for the ANC’s acceptance of the protection of property rights in a new constitution, and also for the adoption of a ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ (market-friendly) approach to the acquisition of land. The primary mechanisms until 2006/07 were grants to land reform beneficiaries for land purchase and land development, the establishment of legal entities to hold land for groups, and business planning to ensure ‘viable’ farm plans for large farm units (in other words, without subdivision). The state played the central role in negotiating prices with landowners and approving grants and plans, through long-winded bureaucratic procedures; consultants played key roles in writing constitutions for legal entities and producing business plans, which were often poorly aligned with the needs or desires of beneficiaries; landowners who were unwilling to sell were able to veto land transfers in specific locations; the lack of capital and ineffective post-settlement support measures have hamstrung the ability of beneficiaries to engage in commercial farming; and the absence of area-based planning meant that land acquisition lacked any kind of spatial logic. In effect, the least effective aspects of both state and market-driven approaches to land redistribution were combined in a programme that worked within, rather than confronted, the overarching context of an agrarian structure dominated by large-scale agrarian capital.
Figure 3.1 depicts the key land reform policy choices made by the South African government since 1994 in relation to two policy ‘axes’ – state versus market mechanisms, and large farms versus small farms. Also shown are the policy stances advocated by a range of interest groups outside of the state. Farmer unions such as Agri-SA and the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU), and private sector think tanks such as the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE 2005, 2008), continue to argue for a market-driven, large-farm orientation within land reform, and the National African Farmers Union (NAFU) and similar formations urge high levels of state support for commercial black farmers on large farms. Land-sector NGOs such as the National Land Committee in the 1990s, or the Trust for Community Outreach and Education over the past decade, have consistently advocated state-driven approaches aimed at redistributing land to smallholder and subsistence farmers (Andrews 2009). The World Bank’s policy stance has been closer to that of government, but has consistently identified smallholder farmers as the key beneficiaries (while continuing to argue that liberalisation of agriculture is necessary for efficiency).
In contrast, on the ‘state versus market’ axis, government policy since 1994 has retained its position at the midpoint, or crossroads: the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ mechanism is still in place; land reform is still state-funded, market-friendly and lacking any effective instruments for a wide-ranging agrarian reform; and it continues to combine bureaucratic ineptitude with market processes that undermine strategic planning. On the large farms versus small farms axis, government policy (at least rhetorically) favoured small-scale farming in the 1990s, shifted emphasis to ‘emerging’ large-scale commercial farming in the early 2000s, and then shifted back to ‘smallholders’ after the 2009 national elections.
Figure 3.1 Land reform policy stances in South Africa
In the absence of agrarian reform, the impact of government policies is that (i) some poorer beneficiaries of land reform and rural development are able to enhance their (marginalised) livelihoods to some degree; and (ii) a small minority of better-off beneficiaries, often those with access to income from non-agricultural businesses, is being provided with significant funding and support by the state and elements of agrarian capital.
Conclusion: the political economy of policymaking on land and agriculture
According to Lahiff (2007: 1583–1584), South Africa’s reform programme should be seen as ‘the outcome of competing imperatives and contending political forces’, but with low levels of mobilisation amongst the rural poor, resulting in ‘a messy compromise’. Hall (2010: 189) emphasises ‘uneasy truces between competing interests’, resulting in ‘internal ambiguity, tension and even contradiction within policy’. The incoherence of land reform policy thus originates within the contested politics of policy processes, a key outcome being the effective decoupling of land reform and agricultural policy and consequent failure to advance a coherent strategy of agrarian reform.
Understanding the underlying logic of this choice and assessing possibilities for alternative choices means looking beyond the land and agricultural sectors and locating it within the political economy of South Africa’s transition to majority rule. Marais (2011: 139) argues that neo-liberalism has provided the ‘organising framework’ for the transition. Following Harvey (2005), I understand neo-liberalism as ‘the contemporary form of global capitalist accumulation’ (2005: 134) characterised by the ‘expansion of opportunities and options for private capital accumulation’ (2005: 136). On coming to power the ANC adopted a neo-liberal path, restructuring the economy on the terms of conglomerate capital, hoping for a trade-off of corporate support for programmes of socio-economic redress, the compatibility of corporate ambitions and the creation of a black bourgeoisie (Marais 2011: 389).
However, given that poverty and inequality continue to be reproduced and the economy is ‘structurally incapable of providing jobs on remotely the scale and quality required’ (Marais 2011: 427), the dilemma for the ANC, the state and capital ‘is how to reproduce and maintain power and achieve social and political stability’ (Marais 2011: 388). This is the context for ongoing contests for hegemony, and for the tendency for the as yet unresolved land question to periodically resurface as a symbol of dispossession and deprivation more generally.
Notes
1Departmental reports from 2003 onwards do not contain a disaggregated analysis of LRAD grants (Lahiff 2008: 3).
2‘ANC 52nd National Conference 2007 – resolutions: rural development, land reform and agrarian change’, available at http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history-conf/conference52/resolutions-f.html.
3This is in contrast to restitution, where budget constraints began to impact negatively on the resolution of large and costly rural restitution claims from 2009 (Greenberg 2010: 5).
References
Aliber, M. and R. Hall. 2010. ‘Development of evidence-based policy around small-scale farming’, paper commissioned by the Programme to Support Pro-poor Policy Development, Pretoria: The Presidency, Republic of South Africa.
Amin, N. and H. Bernstein. 1996. The role of agricultural co-operatives in agricultural and rural development, Johannesburg: Land and Agriculture Policy Centre.
ANC (African National Congress). 1955. The Freedom Charter. Adopted by the Congress of the People, Kliptown, Johannesburg, 26 June 1955.
Andrews, M. 2009. ‘Piloting participatory needs-based land reform in the Breede River/Winelands Municipality’, in R. Hall (ed.) Another countryside? Policy options for land and agrarian reform in South Africa, Cape Town: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape.
Bernstein, H. 1996. ‘The agrarian question in South Africa: extreme and exceptional?’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 23(2–3): 1–52.
CDE (Centre for Development and Enterprise). 2005. Land reform in South Africa: a 21 st century perspective. Research Report No. 14, Johannesburg: Centre for Development and Enterprise.
CDE. 2008. Land reform in South Africa: getting back on track. Research Report No. 16, Johannesburg: Centre for Development and Enterprise.
Cousins,
