Courting the 800,000

In no small way, the fate of South Viet Nam has long hinged on the fortunes of the restless, landless peasants whose rebellion against an intolerable feudal way of life was one of the original causes of the war. In the 1950s, the Viet Cong cut a wide swath through the Vietnamese countryside by importing Ho Chi Minh's formula of routing the landlords and distributing "land to the tiller." Today, the leading advocate of Ho's thesis is none other than President Nguyen Van Thieu.

Two years after its belated inaugural, the Saigon government's widely praised land-reform program is well under way. More than 470,000 of 800,000 farming families have been awarded titles to 1,560,000 acres of land, mostly private tracts that they had previously tilled as tenant farmers. At year's end, farming by landless tenant families will have virtually ceased in South Viet Nam. That means, as Thieu said last week at a Farmer's Day celebration at Bien Hoa, "a new way of life, a prosperous and dignified life."

Free Land. Before the current land reform, U.S. studies had ranked South Viet Nam among the world's four worst areas in terms of peasant landlessness, that classic precondition for rural insurrection.* As much as 58% of the rural population lived a hand-to-mouth existence as tenant farmers--a higher level of landlessness than in prerevolutionary China, Russia or Cuba.

In the Mekong Delta, where 80% of South Viet Nam's rice is grown, seven out of ten families were tenants, paying 30% or more of their income to the landlords for their land, seed and the use of a buffalo. Typical of the tenants was Tran Van Cau, 42, a farmer in the Delta village of Tan Loc. For ten years, Cau had tilled a small 4 1/2-acre tract; he paid rent first to a local landlord, then for six years to the Viet Cong, then to the original landlord, who moved back after government troops "pacified" the village in 1968. Today, Cau serves only his own family of six. He keeps the title to his land, rolled in protective plastic, tucked away in a cranny of his small house.

Any tenant farmer who can show that he is tilling a piece of land is entitled to take free possession of it, up to certain limits (7.5 acres in the vast Delta, 2 1/2 acres in land-poor central South Viet Nam). Landlords are allowed to retain a maximum of 30 acres provided they work the land themselves or hire wage laborers.

For acreage claimed by tenants, landowners are being compensated in bonds and cash, payments spread out over an eleven-year period; the U.S. Treasury will pick up at least 75% of the $727 million total bill.

Unhappily, Thieu's plan may be about 15 years late.

During the 1950s, when the Diem regime was merely toying with land reform, the Viet Cong perfected a crude but effective program of their own. Landlords were simply driven to the safety of the cities, their farms were handed over to "liberated" peasants who often willingly gave their sons to Viet Cong recruiters--at a rate of up to 7,000 a month in the mid-1960s. If local allegiance to the Communists lapsed, it was often renewed later when, in towns newly pacified by U.S. troops, the old landlords rolled up in South Vietnamese army Jeeps to repossess their lands.

On the Fence. Thieu's program has had its share of problems. Soldiers grumble that they cannot get into the program because they are unable to till land while they are in the army. Landlords complain that government compensation is slow. Ultimate success depends on the ability of the Saigon government to provide military security; a test of that ability loomed last week, as North Vietnamese forces around the Demilitarized Zone and in the central highlands launched a series of attacks that could be the prelude to the long-awaited Communist offensive.

More subtly, there are doubts about what will follow the old landlord system. For all their faults, Vietnamese landlords were traditionally a buffer between their tenants and the whims and avarice of Vietnamese officialdom. In some areas, officials seeking kickbacks have forced poor tenants off lands near roads and villages in order to make room for wealthier farmers better able to offer bribes for the choice titles.

"All land reform is going to do is push the guy sitting on the fence toward the government," notes Jack Riggs, an American adviser. The corollary is that, poorly managed, a reform program can also force the guy back into the hands of the hungry V.C. recruiter. But there is one good indication that Thieu is pushing in the right direction: the Viet Cong have mounted a vigorous propaganda campaign against his program.

*The other three areas: Java, northeastern Brazil and Central Luzon, breeding ground of the Philippines' Huk terrorists.

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