Land: Government can learn from the Church

About two years ago, while still working full-time in the field of social justice and civil society, my employer — a former cabinet minister under Nelson Mandela and unionist — gave me the opportunity to accompany him to Kwa-Zulu-Natal in search of land for a community-based, cooperative farming initiative.

I learnt a few lessons in my research leading up to this trip on the issue of land and creating sustainable livelihoods for some of the poorest people in the country, livelihoods created from their own labour.

In as much as there is a legitimate debate around resource ownership in South Africa — particularly in relation to land—sadly much of the agricultural land scattered across South Africa lies fallow and unused. This has turned South Africa from being a net exporter of food to now being a net importer of food.

This does not diminish the fact that land needs to be more equitably distributed, even land that is currently in use; however fallow land, some on the government’s balance sheet, would be a brilliant starting point.

The land question arose once more when President Zuma, in his State of the Nation Address, delivered on February 12, said the government would reignite their focus on land redistribution and that land ownership by foreign nationals would no longer be a possibility going forward.  Accordingly, the alternative to foreign nationals — and presumably enterprises — owning South African land would be to permit long-term leases as their most permanent possession of land.

With an estimated 7% of South African land vested in foreign ownership, limiting the further acquisition of land by foreigners might seem to be a practical starting point in aiding land redistribution.

Simple land transference is not enough, however. There is an assumption that just because a community has been working on a farm, or live in a rural area, that they will have an innate ability to farm. My trip from two years ago proved how incorrect this assumption is.

Speaking to the regional and municipal managers in Kwa-Zulu-Natal, it was clear that support in the form of seed, irrigation, connecting small-scale farmers to the market and the imparting of skills are essential to the success of land redistribution. Sadly, these essential elements for the successful use of redistributed agricultural land are all too often completely absent.

Our conversation with these regional managers proved that many of these schemes required government’s financial and practical, ongoing support. Even in instances where this support was given on an ongoing basis, the lack of farming skills left the land to eventually lie fallow.

The Catholic Church—owner of generous stretches of land — recognised that land and the redistribution thereof is in fact important. Catholic social teaching would demand that ordinary people in society benefit from the Church’s resources, more so land.

The Southern African Catholic Bishop’s Conference therefore established a Land Desk in aid and in cooperation of government’s redistribution programme. Philani Mkhize, coordinator of the desk, told me on my Radio Veritas show that the Church recognises that it is not just an act of handing over land to communities, but that the essential imparting of skills is crucial. This approach has yielded positive results and teaches us a few lessons.

Land redistribution should be initiated for the good of people rather than for political expedience. With the rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters, whose central policy hinges on radical land policies, the incumbent party feels the threat of losing a younger disaffected vote, and so seems to have responded with a “radical” policy of their own.

Long-term lease agreements work well in many parts of the continent, Mozambique being the closest and most obvious working example. So the issue is not the policy itself but the reason why it is implemented and to what end.

If such a policy is to be implemented, with the supposed aim of communal beneficiation, than surely it should yield these results.

The government does not have far to go to find out how to implement such a programme fruitfully. They can simply pick up the phone and call Philani Mkhize to learn valuable lessons on how to truly befit the benefactors of redistribution schemes.