While land and agriculture minister Lulama Xingwana makes strident calls for expropriation to speed up land reform, the smallholders at Hereford wait in vain for her department to honour its promises to grant them title to an irrigation scheme they invaded and revived a decade ago. Stephan Hofstätter reports on an increasingly typical case of black commercial producers reduced to subsistence farmers by government inaction.
Jerry Sefoloshe (53) remembers the day he led a group of land invaders to take over the abandoned 220ha Hereford irrigation scheme, outside Groblersdal in Limpopo, as though the dramatic events of a decade ago unfolded yesterday. He’d convinced 56 farmers living at Tafelkop in the former homeland of Lebowa to take part. Their wives were instructed to bring pieces of laundry to hang outside the abandoned farm houses, and put up curtains in the stripped windows as a flag of ownership. Although they’d informed the police, political parties and the press of their intentions the day before, the long convoy snaked towards Groblersdal without incident. “We were keen farmers, but we had no land,” says Sefoloshe. “It was our Groot Trek.”
On arrival they immediately started clearing canals and chopping out trees that had encroached on their new homes. By the time the police arrived it was too late to evict them. After some of the original invaders returned to Tafelkop, there was enough land for each of the dedicated core of 33 who remained to be allocated viable plots. They worked to a strict set of rules: the “use it or lose it” principle was applied to all irrigable land; the only economic activity allowed was farming or selling farm produce; and anyone who unilaterally refused to pay joint expenses was ejected.
Broken promises
The next step was to regularise their tenure. Although officials were loath to encourage a land grab, it would have been difficult to find more deserving candidates to benefit from South Africa’s land reform programme. The land belonged to the Department of Public Works and had originally been part of a white empowerment scheme for Second World War veterans. The farms had good soils, decent irrigation infrastructure and plenty of available water. Most of the farms had been abandoned by the farmers in the mid-1980s, partly because of apartheid violence and farm murders. The land invaders, most of whom had worked on the scheme as children, at that time returned to farm the rocky waterless soils of Lebowa. There they’d formed the Tafelkop Farmers’ Association, taking every opportunity at open days or input supplier workshops to improve their skills. But they lacked enough land to farm commercially. “People were granted land from the traditional authorities for subsistence use, but we realised we would never make money like that,” explains Sefoloshe. “Our eyes were always on those farms we’d grown up on that were lying empty.” The land claims officials representing the Tafelkop farmers promised them the vacant land when apartheid ended in 1994. But, toward the end of 1996 the government consolidated the plots into four farms and put them up for sale. It was the catalyst that galvanised the Tafelkop farmers into action. “Those were our farms,” says Sefoloshe. “We would never let them sell them.”
Within weeks of their land invasion in February 1997 they’d met former Land Affairs director general Geoff Budlender and his minister Derek Hanekom, been issued a Memorandum of Understanding granting them temporary occupancy rights, and 18 months later a one-year lease with the option to purchase that has been seen by Farmer’s Weekly. The documents proved crucial to their commercial success. They were able to sign planting contracts with the local co-op and use those to secure cheap production finance. Within two years eight farmers in a pilot project, including Sefoloshe, had produced 40t of baby vegetables, most exported to Japan, France and the UK through Swallow International. At its peak the scheme employed up to 400 workers during harvests.
Island of decay
This February, the Hereford land invaders held a sombre commemoration of the day they took over the land and started farming. But they had nothing to celebrate. The scheme they’d revived has become an island of decay surrounded by flourishing commercial farms. Vandalised tobacco-curing barns are used as sun shelters by roaming cattle, with a few patches of low-grade maize as the only sign of agricultural activity. An oft cited cause of failure for land reform farms is a lack of skills and post settlement support. This is openly acknowledged by government now and prompted the launch, this February, of the Settlement and Implementation Strategy (SIS) which proposes the creation of a local agency that coordinates the confusing array of grants and support services land reform beneficiaries are eligible for. But critics say the approved draft misses the point that red tape and inefficiency currently renders much state support ineffectual. SIS threatens to create another stifling layer of bureaucracy rather than improve government’s primary functions as administrator and infrastructure provider, which are often far more important than handouts to entrepreneurs.
This is amply illustrated by the Hereford farmers. A lack of skills or post-settlement support played no role in their demise. Some had been on irrigation study tours to Israel, many regularly attended training courses provided by input suppliers, colleges and rural development agencies, and all the farmers had decades of hands-on experience and help from commercial neighbours to draw from. Moreover, they received several infrastructure grants, subsidies and debt write-offs for items ranging from water bills to canal construction. The real reason for their failure was that no-one in government appeared willing or interested in renewing it or granting them title to the 33 plots the farms had been subdivided into. This left them unable to enter domestic markets when export earnings crashed on the back of a strong rand, after their year-long lease expired. “We tried to get delivery contracts with all the big co-ops and agroprocessing – NTK, Afgri, Koo – but they all wanted proof that we had security of tenure,” say Sefoloshe. “Without it no-one will invest in you.”
Sorting out the mess
Sefoloshe estimates the scheme could increase production fivefold from its previous peak if the farmers were allowed to exercise their option to buy. But this has proved impossible for several reasons. Initially Mpumalanga’s MEC for agriculture and land administration had been granted power of attorney by the Department of Public Works to lease the Hereford farmers the land. But no-one was sure if they should buy it from Public Works or if title first had to go to the province via Land Affairs. Further complications arose. Last April the area was incorporated into Limpopo during a provincial boundary shift. That meant Limpopo’s agriculture officials had to start from scratch to sort out the mess. “We must transfer power of attorney to our MEC. Then we can look at leasing the land to these farmers, with the option to buy,” says Limpopo Department of Agriculture district manager Jethro Nowatha. This February the farmers were informed of a restitution claim on their land. They vowed to fight it. “I grew up in this area and know all the stories about who was forcibly removed when and where,” says Sefoloshe. “The people who were here left before 1913.” He defies officials from the land claims office to try to identify signs of settlement. “They must show us remains of dwellings and graves. They won’t find any.” Nowatha concedes a successful land claim would deal a severe blow to the Hereford farmers. “There are lots of competing pressures on land values here from mines and housing developers,” he says. “These people will come in and offer to make deals with the claimants.” He promised to convene a meeting with the relevant officials from all the departments involved, to resolve the impasse. “We want a solution by the end of March.” Many believe these tenure issues should have been resolved long before government poured grant money into the scheme. R7 million was spent upgrading the pump-driven irrigation system and R1 million on a state-of-the-art packhouse with large cooling rooms, now a gleaming white elephant surrounded by knee-high weeds. Neither has been used for years because the farmers can’t afford the labour and electricity costs.
“The farmers of Hereford have great potential, but it’s time we stopped wasting taxpayers’ money and putting the cart before the horse,” says Naas Joubert, who heads the Limpopo co-op NTK’s emerging farmer desk. Quit posturing Others want government officials to stop posturing and focus on fixing administrative mistakes in the land reform programme. “To see all this productive land going to waste is a shame,” says Teddy Matsithela, who heads a joint structure formed by SA’s black and white farmers’ unions, Nafu and Agri SA. “These are obviously complaints that can easily be fixed. Instead of talking about taking land used productively by white commercial farmers, let’s parcel out available land according to capability, not for political reasons, and make sure it’s used productively.” Sefoloshe couldn’t agree more. “This is not a land invasion like Zimbabwe,” he says. “We are not chasing anyone out or destroying anyone’s possessions. We just want to be fully fledged commercial farmers and earn a decent living from our businesses.”
