in South Africa as well as elsewhere in the world. Land and agrarian reform does not unfold as a neat and straightforward process; societies in which reform is launched and bureaucracies and states that give hands and feet to these processes appear far more complex than is often assumed or dreamed of. The lessons learned from land reform are synthesised in a series of conceptual starting points; these help us to disentangle the complexities, ambiguities and contradictory realities and experiences that land and agrarian reform has generated and will continue to generate.
In the Shadow of Policy conveys many ideas and suggestions. By making a distinction between policies and (everyday) practices, it offers scope to study the discrepancy between theory and policy (that is, design and implementation, including budgeting) and practice (what is implemented, how and by whom, and how reworked by beneficiaries). It reflects on the politics of land and agrarian reform and challenges those involved to ensure a genuine role for reforms on the political agendas of governments and international development agencies. What is questioned is whether these agendas take note of the realities at grass-roots level and whether an organised social movement is there to channel land reform processes. In the Shadow of Policy simultaneously critically engages with the assumptions that the South African state has the capacity to provide budgets, to design meaningful programmes and to deliver services to beneficiaries. The experiences of reform that are elucidated in this book severely critique that capacity. Yet the idea that beneficiaries sit back and wait for government to deliver, and do not enact development, is not in line with the findings from empirical research in South Africa’s rural areas. At the same time, land reform experiences are varied and heterogeneous, from both a social and a livelihood point of view. But beneficiaries do not become disenchanted only with the process; elites ‘capturing’ benefits for themselves, internal fights, abuse and new forms of social inequalities signify that beneficiaries contest the socio-political spaces of land reform.
This chapter has provided food for thought about land reform policy and practices and has captured land and agrarian reform policies, practices and processes as messy and often as unordered. When we begin to view land reform as messy and structurally unordered, new modes of thinking, new designs and social action are required. In the Shadow of Policy provides some ideas to facilitate progress beyond rhetoric.
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