So South Africa’s land claims commissioners are so upset by the fact that the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Gugile Nkwinti cut their annual salaries that they walked out en masse.
Paddy Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com
Instead of earning R1-million a year they will now be earning just R840k (R70k a month). What these senior government employees are probably saying is: “How does the government expect us to live on that, let alone meet all our expenses?”
After all, they will probably claim, they were battling to make ends meet before the pay cuts when they were getting R1-million a year (R83k a month) and, if anything, they should have got at least an inflation-related increase, not a decrease.
And the acting chief commissioner, Sibusiso Gamede – who was earning about R1,4-million a year or almost R117k a month – led the mass walk out citing “personal reasons” for leaving and promptly accepted another job (presumably even better paid) in the private sector.
The only person to remain in the job – and to have accepted the pay cuts as well – is Limpopo’s Tele Maphoto, so it seems that at least one person is capable of living on such a minute government salary.
The immediate reaction to the story published in various newspapers earlier this week was the commentary from members of the public who referred to the obscene amounts of money being paid to the land claims commissioners and, more predictably, that they are all part of a self-enrichment gravy train being run by the ANC for its people.
What was left unsaid – and the point of this column – is that the land claims commissioners have, by all accounts, failed miserably in their jobs. The land reform process – which was supposed to have been completed long ago – is nowhere near completion.
There is a huge bottleneck of claims that must still be heard, hundreds of millions of rands that must be paid to farmers who have lost their farms to expropriation deals and millions more that that is owed to communities who opted to accept a financial package rather than a land deal.
My own view is that these pay cuts were a direct response by government to the poor performance of the land claims commissioners. If I were the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform then I certainly would have cut the salaries of my land claims commissioners who consistently failed to do their jobs properly.
And I hope that all the other ministers running the many other government departments will do exactly the same thing as Gugile Nkwinti has done when it comes to assessing their own under-performing staff members.
If people don’t perform, cut their salaries.
I reckon that just about every government department – with the possible exception of Finance – could and should impose fairly substantial pay cuts on those employees who consistently under-perform.
In fact I would like these ministers to move away from the socialistic principle of payment grades and set salary scales to an incentive-based reward mechanism for salaries.
That way those employees who are excellent at what they do – there are few – can be generously rewarded while those slovenly slouches who are little more than oxygen thieves, can have their pay packages cut.
If that doesn’t put a fire-cracker under bums then nothing will, so fire them.
Nkwinti seems to be cracking a fairly substantial whip when it comes to his Land Reform Ministry because he has also agreed that the Farm Equity Share Schemes can be re-introduced in the Western Cape.
These share schemes are, in effect, an alternative to land reform.
Instead of giving away productive land that is being farmed successfully on a commercial basis, the owner of the land and his or her farmworkers form a joint enterprise and each member of the enterprise has a share in it.
This means that they share in the assets, the liabilities and the profits and, every share has a net value for every individual. What it means is that successful farms are kept profitable and successful. The community shares in that wealth this farm generates and, in sharing in it, each one of them is able to benefit from the wealth creation process.
That seems to be a much more effective solution than splitting farms into tiny parcels or plots and then expecting each person who owns a plot to make a commercial success of farming a tiny tract of land.
It also seems that this will stop the consistent failure of commercial farms in places like Limpopo and Mpumalanga. In these two provinces at least 70% of farms expropriated under the land reform programme have gone from commercially successful enterprises to complete failures in less than ten years.
Most of these farms are now bankrupt and face repossession by the Department of Agriculture.
So what can we read into the recent developments within the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform?
Firstly the pay cuts being imposed on claims commissioners were probably a direct result of their poor performance and their inability to do their jobs properly or to resolve land claims timeously.
Secondly, the ban on Farm Equity Share Schemes has been lifted, opening the way for a whole host of share schemes that will provide real wealth creation opportunities while maintaining the commercial viability of South Africa’s vital agricultural sector.
That, for me, is a much better bet than the Zimbabwe solution, which has effectively destroyed a country and a nation, reducing it to being the world’s most truculent beggar.
For Zimbabwe is just that: a beggar with a bad attitude.
*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him via email.
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