In 2006 Farmer’s Weekly carried a story about the Besters/Quedusizi Land Reform Project near Ladysmith, which was praised both as a progressive farmer initiative and as a model for cooperation
between farmers, government and labour tenants.

However, four years later the project is characterised by poor service delivery and tension between beneficiaries. The chosen enterprise model was also criticised as it led to social fractures. Sean Christie investigates what went wrong.


Things have gone horribly wrong at the Besters/Quedusizi Land Reform Project near Ladysmith. When it was launched it was praised as a model of cooperation between farmers – who voluntarily offered more than 14 000ha of land – government and labour tenants.

It was regarded as “the new dawn of land reform”. Now, four years on, the only things that flourish there are bitterness, anger, and disappointment. Zakhele Ndlovu is chairperson of Zwelihle Dairy, bought by the government in 2006 as part of its fledgling Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS), and he leads me out of a tin lean-to into the freezing cold.

“I want to show you something,” he says, pointing in the direction of a small shed beyond a bullock’s kraal. “For many years the government has promised to give us a dairy, but I’m tired of asking them when they’re going to build it, because they always say they will, then do nothing. We can’t afford to feed these cows any more. They’re dying like flies.”

In a nearby paddock, a carcass is being chewed by dogs. With us is Zweli Mbhele, chairperson of the company that coordinates the implementation of the Besters Land Reform Project. Laughing nervously, he jokes that Zakhele better watch out – the government isn’t going to be happy with what he’s showing me.

But Zakhele is beyond caring. After all, the state’s development of PLAS and the Besters land reform initiative went hand-in-hand.

Effect on government

The Besters initiative was one of the reasons behind government’s turn towards an area-based approach to land reform. Small groups of claimants would be placed on large farms where government could easily deliver services to them.

The PLAS implementation document explains that the state as the development driver will acquire the land, create a planning framework, develop the land and then assist potential beneficiaries through grants and services to acquire this land.

The way PLAS was meant to work was so akin to the spirit of Besters the state decided one of its very first PLAS farms should become part of the Besters Project.

The area-based planning principles were the same, the government’s commitment to develop the skills of beneficiaries dove-tailed with the developmental ethos of the Besters farmers and the intended outcome of claimants owning their own land was a match too.

Commercial Property Associations

The beneficiaries of the land which comprised the original Besters Project, as well as the beneficiaries of the PLAS farm the state later added to the project, were all organised into 14 commercial property associations (CPAs), each governed by a constitution drawn up with the help of what was then the Department of Land Affairs.

There was a critical difference though: title deeds to the PLAS farm were never transferred to its CPA, despite promises to this effect. All the other CPAs became the legal owners of their land, cattle, and equipment almost immediately.

Four years on, according to former project mentor Simon Tedder, a few of the CPAs are getting along fine, some are stagnant, and some have completely collapsed. Zwelihle Dairy belongs to the latter group.

“If this land had been given to us I would have taken these cows to the butchery before they died,” says Zakhele. “With the money I would have bought things that we need on the farm – feed, diesel and medicine. Right now we’re only getting 30ℓ/day of milk from 20 cows, because they are not well. With that money we can’t keep the farm running, which is why the cows are dying.”

‘Cattle don’t wait for politicians’

The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) won’t say how many cattle have died, but Zakhele says the DRDLR’s Sam Mahlaba, who is responsible for the farm’s assets, has come out four times to take pictures of dead animals.

Sam says he’s told his superiors about the dire situation at Zwelihle and although he’s not allowed to talk to the media it’s clear from his tone of voice that he’s exasperated too.

But where does it stop? Zakhele is becoming increasingly worried that fingers will be pointed in his direction.

If it comes to that, though, Roland Henderson, one of the architects of the Besters Project, will be there to tell the truth. “This is the only PLAS 1 farm in the area, and it’s been done very badly from the start,” Roland says.

“Apart from complexities inherent in dairy farming, the government divided the farm between two CPAs, neither of which received any support until last year, when I was brought on board to help increase the herd and get it through winter.

“This year the animals have been left to fend for themselves again. There’s talk of more support, but what the government has never understood is that cows don’t hang around until the politicians are ready.”

So much, then, for the government’s custodianship of one of its own pilot projects. What about the remaining 14 700ha the farmers released to the Besters Project, and the 2 500 labour tenants this land was transferred to?
 
The trouble with collective ownership
With Zweli Mbhele as our guide we set off to investigate some of these CPAs in a University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Mazda, with Dr Marietjie van der Merwe at the wheel. She recently collated the research of UKZN students who were assigned a CPA each, and she came back to verify the findings.

“This is a lot more complex than I originally anticipated,” she says, as we arrive at the farm Beaulieu, to speak to leaders of the wryly named Inyakanyaka Yumshini CPA (The Machinery is Broken).

In the barren entrance hall of a farmhouse vandalised by non-paying tenants, Ephraim Khoza and Moses Mpungose tell us that the CPA, which originally comprised 16 muzis (households), has divided all its land, equipment and cattle between three groups.

Why? “Because they can’t agree on anything in such a big group,” says Zweli, who’s translating for us. “Also, some people were doing all the work while others just came and asked for their share of the money at the end of the year.”

Moses and Ephraim belong to what remains of the original CPA. They say that, despite the fact that seven of its 10 members work for other white commercial farmers, they’re doing just fine since the split.
Later, speaking to Roland Henderson, it becomes clear that the organic division of resources is now a defining characteristic of the Besters Project.

 “In most cases the CPAs have at least divided the communal herd. Nobody looks after something which is collectively owned – this is the lesson of world history, never mind local land reform,” he says. The directors of the Besters Farmers Association who initiated the project support these sub-divisions, he adds.

Was it a mistake to create CPAs, then? “At the time nobody could think of a more suitable legal entity through which to organise the beneficiaries, so we went with CPAs,” explains Roland. But in 2008 he co-authored a World Bank report about the need for a different enterprise model, suggesting smaller farming units allocated to individual owners.

“CPAs don’t define a member’s worth,” says Roland. “The house rules of each CPA allow members to exit, but there’s no mechanism to value individual shares. We’re suggesting different types of subdivisions to accommodate different wants and needs.

“Some beneficiaries just want to live on the land, and they should be able to do so. Those who want to sell their share to buy a taxi should be allowed to, while those who can and want to farm should be able to increase their property for this purpose.”

So what’s holding up these subdivisions? “It’ll cost a fortune,” says former project mentor Stephan Boshoff. “There are over 400 households and each subdivision would have to be separately registered, transfer fees would have to be paid, and so on.

“Who is going to pay? We all know the government doesn’t have the money.”
On a systemic level the project is being hampered by what the World Bank report describes as “the enormous complexity of the grant systems, disbursement procedures and accounting rules that govern the management of funds.”

Mentors and misunderstandings

Dr Van der Merwe’s students suggested that the Besters beneficiaries were desperate for ongoing training and mentorship. When the project began, Simon Tedder and Stephan Boshoff were employed as full-time mentors, but their contacts expired after only three years.

Dr Van der Merwe puts this to Ephraim and Moses and they shake their heads – they don’t want mentors. At Zwelihle it’s the same. Zakhele says he wants the title and resources, not mentorship.

What went wrong? Zweli suggests that the role of mentors was not adequately explained to the CPAs, especially to beneficiaries who don’t visit their farms very often. There was a misconception that the mentors were supposed to function as managers, so the fact that they visited only once a week caused tension.

This explanation doesn’t seem to completely cover it, and neither does the CPA members’ insistence that they know everything about farming. It’s abundantly clear they need all the help they can get.

“In hindsight,” says Roland, “the CPAs probably needed managers who could have gradually relaxed into mentorship roles. This is a pilot project and so we were defining duties and feedback mechanisms as we went along.

“The two mentors started during the capital investment phases, which of course entailed a lot of hard work. They had to chase the CPAs up, and this perhaps produced echoes of the old master-servant relationship.

“More fundamentally, though, and as I’ve said, the CPA approach was all wrong. It led to social fractures, and the mentors naturally became embroiled in these, because social issues trump agricultural ones every time.”

Stephan doesn’t put it as delicately. “In my view there was no big stick. Each CPA had its house rules and there was a committee elected to enforce them, but in reality nobody was prepared to stand up and be the bad guy when a fellow member did something illegal like slaughter a cow from the communal herd.”

In addition, a near total lack of faith in government’s ability to deliver on its promises made mentoring some of the CPAs impossible, says Stephan.

“When the Ingula Kayishzwa CPA on Maritzmouth Farm were told they would have to rely on government for future assistance they promptly divided their 180 cattle between the households. The next day 70% of those cattle were at a public market. They wanted to take the money and run,” he says.

Simon’s biggest challenge was trying to teach people who didn’t want to be taught. “There are a lot of people in the CPAs who simply do not want to be farmers, and many who have no aptitude for farming,” he says.

“There should have been a more rigorous selection process at the start, with land going to those who had already shown an inclination and an aptitude for farming. Not everyone is born a racing car driver, or an accountant – it’s the same with farming.”

And whatever you do, don’t get any of the stakeholders started on the support provided by the department of agriculture’s Ladysmith office.

“There are two women in the Ladysmith office who we never see,” says Zweli. He’s far more diplomatic in his evaluation than Simon Tedder, who says, “What those two know about agriculture would do more harm than good.”
 
Moderate success

Zweli is chairperson of the Masakhane CPA on Rooykop, and while he admits the CPA has basically fractured, he is getting along quite well.

“I have 105 cattle now,” he says. “Every three years I exchange bulls with Roland to keep the genetics healthy. My mother always told me not to buy a car before I get married. She said a wife is more expensive than a car. Well, now I’m married, I have two children, and I’m thinking of buying a car.’

By common consent, the CPAs that have fostered good relations with their commercial farmer neighbours have fared best of all.

“The Mphuzanyoni CPA beneficiaries received a huge amount of land which government has not been able to fill with cattle, so I lease some of it back from them,” says Simon. Mphuzanyoni has been able to double the size of its communal herd since 2006.

“There is give and take among two or three of the CPAs and their neighbours,” Stephan explains. “They help each other burn fire breaks and put out fires, share information and so on.”

Hope for the future

Great hope is vested in Anwhar Madhanpall, the new chief director of Rural Development and Land Reform in KZN.

“Anwhar is an attention-to-detail man, and we’re hoping he’ll come and rescue the project before it becomes a full-scale disaster,’ says Roland Henderson.

Despite all these obstacles and pitfalls the project’s moving spirits, particularly Roland Henderson, Donovan Smythe and Zweli Mbehle, remain committed to finding solutions, and a change of the political guard and the help of university researchers could give them the solutions.

In one respect the success of Besters is beyond doubt. The district is safer and racial relations are better, thanks to the Herculean efforts that went into the voluntary transferral of white commercial farmland to black labour tenants.

“This is now in the hands of government and there’s nothing more we can do,” says Stephan. “If it carries on like this the project will soon hit rock bottom, and the commercial farmers will be there to see what can be done to get the land producing again.”