ABSTRACT
The Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) of the United Kingdom is very active in Swaziland. The background of CDC and the range of its global investments are reviewed in Chapter 13, Section 1; a tabulation of its activities in Swaziland is included at the end of Chapter 4 to emphasize the pervasive importance of CDC to the economy of Swaziland.
The specific project covered by Chapter 4 is actually a complex of enterprises, namely: the Inyoni Yami Swaziland Irrigation Scheme (SIS), the Mhlurme Sugar Company (MSC), and the Vuvulane Irrigated Farms (VIF). The latter is a resettlement satellite farming venture. This case illustrates another "nucleus estate" corporate structure. However, it provides a striking contrast to the Mumias Sugar Company in Kenya (Chapter 3). In Kenya, the contract farmers are landowners and were resident long before the company arrived; in Swaziland, the farmers are not landowners and were settled at the enterprise site with no tradition of landownership. In Kenya, both the nucleus estate and an outgrowers program were integral parts of the enterprise from the outset; in Swaziland, the satellite farming scheme was implemented over a decade after the first investment was made. In Kenya, 23,000 farmers supply 88 percent of the cane for the core sugar mill; in Swaziland, 263 farmers supply 12 to 15 percent. In Swaziland, the farmers have larger land areas, are supplied with irrigation water, and produce other cash crops than sugarcane that they can market freely. Perhaps most significantly from a rural development perspective, in Kenya the farmers have their own organization to act in the interest of the participants, however weak it may be; in Swaziland, the Vuvulane Irrigated Farms, home and mentor of the satellite farm families and a creation of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, is being transferred in ownership and control to the Swazi Nation, raising serious and troubling questions about the future.
The SIS enterprise is a combination of cattle, citrus, and sugar, covering an area in excess of 100,000 acres of land that beforehand was largely a wasteland where game and hunters were 58the main inhabitants. The area was brought to its productive potential by an irrigation system introduced in 1957. This established the feasibility of large-scale sugar production, and the subsequent spin-off in 1958 of the Mhlume Sugar Company, now a major producer for the export market. The sugar company now operates a plantation of 12,000 acres, purchased from SIS. The estate produces 35 percent of cane requirements; SIS provides an equal quantity; the outgrowers supply 12 to 15 percent; and the remainder comes from nearby large commercial farms. All growers get irrigation water from the SIS system.
It was in 1962 that the outgrower scheme was implemented and 4,000 acres were allocated by SIS as the land base for the Vuvulane Irrigated Farms. This land was in an area of good soil, suitable for sugarcane, vegetables, cotton, peanuts, potatoes, and other cash crops. Settler farms range from 8 to 16 acres, with 75 percent to 80 percent of the farm devoted to sugarcane cultivation. By 1983, 263 families were resident. The particularly intriguing element of this scheme is that for the settlers and for the Swazi Nation, it represented the first and only break with the tradition of tribal chief control over land use, except for large commercial farms, mostly owned and operated by non-Swazis.
