and many others suggest, intrude on the formally stated objectives. There is always, as much of the book will indicate, a fair degree of rhetoric at play. What drives the momentum of this book, then, is a commitment to making visible what is happening in the fields and homesteads on the land reform projects and what this potentially means for different actors in different places in South Africa. This is intimately linked to the debate on the land question (Bernstein 2004, 2007; Ntsebeza and Hall 2007; O’Laughlin et al. 2013). With Hammar (2007), I argue that there is a plurality of co-existing land and agrarian questions articulating with one another within specific sites, and across space and time. This in turn urges us to rethink the land question; the book sets out to provide empirical data for that.
The title specifically reflects the three major aims of the book:
•to illuminate the interactions between the role and position of the state and its assumed capacity to design and implement policies;
•to elucidate whether and how the actions derived from these interactions resonate meaningfully with everyday realities. As the book documents, there is a lot more going on at grass-roots level and in the villages than is often assumed by state officials, policymakers and experts;
•to contribute to the debate on land and agrarian reform beyond the South African experiences by unpacking and analysing how policies and everyday practices get intertwined and mutually shape each other.
This analysis identifies a number of important analytical issues for the debate on how to study land and agrarian reform processes and practices.
This chapter briefly reviews some of the major emerging themes within land and agrarian reform processes. It explains the structure of the book and provides an overview of the themes addressed in each chapter. Drawing on these provides substantial scope for both a synthesis of arguments and the formulation of a number of methodological points of departure for further analysis and debate in the study of land reform and agrarian change.
Land and agrarian reform: themes and topics
How to understand and design land reform has generated heated debates between scholars and practitioners. The nub of this book is that land and agrarian reform are both needed in view of the high degree of rural and urban poverty, and the socio-economic and political inequalities that largely, but not exclusively, revolve around ownership of land and access to productive assets and income. It is a matter of undoing past injustices, given the long history of racialised land dispossession and forced removals, as well as the continuing inability of the industrial and service sectors to absorb the abundant rural and urban labour force. These two agendas have increasingly become connected in the policy discourse and everyday practices of land and agrarian reform in South Africa. This is expressed – in varying ways and tones – in government documents (DLA 1996, 1997; DRDLR 2009, 2011), in public statements by African National Congress (ANC) dignitaries and politicians and in publications by South African scholars (for instance, Ntsebeza and Hall 2007; Van Zyl et al. 1996; Walker 2008; Walker et al. 2010); it also finds recognition in the international literature (Bernstein 2002, 2003, 2007; Borras 2008; Lipton 2009; O’Laughlin et al. 2013; Rosset 2006; Thiesenhusen 1989a). What is questioned by this book is what kind of land reform, how implemented and by whom.
Any attempt to lay out some of the major themes and controversies and formulate a methodological framework for the critical analysis of land reform in South Africa must take into account that experiences of land reform are contextual and historically specific. Clearly, these experiences are many and cannot be accounted for fully in this introductory chapter. Nevertheless, I argue that some general lessons can be drawn, which can be broadly summarised as pertaining to the interconnected role of the state and market(s) and the rhythms of agrarian change, as well as the tensions and contradictions that are generated as a result of this. These are as yet unresolved, as we will see, in both theory and everyday practice. Lipton (2009: 8) considers land reform ‘unfinished business’ which should remain a feature of the political agenda. The motivations, however, for addressing land issues have shifted considerably over time.
Thiesenhusen (1989b: 488) succinctly summarises over 50 years of land reform in Latin America: ‘… reform programmes have been too small, too late, too underfunded, too dictated from above, too hierarchically organized, and too infrequently responsive to pressure from the grassroots’. In addition, Thiesenhusen points to a number of processes and key issues that are also relevant for the South African case: (i) ‘if land reform is to be a substitute for rural welfare programmes and affirmative action … it fell short of the mark’ (1989b: 483). (ii) ‘… the technological imperative came partially to replace the social rationale as the predominant force shaping and moulding the defining features of Latin American agrarian structure’ (1989b: 484). He specifically points to labour tenants becoming smallholders and landless labourers: (iii) ‘a group of large- to middle-sized, entrepreneurial, capitalised farms resulted’ (1989b: 484); (iv) a range of reform bottlenecks emerged: inputs supply was constrained; political interest in reforms waned as new economic growth points emerged; bureaucratic procedures, negative and critical public opinion, inadequate post-settlement support and a top-heavy bureaucracy smothered the process and progress; and (v) reform is ‘betting on the strong’: the ‘overall number of peasants accommodated in land reform was relatively small …’ (1989b: 486, 487).
Despite such critical evaluation of land and agrarian reform, it still is a relatively legitimate item on the agenda in many countries and for many donor agencies, and relevant for social movements to engage with. Land reform has been designed, planned and implemented in many different ways and for many different reasons. Two of these modes stand out clearly in the literature and both emerge from relatively contrasting ontologies: the ‘land to the tiller’ perspective, which gradually became incorporated in neo-liberal discourses of development, and those that flow from the ‘agrarian question’ debate.
‘Land to the tiller’ has long been a guiding and popular slogan to legitimise and carry out land reform in Latin America. Redistributing land more equally was to reduce poverty by providing the poor with access to their main productive asset, thereby increasing rural employment and incomes. ‘Land to the tiller’ has also been favoured as a vehicle to increase and render production more efficient as productivity on smallholdings is seen by some as much higher than that on large farms (Lipton 1993, 2009; Mafeje 2003; Wiggins et al. 2010). Securing their land rights would sustain expanded production and increased welfare (Smith 2003) as well as a democratisation of land–society relations (Wittman 2009). Recently, De Janvry and Sadoulet (2010) provided substantial evidence that rural poverty reduction has been associated with growth in agricultural yields and labour productivity; they warn, however, that this relation varies sharply across regional contexts. Land reform, then, should set out simultaneously to provide access to land and to increase production through the increased use of new technologies and integration into commodity markets. This discourse of modernisation, in which market institutions and relations play a key role, is preferred by most land reform protagonists (Deininger and Binswanger 1999; Ellis 1993; Lipton 2009; Lipton and Lipton 1993; Van Zyl et al. 1996). One must hasten to add that a pro-market stance does not automatically mean an uncritical embracing of neo-classical economic growth models. Smith (2003) thoroughly critiques the neo-classical economic assumptions about land markets and people–land relations, which according to many (Ferguson 2013; Hebinck and Van Averbeke 2007; Shackleton et al. 2001) do not revolve only around the production of agricultural goods.
The argument for land reform also has its roots in the classic ‘agrarian question’ debate. Does land reform help to solve the major agrarian questions? What is or will be the direction of agrarian transformation? Smallholders, small- and large-scale farmers, subsistence and market-oriented farmers, peasants and entrepreneurs, capitalist and petty commodity production are some of the social categories and concepts that are used to debate the direction and trajectories of agrarian change. Chayanov (1966) and Kautsky (1988) represent opposing theoretical and ideological positions in the debate about the role of smallholders in the context of
