Worried farmers have deeper row to plough

With apologies to Bill Bryson: I come from Viljoenskroon. Someone had to. I was reminded of his line from The Lost Continent (in his case confessing to Des Moines) on my recent visit to Omaha, Nebraska.

Des Moines is about three hours' drive away, across the plains of middle America that once teemed with buffalo and are now planted with maize and soya - as good an example of highly mechanised commercial agriculture as you will see anywhere.

Bryson continues: "When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there for ever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever."

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Sadly, the prospects in Viljoenskroon were even less rosy, and all my English-speaking contemporaries have moved on.

En route this week to South Africa's biggest agricultural extravaganza, Nampo, near Bothaville, I took a quick detour through my old home town. Sometimes it's better to not go back.

Promulgated in 1918, Viljoenskroon was named after a horse called Kroon owned by one Viljoen. Today, it's a town that looks like someone not only shot the horse but stole the saddle too.

It's part of the Moqhaka municipality, most famous today for its R94-million municipal debt to Eskom, which cut off power last year to nonpaying customers.

The primary school I attended appeared abandoned, its buildings in decay and gravel playgrounds overgrown. The wide streets, which once teemed with activity and locally owned businesses, are lined with budget stores of national chains with no visible signs of commerce.

Continuing tentatively along a rapidly deteriorating R59 out of town, I came across a car on its roof. A cop waved to me to slow down, but the speedometer for the past 10km had barely budged above 60 as I navigated the remains of what had once been a road that provided speedy access to Bothaville and ensured the crops got to market.

The driver of the GP-registered car was fine. A city slicker unused to the patchy road surface had lost control on the way to Nampo. So much for premier Ace Magashule's Operation Hlasela, which spent a rumoured R140-million on a website that promised jobs, infrastructure and land.

Land. South Africa's key bone of contention.

Agriculture here is more commercialised than ever. From 130000 farmers in 1994, there are about 37000 left on the land, Grain South Africa estimates. Most are white and many extraordinarily prosperous. They farm tens of thousands of hectares, investing in pricey equipment to reduce their dependence on labour in a deeply unpredictable environment.

There is a small but growing group of black farmers who, at Nampo, voiced similar concerns as their white neighbours about a lack of government support. Security of tenure is a big issue. Why invest in the land if you don't know that you will have access to it five years from now? The political rhetoric is making farmers worried.

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Strangely, the mood at Nampo was quite upbeat. It may have to do with the fact that, after a decade of being ignored by the Department of Agriculture, it hosted Agriculture Minister Senzeni Zokwana twice. Perhaps it's the fact that farmers owe the Land Bank and commercial banks some R145-billion. If the land were to be seized, not only would it threaten food security, it would pose a threat to the financial system and hence the economy as a whole.

But there might also be a false sense of security. The state, which sits on some 4,000 farms it could transfer to black owners but has not, is not going to provide the solutions. Agriculture will have to sort this mess out itself.

What it needs is a greater sense of urgency before economically disenfranchised South Africans take the rhetoric literally.

Whitfield is a public speaker on the political economy, a financial journalist and a grateful urbanite