Farmers have lost faith in the government at multiple levels, said Dr Theo de Jager, the executive director of Saai. They distrust the state, lack confidence in the national department responsible for expropriation, and certainly do not trust politically appointed officials deployed in municipal offices.
He said the government’s track record of land expropriation at below-market value is far too suspect for landowners to feel safe under this legislation.
De Jager was responding to President Cyril Ramaphosa signing the Expropriation Act and the Preservation and Development of Agricultural Land Act.
Uncertainty about land claims
“While certain agricultural business organisations have attempted to reassure landowners that the courts will ensure ‘fair and equitable compensation’, these assurances ring hollow. These same organisations have already lost credibility among primary producers for supporting initiatives such as the Agriculture and Agro-Processing Master Plan and black economic empowerment-based export criteria for family farms.
“The term ‘weights and balances’ sounds eerily similar to the 1994 political rhetoric used to convince South Africans that racial discrimination in scholarships, job placements, and quotas was a thing of the past only for these very policies to become entrenched in national legislation,” he said.
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He noted that one of the greatest risks facing landowners is the uncertainty surrounding land claims. Even 27 years after the original cutoff date for land claims, South Africa still does not have a finalised list of all claimed farms.
“According to parliamentary responses, the first reported list of claims in 2002 included 63 000 claims. That number has since grown to approximately 83 000. However, these figures do not reflect the number of farms, as one claim can cover multiple properties such as the Makgoba land claim in Tzaneen, Limpopo, which affects 775 farms.
“Additionally, there is a separate category of 163 000 ‘new order’ land claims filed since 2014. However, these claims have been put on hold by a court ruling until the 1998 claims are resolved,” he added.
Compensation vs. market value
De Jager said this forces organisations that serve the interests of landowners, especially family farmers, to spare no effort or resources in the battle to protect them against the application of “discount clauses” and other calculations designed to undermine market value in compensation, ultimately enabling the state to push for nil compensation.
“This is not just a battle of ideas. It is a fundamental economic issue. The push for transformation and asset redistribution without regard for economic growth or entrepreneurship poses a major threat to South Africa’s food security and investment climate.
“But the real question remains, in what kind of democracy is an individual expected to personally bear the cost of a national land reform agenda?”
De Jager stated that Saai was born out of a 2018 court battle against the attempted expropriation of the Akkerland game farm in Limpopo at just 25% of its market value.
“This is not just a case of anti-transformation farmers ‘crying wolf.’ Farmers’ scepticism is rooted in experience,” he said.
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