LETTER: Land stance misleading

Tom Cocks refers to “white landowners who still possess three quarters of SA’s freehold farmland”, contrasting this with “4% owned by blacks” (“Why Trump is reacting to the Expropriation Act”, February 3).

These numbers invariably provoke outrage, feeding the belief that “nothing has changed” since 1994. But they are misleading. This 72%-4% split (land held by coloured, Indian and “other” landowners is ignored) refers to freehold land held by individuals and registered at the deeds office.

Commendably, Cocks acknowledges the “freehold” qualifier. But such land amounts to only a third of the total in the country (not all being farmland in the sense of agricultural units). It is the only land regarding which the race of the owner could be identified.

Most land is held by trusts (24%), the state (22%), companies (19%), community-based organisations (3%) and co-ownership schemes (1%). Revealingly, the 72%-4% focus erases the modest land reform successes that have been achieved, since this tends to happen through community rather than individual schemes.

It also bypasses acknowledging that land to which black people have historically had access — the former homelands — has been state property and remains so three decades after the transition.

Misrepresenting the facts in this way may be useful for building a narrative about why the state needs ever more extensive powers to discipline the recalcitrant. As Cocks comments, many accuse “white landowners of hoarding”. But he bases his narrative on an incomplete and less-than-honest appraisal of the circumstances. Indeed, if freehold is to be the standard — and we have much sympathy for this — it needs to be recorded that there has been enormous official resistance to the idea.

This was expressed unambiguously in early 2018, during the parliamentary debate that set off an investigation into amending the constitution to facilitate expropriation without compensation, when the then land affairs minister made clear that titling was off the table. Beneficiaries of expropriation would, in effect, remain tenants of the state. Present circumstances arise from deliberate choices made since the transition as well as our tragic history.

Informed debate requires an appreciation of the full realities, however inconvenient they may be to any given narrative.

Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations

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