MEC Allan Winde,
Honourable Program Director,
Guests.

Let me take this opportunity to extend our appreciation for being invited to share this platform with my former colleague, the Hon. Allan Winde, MEC for Business Opportunity in the Western Cape Provincial Government. Thank you for inviting me back to my province. This is my home and your home. We need to learn to share our province.

We need to reduce the tension in our relationships, to put more focus on finding together what works. We can do this together under the Constitution and in the spirit as well as the letter of the laws, which define the inter-governmental relationship between the national government and the provincial and local government.

The contest between political parties should not be the centre of this relationship. Of course I will continue to put forward my belief in the policies of my party, as Allan will in his, but that should not be the centre of how we solve the pressing problems we are facing in bringing land reform to the rural parts of the Western Cape.

We can work together and find each other in this. In fact, we must find each other in particular for the good of the people who, as a result of more than 350 years of oppression, are now identified as beneficiaries of the land reform program.

During my input in the budget process in Parliament I stated that we take this responsibility towards land reform very seriously because it is central in realising the social and economic transformation objectives of government.

We have a task to contribute towards building an inclusive society.

The diagnostic report of the National Planning Commission (2011) identified failure to implement policies and the absence of broad partnerships as the main contributing reasons, central to our shortcomings as government.

I am hopeful that from now onwards our respective departments would facilitate such partnerships for the betterment of the lives of the people in this Province.

The Reconstruction and Development Programme (1994) stated that –“… no political democracy can survive and flourish if the mass of our people remain in poverty, without land, without tangible prospects for a better life…”. In other words, the current ownership patterns are not sustainable. It is with this in mind, as well as with the understanding that our work is central in reversing the legacy of the 1913 Natives Land Act, that we must approach our work.

It is my submission that most delegates will agree on these fundamentals whilst we may disagree on some of the practicalities.

Land Reform

Chairperson, it is with this understanding in mind that the Ministry and the Department is pursuing land reform in our country through the following four pillars:

•     Restitution of Land Rights;
•     Redistribution of Land;
•     Land Tenure reform; and
•     Development of the land.

Within the context of the National Development Plan (NDP)- land reform is accorded the task of ensuring economic growth and facilitating integration.

We believe that the Land Tenure summit we held on 4-6 September 2014 has helped us to understand where the challenges and gaps are regarding tenure options. We hope that the discussions in this summit will help enhance the debate.

For us, land reform success is not just about the number of hectors of land transferred to previously landless and property-less people, but also the extent to which this contributes to job creation and poverty alleviation.

District Land Committees

The NDP introduces the idea of District Land Committees (DLC) to manage the process of land reform at a local level. The original plan of the Department was to pilot the DLCs in a few districts in a few provinces, to learn in practise how to meet the challenges they will bring. However, the MINMEC meeting held in August decided that all provinces should begin to form these committees.

Although the NDP introduces the idea of the DLCs it is not prescriptive in this regard. In fact the NDP explicitly says that, “we believe that our proposed model is only one of many that should be considered.” (NDP 2030, page 227) We need to move forward in this spirit of debate and discussion and not be fixated on implementing the NDP word for word. We must learn as we go along, otherwise our dogmatism may cause more problems.

I agree with the principles outlined in the NDP for “workable and pragmatic land reform”, amongst which are:

• “to enable  more rapid transfer of land to black beneficiaries without distorting land markets,”
• “ensure sustainable production on transferred land by making sure that human capacities precede land transfer through incubators, learnerships, mentoring, apprenticships and accelerated training in agricultural sciences.”
• “this must offer white commercial farmers and organised industry bodies the opportunity to significantly contribute to the success of black farmers through mentorships, chain intergration, preferential procurement and meaningful skills transfer.”

The key issue we should be looking at in establishing DLCs is their representivity and ability to get all key role players together to identify land, allocate it for redistribution and ensure that it becomes productive. Buy-in will be crucial to our success.

So we also need to see how groups which are largely marginalised in the rural economy are brought into the centre of the land reform program. This must include workers on farms, organised or not, women, existing black small farmers and the youth. If they are not part of the process and do not benefit from the reform process they can become a threat to the land reform program they are meant to benefit from.

To only include agricultural land owners and key stakeholders such as the private sector (commercial banks, agribusiness), the government (national and provincial) and government agencies, as proposed in the NDP model, might lead to these problems. So let’s be flexible to ensure the success of this program.

Evictions and Land Redistribution

At the same time as we are moving forward with this exciting program, we continue to be reminded of our divisive past. We have noted with concern the rise in the number of farm evictions in this municipal area in particular, and the province in general, despite the Extension of Security of Tenure Act. Although some of the evictions go through the courts the proper legal process of serving a notice to the Department is often not followed.

In this financial year, since 1 April 2014, our departmental offices have had to deal with a huge load of eviction cases. There were 10 cases in Eden; 28 in the West Coast; 24 in the Cape Metro; 22 in Overberg; and finally in the region where we are today, Cape Winelands, there were 163 cases. This does not even reflect the number of individuals affected, just the number of cases brought to our attention. These numbers could be more considering that some cases are not even reported.

If you drive around this province you will see that most of the farms are littered with ruined buildings. Most of these are the former homes of farm workers who have been evicted and now live in the informal areas of the towns and villages. The farmers have demolished their houses to ensure that they cannot return. This cannot be in the spirit of the land reform program and the NDP. It goes completely against what we are trying to achieve - a sharing of the land.

We are calling for a moratorium on evictions. We are asking you all, including the Provincial Government, to lead on this. If we continue to justify evictions as being a response to uncertainty in policy, we are not acting in the spirit of the times. In fact to do so would show bad faith and a lack of commitment to the land reform process. MEC lets us show leadership together in this process.

TRANCAA Areas

Another key area for land reform in our province is the issue of the Trancaa areas. There are the small remaining remnants of the vast tracts of land that were occupied by the indigenous people before colonisation. There small areas are all that remain.

At the National Land Reform Summit this issue was raised sharply by people from these areas in the Western Cape. They are concerned that in a number of the areas, municipalities are further alienating the beneficiaries of these areas from their own land. Genadendal, Ebaneazer and Kranshoek are amongst the areas where this is happening. We will, as a Department, be bringing changes to the Act, as well as the proclamations in terms of the Act, to ensure that people living in these areas become the beneficiaries of the process of transferring this land to representative community structures and become part of the Comprehensive Rural Development Program as decided by the MINMEC.

Conclusion

I want to encourage this workshop to broaden the debate. Let us also set principles and targets so that we can measure our progress against those targets. In the Western Cape, the most advanced sections of our country's rural economy exist alongside huge rural poverty.

It is our challenge to work together to change this. We can use this huge wealth and good will to create something which includes those who have been marginalised for the past 350 years. We need to work together to do so.

We wish you success in these important endeavours.

Issued by: Department of Rural Development and Land Reform