30 YEARS OF UNFULFILLED PROMISES MUST END NOW
30 YEARS OF UNFULFILLED PROMISES MUST END NOW. IT IS TIME FOR CONCRETE PRO-POOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AND PROGRAMMES
Statement by the Trust for Community Outreach and Education and Inyanda National Land Movement
This statement reflects the views of the Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE) and thousands of South Africans involved in the movements the TCOE works with. The TCOE is a non-governmental organisation that works with the Inyanda National Land Movement, a land movement that includes mostly landless people in rural areas in five provinces (under traditional authorities in former homelands and coloured reserves as well as areas under municipalities), farm workers and dwellers, smallholder producers and fishers, and the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA).
The President must recall that this year’s State of the Nation Address will be the 31st since the official end of apartheid and transition to a parliamentary democracy, during which poor South Africans have been bombarded with endless unfulfilled promises for a better life. Yet, more than eight million South Africans are drowning in poverty and unemployment, manifestations of structural violence imposed by the state. This is a betrayal of all those who died for national liberation in the past years and have brought the ANC to power.
Mr President, the needs and rights of the impoverished in South Africa have been continually marginalised for the past 31 years. Thus, we expect that the SONA address will deal with the issues outlined below.
Land, poverty, austerity budget, energy transition and economic outlook
Land reform has fallen far below the political promises of the ANC post-apartheid government. Despite sustained criticism and demands from the dispossessed landless, backed by credible research from progressive academics, the government’s land reform pathway is a failure. The promised 30 per cent land redistribution has not been met after 30 years. The land reform budget has declined over the years despite growing demand for land and an increase in land prices demanded by proponents of “market related” compensation. Whilst the President recently signed the Land Expropriation Act, it is doubtful that it will help the cause for land reform at a larger scale and that it will benefit the landless in accessing fertile agricultural land. How will the Act strengthen the land tenure rights of farm workers and dwellers who constantly face eviction, and the land rights of rural people and halt their victimisation by traditional authorities who collude with capital in grabbing rural land away from its owners?
The President’s address must take tune from various court judgements and clarify the powers of traditional authorities as they are key facilitators of ongoing land grabbing in communal areas from the legitimate owners and perpetuating land dispossession. Moreover, the President needs to address the lack of clear policy on commonage land, which is being sold, leased and monopolised by white industrial farmers, resourced and politically connected people.
Access to land is one of the instruments the President must use to address historical dispossession, continued economic marginalisation and inequalities, poverty and widespread hunger and malnutrition. All of these continue to have a black face – with black women at the bottom of the hierarchy of continued patriarchal capitalist violence. The SONA address must deal with the lack of support from government departments to smallholder producers and small fishers who defend and promote alternative agroecological models of production and include water access and rights of small producers, ending the monopolisation of water by white commercial farmers and big industry.
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