tradition has emerged which views smallholders, or rather peasants, as a central factor in rural economic development (Van der Ploeg 2008, 2010, 2013). Kautsky’s entry point is that smallholders are transitionary in the process of capitalist development in the rural agrarian economy; peasants inevitably disappear as a result of ongoing processes of class differentiation, a view which has been adopted by Leninist schools of thought (Bernstein 2009). Bernstein (2007) and also Sender and Johnston (2004) link this with the land reform debate by questioning, for instance, whether land reform alone is able to absorb the unemployed which, in essence, are an outcome of capitalism and industrialisation processes.
Chayanovian views are classified by political economists as a populist tradition that ignores the class character of development (Bernstein 2010a, 2010b), but they continue to play an important role in the land reform debate and future visions of the countryside. This is echoed in the ‘land to the tiller’ slogan. Contemporary social movements, in particular peasant organisations such as Via Campesina and the Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), echo in their struggles that family farms and peasant cooperatives are viable options to fight for (Borras 2008; Rosset 2006). However, as Rosset et al. (2006) and Wolford (2010) point out, the smallholder option for land reform has been assimilated by global considerations of equity and production efficiencies and as such incorporated into World Bank neo-liberal land and agricultural discourses. Much of the original land reform discourse has been incorporated into the neo-liberalisation of agrarian policy, which has also gradually encroached on the land reform programme in, for instance, South Africa and Brazil. State-driven development has been replaced by neo-liberalism, which is considered by many as the predominant, global discourse of development (Kydd and Dorward 2001; Gore 2000). For Gore (2000), neo-liberalism involves not only a shift from state-led to market-oriented policies, but also a discursive shift in the ways in which development problems become framed (for example, more market-oriented) and in the types of explanation through which policies are justified. A major consequence of neo-liberalism is that development policy analysis and evaluations by the state and its monitoring institutions revolve around applying a standardised set of methodologies, which tends to disconnect dynamics from context and history, as well as from power relationships. In that sense neo-liberalism emerges as the logical follower of the modernisation discourse of the post–World War II era, with a strong belief in planned development.
Both state and market are subject to critical analysis in the land reform literature and both are also debated in the villages and on land reform farms. Since they often work against development, markets and their role occupy a central place in critical analyses, not least of all in South Africa. Marsden (1998) and Van der Ploeg et al. (2002), for instance, point to the ‘squeeze on agriculture’ that stands for the increased pressure on farm income which is an outcome of unequal terms of trade and power relations between the agricultural sector on the one hand and the industrial and financial sectors on the other. Lipton (2009), who is not against market options per se, is, however, critical of neo-liberalism and the uncritical embracing of the market that follows. Based on a comparative worldwide study, he argues that under certain conditions a degree of market regulation is required to counteract the impact of market and market relations on land reform practices (see also Lipton and Lipton 1993). Land and agrarian reform should address existing unequal power relations between agriculture and industry – a position, given the extent of deregulation, that is not shared by the current South African government, which is wary of any form of state subsidy for the agricultural sector (Hall 2009b).
Binswanger and Deininger (1996), Deininger and Binswanger (1999) and Deininger (1999) are critical of state-led market reform because of political and financial problems with enforcing a ceiling on land ownership. Experiences elsewhere, they argue, show that state-led reforms generate ‘corruption, tenure insecurity, and red tape’ (Deininger and Binswanger1999: 263). They plead instead for a market-led agrarian reform model (MLAR) which has become the much-favoured approach of the World Bank. MLAR involves a negotiated land reform that relies on voluntary land transfers based on negotiations between buyers and sellers (‘willing buyer, willing seller’), where the government’s role is restricted to establishing the necessary framework and making available a land-purchase grant to eligible beneficiaries. MLAR is defined as a land reform strategy fostering a productive and market-oriented agricultural sector. Deininger (1999) argues that becoming a beneficiary of land reform should be self-selective. The role of the state, then, should be limited to providing land-purchase grants and settlement support services, which demands both budget and human resource capacity, both of which appear to be critically lacking in the course of the land reform programme in South Africa.
Borras (2003: 390) in turn questions MLAR and maintains that the MLAR approach to land reform disconnects ‘the technical/administrative issues in project/policy implementation (like post-settlement support, PH) from the political contexts (such as those in South(ern) Africa, PH) within which MLAR operators and clients are embedded’. Neither history and everyday social realties nor technological choices present themselves as neutral. This book documents in detail that neither market nor self-selection of beneficiaries is a neutral process.
To escape neo-liberal tendencies, Huizer (1999), Rosset (2006) and Borras (2008) call for an agrarian reform ‘from below’. Their plea is for a land reform under the leadership of the state but controlled by social movements that have led the social struggle for land and are experienced in devising ways to improve livelihoods. Not the market but people’s livelihoods and their well-being should inform the state’s reform agenda. It is often argued that a precondition for ‘development from below’ is an active social movement capable of mobilising and driving the process and acting as a creative broker. Brazil, where the MST has pushed land reform, is a good example; experiences show, however, that such involvement can also turn out to be ambiguous, where, for example, the leadership of social movements push their own agendas (Caldeira 2008; Wittman 2009).
Cousins (2007, 2011, 2013) argues in the same vein that ‘accumulation from below’ is a more relevant trajectory to pursue in land reform. Applied to the South African context, ‘accumulation from below’ should help to create situations whereby elites cannot run away with the benefits of the reforms. Thiesenhusen (1989b) points at a similar dynamic in Latin America. Moreover Cousins (2007: 240, 241) maintains that ‘what is required is a radical restructuring of agrarian economic space, property regimes and socio-economic relations, premised on the potential for accumulation from below in both agricultural and non-agricultural forms of petty commodity production, and expanded opportunities for “multiple livelihoods strategies” ’. Phrasing it differently, in Chayanovian terminology (Van der Ploeg 2013), land and agrarian reform in south(ern) Africa should facilitate the construction of self-owned and self-controlled resource bases which fit in with multiple livelihood strategies.
Overview of In the Shadow of Policy
The book is divided into three parts. The first, comprising three chapters, provides an analysis of context. The second part consists of ten chapters that examine the gaps between policy and practice, and the final part, with seven chapters, draws on empirical research to critically assess policy-led initiatives in the Eastern Cape. What follows is a brief overview of the chapters in each section.
Part 1 Setting the scene: land and agrarian reform in post-apartheid South Africa
This part provides an analytical context as well as a policy one. Whereas chapter 1 (this chapter) debates land reform and identifies key issues, chapters 2 and 3 specifically address the policy dimensions of land and agrarian reform in South Africa. Key among the arguments in this part is that next to discontinuities in the policy domain, important and strategic continuities in official thinking remain a predominant feature of institutional repertoires and intervention practices.
This chapter reviews the land reform debate in South Africa and elsewhere,
