The High Level Panel chaired by Former President Kgalema Motlanthe on the assessment of key legislation and the acceleration of fundamental change published its report in 2017. Unfortunately the lauch of the report coincided with an intense news focus on Zimbabwe as Robert Mugabe was forced to relinquish power. Very little media coverage has been devoted to this report which  provides comprehensive analysis of the rural and urban land questions, rural governance and the different dimensions of the land reform programme. The report also makes wide-ranging and substantive recommendations for change. It now seems as if this important report which drew on extensive public hearings and a wide range of in-depth commissioned research  has been shelved, overtaken by the current national debate on expropriation without compensation. 
A range of leading research and social justice organisations, together with individual experts and practitioners have contributed to provide a set of short summary papers on key aspects of the report. These are all publicly accessible here
The collection includes summary papers on:

• Communal tenure
  
• Communal property assocations
  
• Farm workers and labour tenants
  
• Ingonyama Trust
  
• Land administration
  
• Land redistribution
  
• Land restitution
• Mining 
  
• Spatial in equality

In a recent article in Business Day Agri-Western Cape CEO Carl Opperman is quoted as stating that Western Cape farmers have recorded 14 billion in losses as a result of  back to back droughts. The article forecasts that "an estimated 50 000 people could be out of work soon". According to Opperman the employment losses would primarily be experienced  by seasonal workers who would  either be employed for fewer months, or who might not find work at all." The drought has forced officials to impose strict water restrictions, and the agricultural sector, which is the largest consumer of water, has had its supply curtailed by between 60% and 87%,
Opperman said: "Both the fruit and vegetable industries have been hard hit by the drought and water restrictions. In the Ceres area, for example, the limited water supply resulted in 50% less onions and 80% less potatoes being planted this season. This impacts on food production and wage losses of millions of rand for seasonal workers."

Similar concerns were also reported in October 2017 by provincial CoGTA which highlighted the risk of "civil unrest" as an estimated R40 million rand in agricultural workers wages had been lost as farmers cut back on new planting and harvests fell. 

How will the drought impact on advancing a joint programme for decent work in the agricultural sector?  
Potentially the imapcts are enormous as producers and workers experience hard times. Putting such a programme in place requires that producers, workers organisations, state and civil society organisations remain in productive conversation to improve conditions on farms. The drought and projected layoffs risk placing these relationships under intense strain and raise the level of conflict risk in the sector.

Can the drought present an opportunity?
Despite the risks identified above these diificult times can also be regarded as an opportunity to intensify and deepen  multilateral conversations. Not everyone has subscribed to doomsday scenarios. Patrick Dowling highlights that:
"Realising that world‚ national and local leaders can do only so much‚ people have started working co-operatively and innovatively. There are domestic‚ street and faith-based responses‚ workplace plans and initiatives to support frail and vulnerable. As people work together‚ mesh talents and develop trust more dots are joined‚ giving issues of sustainability and co-operative solutions new meaning and practical application".
These initiatives need to integrated into the agricultural landscape. There are are many things this protracted drought can teach us. It will be important for producer bodies and the provincial department of agriculture to communicate clear and reliable information about the impacts of the drought and to project how these impacts could play out for different commodities and in particular localities.
​A wide range of actors need this information so that joint responses can be developed,  solutions found, implemented and monitored. Hard times should provide the cue to open up spaces for dialogue and communciation rather than closing them down.

Siyabu Manona, one of Phuhlisani NPC's directors featured recently in a Daily Maverick article reviewing the severity of the drought in the Western and Eastern Cape. While Cape Town has been capturing the headlines there is a serious crisis gathering increasing momentum in the Eastern Cape. The article written by Marelise van der Merwe quotes Siyabu as follows:

The reality, says Siyabulela Manona, is that provinces like the Eastern and Western Cape cannot think only in terms of short-term drought solutions, because drought is only a symptom of a much larger problem. 
Manona told Daily Maverick it was necessary for policy-makers to take a long-term view with regards to drought, and to apply different lenses to rural and urban dwellers.
“The risks are different for city and rural residents,” he said. “Rural residents are very vulnerable to extreme weather conditions in some ways. But city dwellers may be more vulnerable to fires or other, related events. We are not only dealing with one drought. We are dealing with climate change, which is a longer-term problem. It is important to realise that, and to plan our development accordingly, both in urban and rural areas.”
This includes a shift towards subsistence and small-scale farming with more water-sensitive approaches; curriculum changes that include a focus on sustainability; and rethinking urban planning to maximise limited resources. A practical difficulty, he said, is the influence of five-year terms in government, which means there is too little room for meaningful long-term implementation at municipal or provincial level.
Manona told Daily Maverick that the cumulative impact of cold, extreme heat, dry conditions, flooding, drought and other extreme events have had noticeable impacts on those in small villages and rural areas in recent years.
“People are keeping less livestock, they complain about the heat and having little access to water,” he said. “On the positive side, however, there is an increased awareness of the impact of climate change. We must not overlook that. We must work with that.” That being said, he added, one “must not ignore” the impact on cities, either.
“This is not just a drought,” he said. “This is something much bigger than that. Drought is only one part of it. We must start to plan differently, live differently, which is something not everybody is ready to hear.” 

A new year marked by the launch of the Phuhlisani NPC website and blog. The blog will aim to provide news on Phuhlisani's work, links to useful articles and think pieces and reflections on the politics and practice of land and tenure reform in South Africa. We are going to make a concerted effort to communicate our work better in 2018 which we regard as a critical year in South Africa's history - one where there is a national fightback against elite capture and new directions for land reform which ensure equitable access to land and secure tenure for all but which recognise the danger of opportunist simplifcation of this complex issue.