There’s a need to have a progressive strategy of equipping and capacitating Black people to fend for themselves. Hence continuous focus on provision of food parcels alone will render the government to be working towards regression with if no other interventions are introduced to capacitate Black people to fend for themselves. More focus should be put in programmes which are equipping poor people to continuously make a living from.
Programmes such as providing a comprehensive post-settlement support services to land reform beneficiaries to utilise redistributed land productively and generate income.
Programmes which will not only encourage productive use of land but also equip land reform beneficiaries with knowledge through as skills transfer programmes and make provision of resources to start businesses and further make available continuous mentoring and monitoring programmes. This approach would ensure sustainability in projects managed by land beneficiaries by providing land reform beneficiaries with all necessary knowledge, skills, resources and support needed to farm productively and consequently eradicate poverty amongst black people.
basic education, including adult basic education”; Section 28(1)(c) – “right to children basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services”; and Section 35(2)(e) –
“right of detained persons to the provision at state expense of adequate accommodation nutrition, reading material and medical treatment”.427
These rights are not access rights or subjected to qualifications of reasonableness available resources for progressive realisation, they are guaranteed rights. The third group are the rights contained in Section 26(3) which prohibits arbitrary evictions and section 27(3) which prohibits the refusal of medical treatment. These rights are formed as prohibitions of certain forms of conduct. Failure to protect, respect and promote the fulfilment of these socio- economic rights, especially to disadvantaged groups in society, the state can be held accountable. Pursuant to that the RDP was drafted in line with the Constitution to facilitate needs of the historical disadvantage South Africans and eradicate the legacy of apartheid that led black South Africans to severe poverty. According to RDP the economy was built on racial systematic design.
Towns and cities have been divided into townships without proper basic infrastructure for blacks and well-resourced suburbs for whites.428 Proper demarcations of residential area and business area within these townships is not clearly established. Hence, we have taverns on the main road opposite to a school or church, a clear indication of lack of town planning within the townships. These are the injustices that were left as legacy for the democratic government to redress.
The RDP is founded on six basic principles one being the integrated and sustainable programme, seeking to bring together strategies to eradicate the apartheid legacy and harness all the country’s resources in a coherent and purposeful effort that can be sustained into the future. The RDP further sought to integrate reconstruction and development and is of the view that development should be portrayed as a marginal effort of redistribution to areas of urban and rural poverty. Owing to this, RDP further provided a set of guidelines and principles that gave direction to the initiative process of formulating the land reform policy and programme.
427 Ibid note 426.
428 Reconstruction and Development Programme (n13).
The RDP implemented a fundamental land reform programme. According to RDP, the land reform programme should be focused on demand-driven that is aimed at supplying residential and arable land to the poorest class of people, residing in rural areas and to aspirant farmers. As part of a comprehensive rural development programme, it must make means of raising incomes and productivity, and must promote the use of land for agricultural, other productive, or residential purposes.429
The land reform programme has two aspects: redistribution of residential and productive land to those who need it but cannot afford it, and restitution for those who lost land because of apartheid laws. According to RDP, the redistribution programme should firstly focus on making use of land already on sale and land acquired by corrupt means from the apartheid state or mortgaged to state and parastatal bodies. And where it is deemed reasonable, the programme will rely on expropriation and pay the necessary compensation as the Constitution stipulates. Land obtained from the apartheid state through illegal means must be reclaimed after a thorough due process of investigation has been conducted.
Furthermore, the land reform programme must not be limited to historically black areas but include all South African land that has been illegally obtained. All legal provisions which may promote the planning and affordability of a land reform programme must be reviewed and if necessary revised.430
Moreover, the democratic ruling party should offer extensive financial services for land redistribution. Additionally, beneficiaries should make payment in relation to their financial capacity. A land tax on rural land must be based on unblemished conditions; should also assist to free underused land, and generate profits for rural infrastructural advancement, and should ultimately foster the fruitful usage of land. Support facilities, rural infrastructural development and training services encompassing all the levels must be provided to achieve the standard of productive and effective usage of land. Included in this arrangement, the provision of water must take top position of the priority list, followed by the efficient provision of basic health care services. In light of the preceding view, in the beginning of the RDP programme, a water provision programme was established to usher in the RDP programme.
429 Ibid note 428.
430 Reconstruction and Development Programme (n13).
5.9 The Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development sub-programme (LRAD)