This is the first of a two-part review of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture Report submitted to the president and the public on 11 June 2019.
Love it or hate it, the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture (PAP) report is a pivotal moment in South Africa’s fraught land reform programme. The moment is engraved in history; society demanded a change of paradigm and it got one, but not for the most publicised and emotive reasons.
Nearly six months have passed since it was made public. Whatever is left of that historical moment appears to have been condensed into a single overblown issue: expropriation without compensation (EWC), and, to be fair, that is what triggered it. However, there is a danger that the report will become embedded in the social imagination as a single-issue commission of enquiry.
In reality, the bulk of the report deals with a range of mighty issues that provide insight into the broader context and wide range of issues that need to be tackled concurrently for a lasting and positive impact.
At a July press briefing, following publication of the report, the Minister in the Presidency announced that the Cabinet would request all relevant departments and directorates to study it over a two-month period and then respond. That period expired three months ago. Many of us in civil society, the private sector and academic institutions offered voluntary time and sponsorship of venues and expenses, and in some cases seconded key personnel to the panel itself. They – we – have a stake in how post-PAP unfolds.
We understand that the recommendations are winding their way through state institutions as we wait in nail-biting anticipation of the engagement we were promised. There are some positive indications trickling through of some momentum in government, but we are largely in the dark as to the process – other than some tentative moves regarding EWC.
Leaving aside processual issues, it is useful to briefly refresh ourselves on what the panel was about.
The report was a culmination of a short and intense 10-month period of deliberation to look into all problems concerning “land reform and agriculture” – a wildly ambitious brief. The immediate context was Ramaphosa’s ascent to power under a cloud of outrage at the failures of land reform and the potential prospect of explicit endorsement of EWC in the Constitution. Into a cauldron of competing interests and contentiousness came the PAP, constituted to help quell the rising dissonance of voices surrounding the failures of land and agrarian reform over the previous 20 years.
By nature of its brief, the PAP was bound to be tap into the contentiousness that land reform issues always generate. It was an accomplishment in itself that the panel pulled together to produce a single report. Even before it began its work, the panel’s diverse composition ensured that finding common vision would be difficult and reaching consensus close to impossible.
Two white members of the panel, representing commercial agriculture, presented an “alternative report” but, significantly, not a minority report. These authors agreed with many of the PAP’s recommendations, departing mainly around the issue of EWC and race-based redistribution – as was to be expected. They nevertheless showed interest in ongoing engagement with issues of common concern.
The wider context and implications of the report are South Africa’s complex historical and socio-cultural legacies, which the report acknowledged. These factors materially affect the way we conceptualise the building blocks of land reform: starting with existing realities rather than grand theories that airbrush uncomfortable truths from history.
Global trends form part of the bigger picture. Countless studies confirm that global inequality is growing apace. Huffpost published a graph by the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, based on US income data in 2014, showing widening “tides” of inequality, a trend mirrored globally.
A recent World Bank Study on Poverty and Inequality in South Africa (2018) places the country at the top of the world’s inequality-equality gap using a range of indicators. As argued in Huffpost, conservatives like to argue that “a rising tide lifts all boats” as a justification for bolstering the capital foundations of the wealthy and emergent entrepreneurial class because the surplus generated will “trickle down”. Yet “no other boats have risen; in fact, they’re sinking”. The idea of “trickle–down economics” has been thoroughly debunked, even by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Read the full article on the link above
Rosalie Kingwill
