SA farmers in frontline fight for their land…

The law of land expropriation in South Africa is making headlines across the world. In this interview, Dr. Theo de Jager, the CEO of the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI) and the former president of the World Farmers Organisation, says: "If anybody is going to bleed it is us. If farmers don't stand together, they are delivered." He warns that the act lends itself to abuse, and that farmers could not just assume that "you work with honest officials who really have the best interest of the state and the nation at heart". SAAI is currently in discussions to set up a fund to assist the first "victim" in court. "And in the meantime, we must push. We need everybody's weight in this scrum now. We must push back. We must try to get this act to go back to parliament and to be changed…And we need to make sure that we are safeguarded against the whims of officials, especially on the second and the third tier of government, where the risk is the highest of wild actions…" Dr De Jager also hails the role Elon Musk has played in US President Donald Trump's move against South Africa over the signing of the act. "And although he is under severe criticism, the majority of farmers welcome the way he's shaking the cage at the moment, shaking out all the paraphernalia to get to the bottom, to the principle of things.".Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..The seventh BizNews Conference, BNC#7, will be held in Hermanus from March 11 to 13, 2025. The 2025 BizNews Conference is designed to provide an excellent opportunity for members of the BizNews community to interact directly with the keynote speakers, old (and new) friends from previous BNC events, and members of the BizNews team. Register for BNC#7 here..If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Chris Steyn (00:01.149).The law of land expropriation in South Africa is making headlines across the world. We speak to Dr. Theo de Jager, the CEO of the Southern African Agri Initiative and the former president of the World Farmers Organisation. Welcome, Dr..Theo De Jager (00:18.446).Thank you so much for inviting me to share the platform..Chris Steyn (00:22.707).How do you feel about the stance taken by Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen, who is also the Minister of Agriculture?.Theo De Jager (00:31.96).Well, I've spoken to some of his colleagues in the DA over the last few hours about this and it seems that they are very concerned that Trump might make a few wild leaps and in the process hurt us by cancelling the AGOA privileges we have and of course, farmers will really get hurt, especially in the wine industry, the fruit industry. We export a lot of processed fruits too and they say this is why they try to explain that this is not so bad. .Now as farmers, we are very irritated with mostly organisations and journalists who also come with this narrative that it not so bad. It's nothing different from what we had in a previous expropriation act. It is just aligning it with the new constitution. Now there are two major differences between this new act and the previous one we had. The one is that this act also gives a number of lower ranking tiers of government the power to expropriate. It no longer rests only in national government or the Department of Public Works. Any provincial government or provincial department can also expropriate. Any municipality, any official in a municipality also now will have the power to expropriate. And what will keep a radical politician in a small town from one of the radical parties to try to test the limits of this new expropriation act and who will have to pay for it then? .Secondly, this act provides for nil compensation. There's a big difference, they say, between no compensation and without compensation because the constitution does not allow for expropriation without compensation and in parliament we have won that battle….Theo De Jager (02:53.544).…ayear or two ago. Nil compensation means that all the discount clauses in Article 25.3 of the Constitution can be added up and bring you to 100% of value, which means that you will receive no compensation. .Now of course for us as farmers, there's no difference. You end up the same. You are stripped from your title deed and you walk away naked. You are left with nothing. .These discount clauses, such as the current use of the property, the history of acquisition, the historical investment of the state in a specific property, even the purpose of the expropriation, such as when it is for land claims, it gives the state the authority to take a discount. But the constitution does not stipulate whether that discount should be 5 % or 50% or 80%. This we will have to develop through a series of court cases. .As farmers we feel if anyone is going to be expropriated it is us. If anybody is going to bleed it is us. So to say to us it is not so bad, you know for us it is bad. We run the risk of being expropriated without being paid for it. .And we work in a long-term investment arena. A farm's horizon is not the end of the new financial year. A farm's horizon is not even the next decade, it's the next generation. Why would I? I'm farming outside Tzaneen with avocados and timber and macadamias and a macadamia tree….it takes seven years until you have a harvest. What would motivate the farmer to renew his orchards or to develop new orchards from which you will only harvest in seven years if you run the risk of being expropriated without being paid, without being relieved of the debt you took on to develop this orchard. .But it's about a bit more than that. It's also about this fundamental principle..Theo De Jager (05:18.464).Which kind of democracy do you expect an individual farmer to pick up the bill for a national imperative? What is wrong with market related compensation? Why not just pay the farmer market related compensation and let the fiscus carry the burden of paying for it, bringing it to the shoulders of the whole of society and not an individual? .Because we fear the moment the first number is drawn from that act. We don't know who will be the first to expropriate it under this act. And how will he be picked or she? Who will decide which farmer will have to carry this burden? And for us, there is no good news about it. There is no way as farmers we can welcome the enactment of this act..Chris Steyn (06:12.809).Now the government has blamed AFRIFORUM statements for contributing to Trump's decision to move against South Africa over this law. What do you say?.Theo De Jager (06:25.934).Well, I cannot speak for AFRIFORUM, but AFRIFORUM was good for us as farmers in the history, in the run-up to this, because government also says no farm has been expropriated. It's not true that there hasn't been any land grabs. That's false news. We've seen this movie before, we've gone through it. We've paid the price..In 2017, in December 2017, the ANC decided at its Nasrec conference that it will change the constitution to allow for expropriation without compensation and already at that meeting, four ministers referred to a list of farms to be expropriated and they said there are 195 of these farms..In the next 12 weeks, four more ANC ministers referred to this list and then AFRIFORUM leaked a list and it was the same number of farms on the list. Of course the ANC denied that this is the authentic list. .We were, well actually at the time AFRIFORUM was also bashed by farmers organisations saying they have been irresponsible to release this list..But the next thing, the day before Good Friday, on the Thursday before Easter weekend, one of our members in Organised Agriculture in Limpopo, Johan Steenkamp, was expropriated on his farm, Akkerland, at a quarter to four in the afternoon. And you know that that act reads that the moment you receive your letter from that moment on, you are no longer the owner. But he was granted seven days to take off all his….Theo De Jager (08:24.844).…moveable assets. Now this is a 2000 hectare game farm. How do you remove all your game in three days because four of the seven days is Easter weekend. Where do you find a judge over Easter weekend to hear you on an urgent basis? But we did. We got a judge and he said that Johan Steenkamp can remain on the farm until court can hear the merits of this expropriation. .The difficult part was we had only two weeks to file this case and for that we needed about three quarters of a million rand which we did not have and which this Steenkamp family certainly did not have..So we knocked on every door we knew to try to raise the money. And two or three days before the deadline, AFRIFORUM came to our assistance and said that they would stand security for this loan. AFRIFORUM and Solidarity..That enabled us to fight this thing in court. And on the 3rd of September in 2018, we won that case with a cost order against the minister and the Registrar of Deeds. The Registrar got only 48 hours to return the title deed to the Steenkamp family. And also a cost order against the Land Claims Commissioner, because the judge found that there were no…land claim. It was fabricated. There was not even a land claimant such as the one in whose favour Akkerland was expropriated. .And until this day we could not recover more than about half of the money because you never get all your money back. The fact is Akkerland learned us so many lessons. It taught us when it happens to you,.Theo De Jager (10:30.818).you're on your own. All of these people who say nothing to fear, it will not happen. They are nowhere to be seen once it happens. Secondly, it costs a lot of money. It is very hard for an individual to take up this burden. If farmers don't stand together, they are delivered. But thirdly, you cannot just assume that you work with honest officials who really have the best interest of the state and the nation at heart. And I'm afraid this new act really lends itself to abuse..Chris Steyn (11:19.197).What do you make of the role of Elon Musk? President Cyril Ramaphosa called him yesterday to try and do some damage control..Theo De Jager (11:29.07).Well, you know, Elon is his own man. He doesn't owe anyone anything. We have seen his irritation with the roll-out of Starlink all across our region. I actually had to do with it a bit next door in Zimbabwe. SAAI is also the biggest representative of farmers who lost their land in Zimbabwe and we go there very often..And he said, there's just no way I'm going to give away a part of my business to somebody who did not earn it just because of the colour of his skin. He cuts down to the bone, to the very principle of things. .And although he is under severe criticism, the majority of farmers welcome the way he's shaking the cage at the moment, shaking out all the paraphernalia to get to the bottom, to the principle of things. .And I think there are three things which he is really touching a nerve. The one is the issue of race. 30 years after democracy, why do we still have so many race-based laws? And what about the people who are discriminated against, especially young people? There are people who are well established in careers who were born after democracy. Why must they still carry the burden of transformation? And then the fact that transformation did not get us very far. .We are heavily criticized in SAAI for rejecting the Agricultural Master Plan and we are rejecting it because in that master plan the word transformation appears 92 times, but it does not even mention profitability of farms, sustainability of farms. If a farm is not profitable, what do you want to transfer or to transform? Or if it's not sustainable, what is there to transform? In the mind of a farmer, if you have an enterprise where transformation is more important than profitability, you end up with something like Denel….Theo De Jager (13:54.798).…SAA and we don't want to take agriculture there. If transformation is more important than sustainability you end up with something like ESKOM or SABC and farmers say we don't want agriculture to go there. .We're not against transformation but we are most certainly against the way it had been implemented and we do not have good examples of where this road is taking us. We need a radical rethink of what we call transformation and whose benefit it is. How much of transformation reach the poorest of the poor? How much broad-based is there in BBBEE? And we feel it takes somebody like Elon Musk and Donald Trump to ask these difficult questions and to demand that they are being answered..Chris Steyn (14:54.419).Dr. Meanwhile, how are farmers preparing right now for the probable and possible implementation of this law?.Theo De Jager (15:03.208).The next thing, the farmer will be expropriated somewhere and we don't know who he or she will be. We only know once it happens, all the vagueness, all those discount clauses to which there is no numbers or percentage attached to it, it will be determined in that first court case. So that first victim will bear the brunt on behalf of all other farmers. And we are at the moment discussing with a number of other civil society structures in the business space, organised business, in the space of organizsed employers, to set up a fund to make sure that we will be there and that we can be there to assist that first victim. .And in the meantime, we must push. We need everybody's weight in this scrum now. We must push back. We must try to get this act to go back to parliament and to be changed. We need just an equitable compensation and equal citizenship, very similar to the demands of farmers in Zimbabwe. And we need to make sure that we are safeguarded against the whims of officials, especially on the second and the third tier of government, where the risk is the highest of wild actions within the framework of this..Chris Steyn (16:52.233).Okay, thank you. That was Dr. Theo De Jager, the CEO of the Southern African Agri Initiative speaking to BizNews, and I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you, Doctor..Read also:.Steenhuisen says cool heads can turn Trump/ANC vitriol from crisis to a benefitTrump threatens to cut US aid over SA expropriation law🔒 FT: Elon Musk's attacks on equality laws trigger dispute over Starlink in South Africa

SA farmers in frontline fight for their land…

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