The Agriculture and Land Affairs Department was heavily criticised in Parliament on Tuesday for failing to effectively deal with farm evictions.

"You [the department] are just a joke. You have done nothing," ANC MP David Dlali said in response to the department's presentation to the agriculture and land affairs portfolio committee.

"TAU [the Transvaal Agricultural Union] and Agri SA are smiling because they know the department is not going to do anything [about farm evictions]."

Deputy Land and Agriculture Minister Dirk du Toit said the strategy guiding the eviction of people from farm land had to be changed. "We have to rethink this and change our strategy fundamentally," he said.

While the department was functioning "better than in recent years" it was "not nearly" where it should be, he said.
The commission's chairman criticised the department and the legal system intended to handle evictions, after hearing a first hand account from two people who had been kicked off farms in Limpopo.

"The courts are failing us, the law is failing us, the CCMA
[Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration] is failing us," Reuben Mohlaloga told the committee.

The department's acting director general Tozi Gwanya acknowledged that the review of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) had failed. "On this one we have failed the public."

He said the willing buyer/willing seller policy was being reviewed, as was legislation intended to deal with land expropriation.

Deputy director general Mduduzi Shabane said "attempts have been made" to review the Land Tenure Act and the ESTA, but that effective enforcement was needed.

"We could have done more and we intend to do precisely that."

He said the department had set aside R32 million for evictees to get proper legal representation.

Teresa Yates from land rights organisation Nkuzi remarked that no programme had been put in place to help workers get legal help.

"It's a bit unfair that the burden again falls on over-stretched and under-resourced civil society organisations when this responsibility should fall on the state."

The committee should ensure that there was a dedicated budget to deal with tenure security on farms and help put in place a programme that would identify farm dwellers and secure their rights. Better monitoring and evaluation by the land affairs department was also needed, said Yates.

There was a need to tighten legislation and create a category of "non-evictable occupiers" -- people who had stayed on a farm their entire lives -- and who should be allowed to stay there.

Yates also called for a separation of tenure and employment rights so that workers could not get evicted when they lost their jobs.

According to a survey released four years ago, about two million people were evicted from farms between 1984 and 2004. A further 4.2 million were displaced.

TAU criticised the findings as being outdated. Yates said the extent to which people were currently being evicted without court orders was not known.

She also noted that there had been reported cases of new black farmers saying they felt the ESTA did not apply to them, and that it was meant only for white land owners.

Agri SA's Theo de Jager, a farmer near Tzaneen in Limpopo, pointed to several failings of the ESTA. It created no authority or forum for managing the stock of farm workers. Their animals sometimes exceeded the carrying capacity of the land or began to compete for grazing with those of the farm owner. He said that people living on his farm were leasing out homes on another farm to illegal Zimbabwean immigrants.

Beneficiaries of land redistribution or land claims were also finding themselves "stuck with" workers who had stayed on the land after the owner had vacated it.

Unsanitary living conditions also threatened farmer's ability to export fruit to the European Union, as strict international requirements had to be adhered to, which included the overall standard of the farm.

"There are so many problems with this legislation. All parties must sit and thrash out solutions for each area. It becomes increasingly hard to remain competitive in a global market with the way this legislation constrains [us]."

He said that the 40,000 or so commercial farms in South Africa each had an average of 75 people living on them.
"Welfare is not our core business. We need an imaginative solution."

TAU representative Jannie Roux said it was unfair to ask the agricultural sector to provide housing for workers when this was not done in other sectors of the economy.

"In no other sector of the economy is it expected for the employer to provide accommodation after termination of employment. It doesn't even apply in the state, for example the police or the defence force."

He rejected recourse to illegal evictions, but said that when eviction orders were obtained the parties against whom it was served often refused to comply.

Agri SA president Laurie Bosman said legal evictions did not provide for alternative accommodation, which made farmers look bad. "The sheriff [of the court] just puts people next to the road. It damages the image of the farmer when it was the legal system.

MPs called for partnerships between the government and farmers. De Jager criticised this, citing instances where the department had broken off communication with farmers.
"There's not enough trust and open communication to forge those partnerships you are calling for."