Peter Wylie and his family have been on their farm just a stone’s throw from the eastern edge of Grahamstown since 1946. It’s the place where his father was shot and killed during a robbery several years ago, where he’s invested thousands of hours mending pumps, building dams and carrying on all manner of other tasks that go along with producing dairy.
Peter Wylie and his family have been on their farm just a stone’s throw from the eastern edge of Grahamstown since 1946. It’s the place where his father was shot and killed during a robbery several years ago, where he’s invested thousands of hours mending pumps, building dams and carrying on all manner of other tasks that go along with producing dairy.
Some eight years ago Wylie received first-hand experience of the troubled South African land reform process when he sold a chunk of his land for the controversial process. He’s since seen nothing but degradation and waste take root in this once-productive earth.
Particularly emotional for Wylie is the way the dam on his former land – now Upper Gletwyn farm – was left to break. “It would have taken two guys with spades a few hours to prevent it,” he explained. “I had the same problem on another dam and repaired it before it collapsed. I warned the government about the issue, but they did nothing.”
The result can be seen from Wylie’s hill-top property. A giant wedge has crumbled from the dam wall, robbing the farm of its main source of water, leaving behind nothing more than a dry sandpit.
There is another dam on the land, but it’s not enough. The municipality now has to truck water in every week, at great expense to the council. “It’s really a drain on society,” concluded Wylie, who also noted the “wear on the tankers that have to transport water down that horrendous road.”
Wylie believed the wildlife on the plot has long since been poached away and, with no grazing policy, there’s hardly any production on the land. Indeed, some of those now struggling away in the valley have but one animal on it, and are forced to make a living by other means.
As a passionate community member and conservationist, the short-sighted approach to this sort of land reform seems to bother Wylie deeply. For him, “Farming is about symbiosis: you have to help your neighbours, but I don’t want to help a useless person who’s going to depend on government," he said. "I don’t feel I have to give anybody help unless they have the integrity that warrants it. It’s not a black-white issue, it’s about integrity. I’ll help a worthy person.”
Wylie offered what he calls the “three C’s” as the backbone of any successful land reform process: cultivating, competent and committed farmers. “Without that you’re lost. Look at successful farmers – they’ve either inherited a farm from a family background, or they’ve built it up from nothing, gaining their own experience from work. You very rarely find someone just coming into farming and making a success of it," Wylie said. "If you don’t take financial responsibility and have the ability to farm, why should you be given land?”
