Agriculture is the  mainstay of our local economy in the Dundee area.  Commercial farmers are already under threat from rising input costs, security concerns and the vagaries of  the Northern KZN climate.

However, a proposal by Rural Development and Land Reform Minister, Gugile Nkwinti, that will force commercial farm owners to retain 50% of the land as the ‘historical’ owners, while the other 50% be given to farm workers has cast further doubt on the future of the industry.

According to the proposal, the government will ‘pay’ for the workers 50% share of the land, but the money will not go to the farmers. Instead it will be used as an investment, in the form of a development fund.

The workers, or rather, ‘owners’ will use the funds to make improvements as they see fit, or to compensate the workers who choose to opt out of the agreement.
AgriSA said that, farmers will lose 50% of their collateral, which is devastating in its own right.Minister Nkwinti has given commercial farmers until April 2015 to respond to the proposed policy, which will aim to:
Deracialise South Africa’s rural economy;
Democratise the allocation and use of land; and
Ensure food security as well as food sovereignty for the country.
The key points of the proposal state:
The commercial farmers, as historical owners, retain 50% of the farm;
The labourers on the land assume ownership of the remaining 50%, proportional to their contribution to the development of the land based on the number of years they had worked on the land;
The government pays for the 50% to be shared by the labourers, but the money will not go to the farmer. It will go to an investment and development fund to be jointly owned by the parties constituting the new ownership regime.
The investment and development fund will be used for reinvestment in the farm, skills improvement and to pay out those who want to opt out of the arrangement;
Current tenancy protection remains and it will be balanced by a regime of duties and responsibilities that worker-dwellers must comply with if they want to stay on the farm;
Of the 50% to be shared by labourers, all labourers with a history of between 10 and 25 consecutive years of disciplined service will share 10%, those with 25 to 50 years’ consecutive service will share 25%, those with more than 50 years’ consecutive service will share 50% and 15% will be available for household subsistence farming; and
Land rights management committees, consisting of local people, will be established to solve local disputes.
According to news reports, Minister Nkwinti said he had come up with the proposal because the previous system had many deficiencies, land reform was imperative and too few proactive proposals were coming from stakeholders in agriculture.“I formulated these proposals to give them something to work with,” he said. “Stakeholders have until April next year to react. But we really need to move forward.”