The previous four briefs have dealt with the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and its Draft Preservation of Agricultural Land Framework Bill. But there is a second player in the field: the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR). Their purposes and programmes overlap. The purposes and programmes specified in Budget 2015: Estimates of National Expenditure are as follows:
Agriculture, Forestry and FIsheries | Rural Development and Land Reform | |
Purpose | Lead, support and promote agriculutral, foresty and fisheries resources managment through policies, strategies and programmes to enhance sustainable use, and achieve economic growth, job creation, food security, rural development and transformation. | Create and maintain an equitable and sustainable land dispenation to ensure and act as a catalyst in rural development to ensure sustainable rural livelihoods, decent work and continued social and economic advancement for all South Africans. |
Programmes |
1.Administration |
1. Administration 2. National Geomatics Management Services 3. Rural Development 4. Restitution 5. Land Reform |
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform intends to introduce five bills in parliament by the end of the year. None has been published yet, but their names and purposes are set out in the Department’s Strategic Plan for 2015 to 2020. They are:
Also relevant is the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act, passed last year.
While detailed comment must await publication of the Bills, some questions are already apparent.
Current statements on this issue are confusing. The State of the Nation 2015 address announced the policy of a limiting all farms to a maximum of 12 000 hectares. The Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform said the following in his 2015 budget speech:
We have come up with the following policy proposals on the ceilings, for both natural and juristic persons:
a) SMALL SCALE FARMS. The ceiling for a viable commercial small scale farm should be 1 000hectares;
b) MEDIUM SCALE FARMS. The ceiling for a medium scale viable commercial farm should be 2 500 hectares; and,
c) LARGE SCALE FARMS. The ceiling for a large scale viable commercial farm should be 5 000 hectares.
We have come up with a SPECIAL CATEGORY to address the 12 000ha maximum announced by the President. We are proposing that this maximum applies only to three categories of land use: forestry, game farms and renewable energy farms, especially wind energy.
Any excess land portions shall be expropriated and redistributed, and compensation will be on the basis of the ‘just and equitable’ principle enshrined in section 25(3) of our Constitution.
This raises the following questions:
Optimal land use, food security, land redistribution, modernising communal land tenure, and rural development and reduction of rural poverty are all government goals. But there are tradeoffs between them. There is, as yet, no sign of acknowledgement of these tradeoffs, much less an indication of how they are to be approached.
The cover of the DLRD strategic plan has a photograph of people marching towards the future in departmental uniform, with arms swinging high. The march will be long and circuitous over difficult terrain, with battles on the way. Soldiers leaving for war in August 1914 thought they would be back for Christmas. They weren’t.
Charles Simkins
Senior Researcher
charles@hsf.org.za