Court dismisses SA villagers land claim

In a ruling that is set to have far reaching effects on the countrys stalled land redistribution process, the Johannesburg Land Claims Court last week refused the Bahiring community’s claim to farms of eight landowners in the North West province, saying transfer of the land would have a negative impact on the “food production and economic activities” of the highly productive farms.

The current annual production on these farms is 1 800 calves, 5 900 tons of maize, 400 tons of beans, 470 tons of sunflower seed and 1 080 000 litres of milk.

The court also ruled that relocating the community is not feasible because the government did not have funds. It would have cost the state more than R70 million to buy the farms from the landowners and a further R210 million to relocate the Bahiring community’s 400 families and provide resources for them to continue cultivating the land.

The court also found that the community was compensated when they were relocated 80km away from the farms in the 1960s and at that time the farms were not commercially developed.

The ruling is set to have a major impact on other pending land claims, because this is the first time that a court has found that the relocation involved in the claim is not feasible due to the land’s current use and production.

Thousands of poor blacks are still waiting for the ANC government to deliver on its promise on coming to power in 1994 when it set itself an ambitious target of redistributing 30 percent of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014.

But the huge cost of acquiring land estimated at R75 billion for 82 million hectares of land as well as problems in negotiating land prices under a “willing-buyer, willing-seller” policy have seen the government managing to acquire only 4 percent of land from private owners to date for redistribution, amid growing unrest among the poor landless blacks.

South Africa just like Zimbabwe inherited an unjust land tenure system from previous white-controlled governments under which the bulk of the best arable land was reserved for whites while blacks were forced to crowd on mostly semi-arid and infertile soils.

But South Africa, which has one of Africas biggest farming sectors and its biggest economy, has repeatedly said it will not follow the example of Zimbabwe where President Robert Mugabe seized most of the farms owned by that countrys about 4 500 white commercial farmers and gave them over to blacks.

Harare refused to pay for land, saying whites had in the first place stolen the land from blacks. The Zimbabwe administration said it would only pay for improvements on farms such as buildings, boreholes, dams and roads and that it would determine the levels of compensation to be paid to farmers.

Farm seizures are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe once a net exporter of the staple maize grain into severe food shortages since 2001 after black peasant farmers resettled on former white farms failed to maintain production because the government failed to support them with financial resources, inputs and skills training.