**5.6.4 Pro-active Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS)**

An important component of revising the land reform programme has been the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS). This programme currently involves approximately 1000 farmers. As part of the programme, land is leased out to beneficiaries for a trial period of three to five years during which they have to prove that they can productively use the land for agricultural purposes. This programme has been in place since April 2010 (DRDLR,

Integration Challenges of Water and Land Reform – A Critical Review of South Africa 99

Additionally, it places an emphasis on compliance to strict monitoring criteria. In this regard, it "will issue stringent conditions for those who qualify to benefit from it so as to avoid creating a culture of entitlement from unscrupulous individuals who are in it, for

CCAW is a non-statutory cooperative government structure that serves as a provincial mechanism for joint effort between the Departments' of Water Affairs, Agriculture and DRDLR. Its objective is to ensure that government-funded projects are sustainable from a water utilisation, agricultural engineering and economic perspective. Projects submitted have to be evaluated to determine their feasibility and sustainability. Ultimately, the CCAW should also be responsible for the evaluation of any water use license application that is submitted to the DWA, however, the status and effectiveness of each provincial CCAW varies from functional to non-existent. Some have therefore not taken on this evaluating

Each of the above efforts has been an important attempt at integrating the land and water allocation reform processes more closely. It is imperative for the different government competencies to work more closely together, and also to find ways of adjusting the current land and water allocation reform models to try and address some of the shortcomings of past attempts at effective water and land reform. Initiatives such as leasing out land until farmers can show that they are able to be productive with sufficient government support in terms of infrastructure and cooperation with strategic partners are potentially very valuable. Unfortunately, however, to date none of the programmes seems to have been functioning ideally. The problem has been that attempts at integration between the water allocation and land reform processes have been fraught with difficulties, often linked to the design of the different programmes as well as the organisational weaknesses at the governmental level. Such difficulties include budgets for water allocation and land reform programmes being housed in different departments and funding not being coordinated, underfunding for certain programmes, a lack of monitoring capacity by government departments to establish how well the programmes are being implemented and whether they are successful, a lack of awareness among emerging farmers about which funding options are available to them, a "quick fix" approach with not sufficient attention being paid to quality programmes and quality implementation, an overreliance by the government and emerging farmers on

In addition, different government departments generally do not communicate effectively with each other, do not know who they need to be speaking to in their sister departments and have no clear idea of what activities other government departments are engaging in. In addition to challenges of inter-departmental cooperation and coordination, there is also a problem with intra-departmental communication as decisions that are made at ministerial

**5.6.6 Coordinating Committee on Agricultural Water (CCAW)** 

• The Restitution Settlement Grant • Commonage Infrastructure Grant

personal gain (DRDLR, 2010: 4).

task, in which case it falls to the DWA.

strategic partners.

**5.6.7 Evaluation of "Integration" programmes** 

2011b). One of the potential benefits of this programme is that it moves away from handing over land ownership rights to beneficiaries, which has often led to failure in terms of productivity in the past, and instead requires beneficiaries to prove that they are able to be productive by leasing land to them for a limited trial period. Beneficiaries have complained that this programme sets them up to fail and that the absence of a title deed makes it impossible for them to get financial assistance from banks. A reference group has been formed to further investigate the matter. It is still to be decided whether beneficiaries will eventually be able to own the land that is leased to them (DRDLR, 2011b).

As part of PLAS, grants to the value of 25% of the value of the land are to be awarded. This award will be once-off for now, but it is planned that in future it will be invested over a period of five years. This will take the form of a pyramid scheme with most of the money being awarded in Year One, and then less and less with farmers co-investing more of their own money over the next five years. The idea is not to give aid to the emerging farmers/beneficiaries but to teach them to farm on their own (DAFF, 2011a).

In addition, to aid emerging farmers, it is planned that they will team up with strategic partners, namely established commercial farmers, who will share in the profits and risks of the new enterprises. This partnership is regulated by means of an agreement between the strategic partner (farmer), the beneficiaries and the DRDLR (DAFF, 2011a).

Strategic partners are supposed to oversee activities on farms, ensure that the sowing and harvesting happens when it is supposed to, repair infrastructure, ensure that water allocations are paid for etc. The involvement of strategic partners has worked well in some cases as these partners often have in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of commercial farming and are therefore able to ensure that productive farming takes place. This approach can however also be problematic as it can in some cases engender an over-reliance of beneficiaries on the strategic partner, as the partners often take over the management of the farm completely and also often leave the farming operation after their five-year contract has expired. This leaves the beneficiary with little new knowledge of how to manage a farm and also deprives them of the independence of managing the farming operation on their own (DAFF, 2011b).
