Lack of individual land ownership, not white tenure, stymies agricultural development
13 February 2025 - 15:14
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Has Tiisetso Motsoeneng ever flown over SA? (“A painful reminder of racial hierarchies still at work”, February 10). Most of it is semidesert. The Karoo comprises 30%, and the Kalahari/North West/Limpopo another 30% — good for low-intensity cattle and sheep farming, but that’s about it.
As you go further east the country gets greener as you get to the rain-rich Eastern Seaboard, where KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape make up 21% of the country and have great agricultural land.
What do they produce? Very little. Why? Zululand and the Transkei were essentially left intact by the British colonial administration, and continued with tribal rule. There is still no individual land ownership. How can that motivate agricultural development? Should we not reform that?
From the 1960s onwards the apartheid government ran incentive schemes for industry to move into these so-called homeland areas, including tax breaks and subsidised transport. Lots of clothing and high labour-content businesses moved to these areas. In 1986 there were 22,000 industrial jobs in Ciskei alone, yet now there are a handful left.
The apartheid government put major effort and money into trying to develop those homelands, yet failed. Why? In the 1921 census the total population of the country was 7-million — 4.6-million black, 1.5-million white, 545,000 coloured, 165,000 Indian. Whites were 23% of the population and blacks 65%.
Now, whites account for less than a third of that percentage due to emigration and slow population growth, but they still own the same property. So, as the white population numbers drop as a percentage of the total, should they give up jobs and property?
No-one is ignoring our history, but the world is dynamic and does not stand still. Thirty years of race-based, resentful policies have destroyed the economy for all South Africans.
Rob Tiffin Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: Reform tribal rule
Lack of individual land ownership, not white tenure, stymies agricultural development
Has Tiisetso Motsoeneng ever flown over SA? (“A painful reminder of racial hierarchies still at work”, February 10). Most of it is semidesert. The Karoo comprises 30%, and the Kalahari/North West/Limpopo another 30% — good for low-intensity cattle and sheep farming, but that’s about it.
As you go further east the country gets greener as you get to the rain-rich Eastern Seaboard, where KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape make up 21% of the country and have great agricultural land.
What do they produce? Very little. Why? Zululand and the Transkei were essentially left intact by the British colonial administration, and continued with tribal rule. There is still no individual land ownership. How can that motivate agricultural development? Should we not reform that?
From the 1960s onwards the apartheid government ran incentive schemes for industry to move into these so-called homeland areas, including tax breaks and subsidised transport. Lots of clothing and high labour-content businesses moved to these areas. In 1986 there were 22,000 industrial jobs in Ciskei alone, yet now there are a handful left.
The apartheid government put major effort and money into trying to develop those homelands, yet failed. Why? In the 1921 census the total population of the country was 7-million — 4.6-million black, 1.5-million white, 545,000 coloured, 165,000 Indian. Whites were 23% of the population and blacks 65%.
Now, whites account for less than a third of that percentage due to emigration and slow population growth, but they still own the same property. So, as the white population numbers drop as a percentage of the total, should they give up jobs and property?
No-one is ignoring our history, but the world is dynamic and does not stand still. Thirty years of race-based, resentful policies have destroyed the economy for all South Africans.
Rob Tiffin
Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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