Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs, and members - both special delegates from provinces here present today and permanent delegates - the North West is largely rural. It is within these rural parts of the province that development has to take place. The majority of the indigenous people were dispossessed of their land, even before 1913. Restoring the land back to its rightful owners is therefore one of the main challenges to the new democratic Government.
If one travels across the province, one becomes aware of the large number of people who are homeless. They are homeless because they have been landless for many years. This has impoverished the indigenous people of that province. The ANC Freedom Charter states: ``The people shall share.''
This means that the people of South Africa shall share in the God-given resources so that there shall be equity and a better life for all its people. We are saying of the North West that if the haves are prepared to share with the have-nots, there will be stability in the province. The commitment of some people such as Mr Roger Roman, a white landowner in the Hartebeespoort Dam area, is indicative of the goodwill among many white South Africans, who are prepared to share with the have-nots. He decided to give his land away, but had to embark on a six-week fast to convince authorities to allow him to do so. He willingly signed over part of his 13 hectare small-holding to 11 families despite the protestation of his neighbours and the Hartebeespoort Dam local council. His action should be a challenge to local authorities and landowners across South Africa to transfer land voluntarily to displaced communities in order to speed up land reform.
Another significant occurrence in the North West was the ending of a 10- year-old legal dispute between the royal Bafokeng nation and Impala Platinum Mine Company. This settlement brings the curtain down on a dispute that has been there for the last century. During the apartheid regime the Bafokeng nation had running battles with the former Bophuthatswana leader, Lucas Mangope, over this land and royalties from the mining houses. The people of the North West want stability in their province and in the entire country. However, the stability will only be long-lasting if the landless people of the North West are given access to land and control over their own land. Access to and control over land is extremely important for the rural poor of the North West.
For them the land is not only a productive resource and a collateral for bank credit, but it also builds the confidence of rural people. It converts them from the status of vulnerable to potential actors who constitute an integral part of a society and its development. In other words, land is their very entry point to social and human development.
Opposition parties have argued in the past, and no doubt will do so again in this Council today, that the department of Agriculture and Land Affairs has not moved speedily enough to implement its land reform policies. This budget, among other things, endeavours to address the backlog. To these parties I just want to issue a friendly reminder that it was their immoral policies, and support for these policies, that were responsible for the large-scale dispossession and consequently extreme unequal distribution of land in our country.
The minority government and its opposition parties understood that the racial division of land in South Africa was a fundamental precondition for the continuation of white privilege. They knew that white farmers would eventually form one of the most important strata of support for successive white minority governments and privilege. In return for their support, white farmers received large acres of land and huge subsidies, which facilitated the development of white-owned agriculture. This is the reason we have so many evictions of farmworkers in the North West province, more than ever before, by farmers fearing the laws enacted by this Parliament.
On the other hand, blacks were dispossessed of their land and black-owned agriculture suffered years of neglect. A pattern emerged in which some sectors of white-owned agriculture became highly commercialised and productive, while most black-owned agriculture continued to use traditional subsistence methods, which brought diminished returns. The tragic consequences of this unequal distribution of land and agricultural resources continue to haunt us to this very day.
I am not surprised at the opposition parties' response to the Government's land reform programme. It is characteristic of their inability to understand the enormous challenges facing our democratic Government to transform the fundamentally inequal relations in our society with the limited resources available at its disposal, and in particular the challenges facing the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs in implementing its land reform programme. Our land reform programme is not just a question of giving land to people; rather it is linked to a more strategic long-term objective, namely the development of the productive potential of our rural population, which is a critical precondition for sustainable poverty reduction in South Africa.
A further challenge is the commitment we have made to carry out our land reform policies in a manner that will not compromise South Africa's position as one of the leading nations in the area of agricultural production. Adding to the above constraints is the fact that our democratic Government, unlike the apartheid government, respects the rights to property, which prevents it from embarking on a process of large-scale expropriation. In their zeal to criticise Government and to score cheap political points, opposition parties deliberately overlooked the many positive steps taken by Government to implement its land and agricultural reform policies. They do not tell their supporters that the ANC Government has gone much further than any other South African government in implementing a far-reaching programme of agricultural liberalisation. They do not tell their supporters that, as a result of this programme, barriers to market entry, both domestic as well as for export, have been removed, price incentives have shifted towards high-value labour-intensive crops, and land prices have declined dramatically.
It is indeed true that what is happening in Zimbabwe today should be a learning process for us as well. We should look into ways and means of approaching the question of land, and that is the reason I specifically say:
Motho ke motho ka batho ba bang. [A person is a person because of other people.]
When one recognises the co-existence of one's neighbour, that one's neighbour should also live, then one is busy creating a stable future ...