A critical appraisal of South Africa's market-based land reform policy

Chapter 6: LRAD projects in Limpopo
cattle farming. Bellevue was a state farm,
like the Steilloop and Manamead farms,
and Mr Kutumela has been leasing it for
about six years after it was made available
by the DoA.
Mr Kutumela applied for the LRAD
grant in 2002 after hearing about it at the
Zebediela Farmers’ Union meeting. He did
not remember how long the application
process took, but it was not long, ‘just a
few months’ (interview 16). Strangely
DLA does not have the project listed as
approved, so the project is not included in
the statistics given for approved projects in
Chapter 5 above. The researchers were
referred to Mr Kutumela by the DLA
Project Officer responsible for that district.
Mr Kutumela believed his project had been
approved during 2002.
The farm is approximately 1 450ha of
land paid for by an LRAD grant and Mr
Kutumela’s own cash contribution that
came from his pension payout when he
retired as a policeman. He now works fulltime
on the farm. He employs seven
workers, three women and four men, and
his son is also assisting him with the
farming. The main activity on the farm
is cattle farming and there are currently
120 cattle. There are also some sheep and
goats. The relatively large number of
employees are required to assist in clearing
the land of dense thorny bush that
negatively affects the grazing capacity.
Project design and land
acquisition
Contrary to the LRAD policy that envisages
a ‘demand directed’ process (DLA 2001:6)
most of the projects in this study were
initiated by DLA and DoA because they
are on what was state land and the decision
had been taken to dispose of that land
through LRAD. This approach raises
another question about the extent to which
such land transfers are addressing the
racial inequality in land access in South
Africa. LRAD sets as a primary objective
the redistribution to ‘black people’ of 30%
of ‘white commercial farmland’(DLA
2001:6) yet only the land acquired for the
Vele and Mankweng Integrated projects
fits that description.
Despite not significantly contributing
to land redistribution, the LRAD projects
implemented in Limpopo may have value
as tenure upgrading projects. The beneficiaries
have certainly benefited in terms
of being assisted to purchase land at very
preferential rates. For example Mr Netshilema
(interview 6) at Manamead had to
pay just R8 000 for his 373ha farm. His
existing assets were considered to be his
contribution to the project and calculated
to be of sufficient value for him to get the
maximum grant of R100 000. Calculated
at a production value of R231 per hectare,
the total land price was R108 000. The
R8 000 was paid with a Land Bank loan
organised by DLA. Six of the beneficiaries
at Manamead are becoming owners of
farms ranging from 139–256ha without
having to borrow or contribute any money
themselves. The beneficiaries interviewed
also appreciated that they were able to
acquire land without being required to
have their own finance or collateral.
Worryingly, a number of the respondents
at Manamead did not know the value
of the land they had received, the size of
the grants they are purported to have received,
or the amount of their own contribution
to the projects. This is probably due
to the way the projects were initiated and
administered entirely by DLA and further
illustrates a lack of ‘ownership’ of the
process by the beneficiaries. Beneficiaries
of the Mankweng Integrated project made
‘own contributions’ in the form of labour,
valued at R5 000 per person, and the entire
land cost was covered by the grant. In the
Vaalkop project the land was donated and
the beneficiaries were allocated grants of
R20 000 each based on their own
contribution of R5 000 each in the form
of labour. At Steilloop the beneficiaries
acquired much larger farms and had to
borrow substantial amounts of money,
from R219 000–R335 000, to cover the
cost of the land purchased. A number of
the respondents complained about the
difficulty of paying off these loans.
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