rural livelihoods

South Africa consists of people who live out their culture in different or in similar ways. Culture includes all the various languages which people speak as their mother tongue and as a second or even a third language. It also includes the music, literature, visual arts, dance, drama, oral traditions, traditional practices which include food, fashion, architecture and heritage and the particular beliefs of a cultural group which all contribute to a unique way of life that is in certain ways distinct from that of another cultural group.

Without a doubt I vote HE Bingu wa Mutharika, President of the Republic of Malawi, one of the best performing African Presidents. The reason for this is simple: in 2004 when he came into power he made a pledge - “I will not be a president who goes around begging for food”. Unlike other rhetorical commitments we have often been treated to, he has put his words into action.

The South African government has set itself the target of redistributing 30% of South Africa’s commercial farming land to black farmers by 2014. So far it has only achieved just over 4%.

The easiest way to quickly reach the 30% target would be for government to find large amounts of cheap, unproductive peripheral land and allocate this to a few people. This land could be in the middle of the arid Karoo or the Northern Cape.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) say Zimbabwe is still threatened by food shortages despite improved agricultural production and more liberal imports this year.

In joint report, the two UN agencies point out that about 2.8 million people will face food shortages this year, as the total cereal availability reaches 1.4 million tons against a projected need of 2.1 million tons.

Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister, Lulu Xingwana, and an entourage of about 30 land affairs and provincial and municipal officials have invaded a land-reform beneficiary’s farm and summarily evicted the occupiers in the Yzerfontein area in eastern Gauteng.

Legal experts have described the seizure, which is part of government’s “use it or lose it” approach to redeem some of the government’s many failed land-reformed projects, as a violation of the constitution and of land tenure legislation.

South African rural women protesting outside the ICC in Durban at The World Congress of Rural Women

The Department of Agriculture has warned that its top officials will enforce a “use it or lose it” policy to ensure land-reform beneficiaries run productive farms.

Agriculture minister, Lulu Xingwana, has also warned that the government will take back farms allocated to blacks under its redistribution programme if they do not farm productively.

She states that the government does not have enough money for land reform in its current budget. Xingwana also blamed white farmers for charging the state inflated prices for land-reform farms.