affordable terms, subsidised inputs and access to reliable markets. This will go a long way in helping to avoid the pitfalls that have been associated with the implementation of many land reform projects in the past, many of which have collapsed.
It should also be borne in mind that members of former liberation armies are a resilient group with a strong capacity for organisation.
Another common trait that they share is that they have long memories and a disposition generally of not being prepared to compromise on the fundamental objectives of the liberation struggle in which they were involved.
Addressing the land question is one of those cardinal objectives.
An object lesson in this regard is provided by the Zimbabwean experience, where the actions of war veterans precipitated and propelled a process that culminated in the government implementing what it eventually called its “fast-track land reform programme”.
It is no way an attempt to stretch the imagination to say that a programme of allocating land to freedom fighters would serve as a much-needed spur towards increasing the pace of land reform in South Africa.
The allocation of land should be a major part of the process of reintegration and memorialising, which are some of the noble objectives envisaged in the MVA.
Our country owes these freedom fighters this small token of recognition for their sacrifices.
*Professor Mayende is a former director-general of the Department of Land Affairs and is the chairman of the board of AgriSETA. He writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Sunday Independent