tenure reform and redistribution, the latter aiming to address the highly skewed ownership of land along racial lines. The purpose of the redistribution programme was defined as ‘the redistribution of land to the landless poor, labour tenants, farm workers and emerging farmers for residential and productive uses, to improve their livelihoods and quality of life. Special attention would be given to the needs of women’ (DLA 1997: 36). Land redistribution would not be rights-based, and people wanting land would have to apply for land acquisition grants, which ‘willing buyers’ would use to purchase farms from ‘willing sellers’.
A Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG) was set at R15 000 per household, in line with the state housing grant, and could also be used to invest in farm infrastructure and equipment (DLA 1997: 41). Qualification for the grant included a maximum household income of R1 500. It was expected that many land purchases would be undertaken by groups, whose members would ‘pool their resources to negotiate, buy and jointly hold land under a formal title deed’ (DLA 1997: 36).
Various types of small-scale farming that the SLAG grant might help establish were listed in the White Paper, including irrigated cropping, small stock and feedlot enterprises, timber and fruit production, rain-fed cropping, extensive grazing, and contract farming (DLA 1997: 42). Opportunities for beneficiaries to engage in small-scale agricultural production, characterised as land-and-labour intensive, was one of six ‘economic arguments for land reform’, along with reducing unemployment (DLA 1997: 13). A section of the White Paper discussed financial services for land reform beneficiaries, for establishing small-scale agricultural production or related rural enterprises. The recommendations of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Rural Financial Services (the Strauss Commission) were accepted and summarised, including the rejection of subsidised interest rates, the provision of ‘sunrise’ subsidies such as graded and flexible repayments of loans and discounted subsidies, state-supported financial packages for land reform beneficiaries, and the use of parastatals such as the Land Bank and the Post Office as rural financial service providers.
The White Paper referred to investigation of ‘measures to expedite subdivision of land to encourage individual or smallholder ownership’ (DLA 1997: 42), and stated that ‘there is general agreement that the Subdivision of Agricultural Land Act be phased out to free up the land market’, accompanied by regulations to protect high-potential agricultural or environmentally sensitive land (DLA 1997: 25). The Act would ‘not be allowed to frustrate land reform’, with draft regulations allowing for exemptions. The Provision of Certain Land for Settlement Act No. 126 of 1993 would be used as the legal framework for land transfers, and this exempted such transfers from the requirement of ministerial permission for subdivision. The Subdivision Act was meant to be repealed in 1998, but despite its approval by parliament it has never been signed into law, and in practice very little subdivision of farms for land reform purposes has taken place, for financial, institutional and ideological reasons; see Lahiff (2007: 1589) and Hall (2009: 39) for analyses of these.
The White Paper made little mention of how land reform objectives would be supported by agricultural policies, and the issue of agrarian structure and its reform was addressed in only one sentence. This disconnect was mirrored in a corresponding failure to integrate land reform into agricultural policy. The Department of Agriculture prioritised policies of deregulation and liberalisation, focused on the abolition of subsidies on credit, inputs and exports, and the dismantling of the system of marketing through single-channel schemes and fixed prices. A new Marketing of Agricultural Products Act (No. 47) of 1996 aimed to increase market access for all ‘market participants’ (a euphemism for new black commercial farmers), promote efficiency, optimise export earnings and enhance the viability of agriculture (Van Schalkwyk et al. 2003: 128). The White Paper on Agriculture of 1995 (RSA 1995: 12) declared that state interventions in marketing should be ‘limited to the correction of market imperfections and socially unacceptable effects’.
These policy frameworks enabled the continued consolidation of agrarian capital, in both farm production and agribusiness. Farmer-owned cooperatives, many centred in the grain industry, were privatised and became major companies supplying goods and services along agro-produced value chains (Amin and Bernstein 1996). There were already high levels of concentration in seeds, fertilisers, agrochemicals, machinery, farm finance, milling, food processing and food retailing, and these saw further processes of vertical integration and the extension of ‘private regulation’ in parallel to the reduction of public regulation (Bernstein 1996).
The land redistribution programme began slowly and gradually accelerated: by 1999, it had yielded 472 projects, 48 176 households and 635 599 hectares (Turner 2002: 12) – but involved the transfer of only 0.73 per cent of commercial farmland. More than half of the land transferred was arid or semi-arid rangeland in the Northern Cape province (Hall 2011: 237). Groups acquiring land had to develop business plans before transfers were approved; these were generally undertaken by government-appointed consultants, and few provided for subdivision. Typically, the plans provided ‘ultra-optimistic projections for production and profit, based on textbook models drawn from the large-scale commercial farming sector and further influenced by the past use of the land in question’ (Lahiff 2007: 1588). This approach meant that group-based or collective ownership and production projects dominated, although this was not at all the intended outcome (Hall 2011: 221). Projects did not receive post-transfer support in the form of training, infrastructure, credit, extension or market access, with the Department of Land Affairs assuming, incorrectly, that these would be provided by provincial departments of agriculture (Jacobs 2003: 5). Similar problems beset land restitution projects where land was restored to claimants (Turner 2002: 9).
Reviewing and remaking policy, 1999–2009
In response to both the slow pace of land reform and the mounting evidence that it was yielding few positive impacts on rural livelihoods, government reviewed its policies and programmes in 1998 and 1999 (Hall 2011: 241). The use of the SLAG grant for production purposes was permitted, a land reform credit facility was established, new grants to support production and multiple livelihoods were proposed, and a move away from group projects and towards individual farmers was considered. Before these new ideas could be implemented, however, a national election took place and the incoming president, Thabo Mbeki, appointed a new minister of agriculture and land affairs, Thoko Didiza, who imposed a moratorium on new SLAG projects and initiated a review of land reform policies. Redistribution policies were heavily criticised for creating large and unwieldy groups of beneficiaries (the so-called rent-a-crowd syndrome) and for not supporting emerging black commercial farmers, who now became a key target group for land redistribution.
In 2001 a new policy framework for redistribution was announced: the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme. Its stated intention was to integrate land reform and agriculture, which had previously been poorly linked. The new LRAD grants would range from a minimum of R20 000 to a maximum of R100 000 per beneficiary, with own contributions ranging from R5 000 at the lower end (which could be paid in kind, including ‘sweat equity’ labour) to R400 000 at the upper end of the scale. One of the stated aims of the new policy was to create a significant class of black commercial farmers – but without abandoning the rural poor, for whom a food security net programme would cater; support for farming in communal areas would also be provided (Jacobs et al. 2003: 4). The intention was that individuals rather than groups would be the main beneficiaries.
In relation to agricultural policy, a market-friendly orientation and a strong focus on ‘efficiency’ was retained, with a new emphasis on ‘partnerships’ between established and ‘emerging’ farmers. A Strategic Plan for South African Agriculture was published in 2001 (DOA 2001), with the goal of promoting ‘equitable access and participation in a globally competitive, profitable and sustainable agricultural sector’ (DOA 2001: viii). There was a strong emphasis in the document on deracialising the commercial farming sector – but mainly through ‘partnerships’ rather than extensive land redistribution. A process of developing a black economic empowerment (Agri-BEE) code for the sector was also set in motion.
The
