Despite numerous policies aimed at land reform and rural development, effective implementation remains our biggest challenge. It’s time to turn great plans into action, writes Peter Setou, CEO of the Vumelana Advisory Fund in Food For Mzansi’s Election Thought Leader series: Agriculture at the dawn of political change.
The National General Elections on 29 May represent a momentous day for the future of South Africa. Arguably, the upcoming elections are the most highly contested since the inaugural multi-party elections that ushered in the dawn of democracy in 1994.
South Africa has changed a lot since 1994. The country is facing a new set of challenges such as perennial electricity shortages, a moribund economy, unabated and debilitating levels of crime, and widening inequalities.
Some of the historic challenges have stubbornly remained a feature of our social and economic landscape, such as rising unemployment, abject poverty, and the racially skewed land ownership patterns inherited from the past.
The question of land redistribution has arguably served as the most polarising issue. Since 1994, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has introduced a plethora of legislation and policies to redress historic land dispossession while ensuring that the process does not imperil food security or spook investment in agriculture and rural development.
The consensus is that, while there has been significant progress, challenges remain. The willing buyer-willing seller policies have fallen short of adequately addressing the allocation of land to previously dispossessed peoples, while a lack of post-settlement support has seen vast, once thriving tracts of land degenerate into unproductive ruins.
Government regulations and rural development
Prior to 1994, expansive rural areas, particularly in the former Bantustan areas, were largely neglected, resulting in desolate areas that wallowed in economic stagnation. One of the priorities of the government post-1994 was to prioritise the development of rural areas, encapsulated in policies such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme, popularly known as the RDP.
The RDP emphasised the importance of improving the working and living conditions of rural people and critiqued the migrant labour system as a cause of rural impoverishment. The RDP committed to utilising land reform to change ownership patterns in agriculture and to support the growth of smallholder farmers for affordable food production to meet the needs of all South Africans.
In a seminal paper titled “Pro-poor rural development in South Africa?” by Peter Jacobs and Tim Hart, the authors note that the approach and urgency to rural development differed under the presidencies of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, respectively.
“Under the leadership of Thabo Mbeki, the notion of two economies became the conceptual anchor for defining the causes of rural underdevelopment and misery. Dualism became a lens to frame rural polarisation as well as the inequalities between commercial agriculture and subsistence farming. This conception also formed a basis for rationalising government’s rural programmes and projects, such as the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP), for coordinating and targeting public investment in 13 rural nodes deemed to be the most deprived localities,” Jacobs and Hart noted.
They continued: “President Zuma elevated rural development to a position among the top five strategic priorities of his administration and established a new Ministry for Rural Development and Land Reform in 2009. Subsequently, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) adopted a Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) as an overarching framework to improve social and economic well-being in rural areas, with special emphasis on reducing unemployment, poverty, and food insecurity. Furthermore, participation to ensure partnerships with all those affected is a core stated principle on which the CRDP rests.”
Mbeki introduced a policy called the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) in 2000, premised on the notions of decentralised targeting, participation, and community empowerment, along with integrated and coordinated governance. Jacobs and Hart noted that it was difficult to accurately gauge the success of many ISRDP projects as they were often reported under other programmes, leading to “double counting of achievements”, and thus making it difficult to measure their impact.
Great policies that fall short of implementation
Undoubtedly, South Africa is endowed with great policymakers who have a fine appreciation of identifying challenges and mapping out a regulatory framework to address these gaps. Our policy development prowess is renowned and acknowledged the world over, and our constitution has received global acclaim.
Nonetheless, the efficacy of great policies is hollow without effective implementation. Many policies formulated by various government departments have not been actioned and are left to gather dust or take an inordinate amount of time to implement. The Agriculture and Agro-Processing Master Plan (AAMP) is one such policy.
The AAMP is geared at, among other things, promoting transformation in the agriculture and agro-processing sectors, increasing food security, accelerating the opening of markets and better access conditions, and enhancing competitiveness and entrepreneurial opportunities through technological innovations.
Despite its potential to deliver on its mandate, there have been lacklustre attempts to get the ball rolling and operationalise the AAMP. The AAMP is a critically important policy directive that can actualise rural development and the scaling up of agro-processing capabilities.
It is therefore imperative that, post-May 29, the government should rekindle the AAMP and secure additional resources where required to operationalise this strategic imperative. A dedicated task team should be established to comply with defined timelines and key performance indicators to realise the full implementation of the AAMP. Progress in implementing the AAMP should be regularly monitored, and interventions put in place to address potential bottlenecks.
Where required, private sector involvement should be secured, including input by vested stakeholders such as academia, NGOs, and farmers’ organisations. This should include broadening the implementation partners to include organisations such as Vumelana and other relevant bodies to ensure broader reach, impact, and cross-pollination of ideas.
Too important to fail
Disturbingly, despite its significance in social cohesion, many political parties in the run-up to the elections have paid scant regard to the land issue. Across the political spectrum, there have hardly been any innovative and groundbreaking policy proposals on how the land question can be expedited and addressed.
At best, some pronouncements on land reform are fanatical and divisive; at worst, the issue is relegated to a footnote.
The National Development Plan (NDP) went to great lengths to detail the steps needed for an effective land reform programme. None of the political parties have outlined how they plan to operationalise some of the recommendations of this economic blueprint, which eloquently maps the developmental path and land reform journey to 2030.
The NDP correctly stipulates that the expansion of irrigated land by at least 500 000 hectares through better use of existing water resources and developing new water schemes would go a long way towards ensuring the sustainability of agriculture, particularly among smallholder farmers, and towards stimulating the development of the agro-processing industry. Currently, only 1.5 million hectares of land in South Africa are under irrigation.
The NDP proposes the repurposing of under-utilised land in communal areas for commercial production and providing support to commercial agriculture sectors and regions that have the highest potential for growth and employment. In addition to this, we need to implement the recommendations of reports such as the Motlanthe Report commissioned by parliament. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
Let us look at areas where we have registered some successes and replicate these. In line with the recommendations of the Vumelana Advisory Fund, the NDP also calls for greater support for innovative public-private partnerships. Vumelana is confident that private sector participation in the land reform programme can lure much-needed investment and serve as a catalyst that ensures the success of this important national initiative.
Agriculture will continue to play an important role in the social and economic well-being of South Africa. The impact of climate change has made food security ever more critical. Land reform cannot be wished away. It is a national imperative that is too important to fail. Our failure to redress the wrongs of the past will only serve to fuel the tinderbox that will ignite with devastating consequences.
- Peter Setou is the CEO of the Vumelana Advisory Fund, a non-profit organisation that was established in 2012 to help communities in the land reform programme to put their land to productive use through its Community Private Partnership (CPP) model. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Food For Mzansi.
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