Howick, KwaZulu-Natal - Farmers, government, and representatives of the landless on Tuesday launched what the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government believes is the country's first attempt to get stakeholders involved in resolving land and agriculture issues.
Speaking in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands town of Howick, agriculture MEC Mtholephi Mthimkhulu said the Provincial Land and Agrarian Reform Forum (PLARFO) was the body that included all stakeholders.
He said PLARFO had adopted its terms of reference which would then determine how the body would operate in the future.
PLARFO had "identified strategic issues that will be tackled by this forum".
Some of the issues expected to be dealt with by PLARFO will be land reform, agrarian reform, tensions between commercial farmers and farm dwellers, as well as safety and security issues in the farming community as a whole.
"The primary aim of this forum is to provide ourselves with constructive communication, co-ordination and co-operation to ensure that we share information and implement various issues in things that are of importance (to the agricultural sector)," said Mthimkhulu.
The KwaZulu Natal Agricultural union, the Landless Peoples Movement, the Association for Rural Advancement, the National African Farmers Union, the Department of Land Affairs and the SA Cane Growers Association were among those represented at PLARFO's inaugural meeting.
The agriculture sector in KwaZulu Natal has been plagued by rising tensions in connection with land and agrarian reform.
It is believed that this prompted Mthimkhulu to launch the forum.
Most recently the tensions between the landless and predominantly white commercial farmers has seen protests at a Vryheid farm where a 76-year-old farmer was given a two-week ultimatum to leave his land.
Earlier this year farm manager Kenneth Eva was killed in a dispute with illegal squatters on the New Venture farm in the Melmoth area. - Sapa
