Читать книгу In the Shadow of Policy - Robert Ross - Страница 12

2

Land and agrarian reform policies

from a historical perspective

Paul Hebinck

The purpose of this chapter is to review land and agrarian development policies in South Africa and to chart the changes that have taken place over the years. This overview spans the period before the native reserves came into being as result of the infamous 1913 Land Act, to the recent post-apartheid land and agrarian reform policies.

A historical analysis of policy structures the chapter. Land and agrarian reform policies are not designed and implemented in a socio-political and historical vacuum. Policies ‘have left their historical traces’ as James (2010: 222) points out and these are still visible and felt to this day. Notably, the residual effects of colonial and apartheid policies constrain the social transformations that post-apartheid policymakers would like to facilitate. An account of policies and their formulation requires a chronology, preferably one which intertwines the nature of state power with advancements in the sciences.

The history of South Africa clearly did not begin in 1652 with the colonisation of a small piece of land near present-day Cape Town by Dutch settlers instigated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Our concern is with the role the colonial state and state policies have played since 1654 in the reordering of what is currently South Africa and how this concurred with the interests of the state, white settlers and later those of the mining sector. A common periodisation is one that distinguishes the colonial from the Union era and apartheid from post-apartheid. State policies, acts and degrees do not neatly fit these four periods, but they nevertheless have some degree of distinctiveness. During the colonial period policies were implemented to expand and control the frontier and that laid the foundation for racial segregation. The second period roughly covers the Union years (1910–1948) during which key land, labour and land-use legislation was passed that exclusively favoured white land ownership and large-scale farming. The apartheid period (1948–1994) hinged on a continuation of betterment and the implementation of homeland policies and a fine-tuning of discriminatory laws. In the post-apartheid era, all discriminatory laws, acts and decrees previously passed to limit the mobility of black people and their access to land have been repealed, and reform policies have been initiated.

The increasing ability of the state to master the social and natural environment, however, is not only attributable to its political and military power to extend its frontiers and enforce rules and regulations. It is also shaped by the advancement in (notably agrarian) sciences and technology and the gradual formation and expansion of an associated expert system (Beinart 2003; Scott 1998). The technological advances progressing over time that assisted the state in its attempts to reorder (rural) society, with a view to intensifying agricultural and rural production, are significant. Laws that regulated use of and access to land came into being after a series of state-appointed special commissions, consisting of known experts (notably reputable scientists) in their field, had advised the state on why and how to deal with matters that reduced environmental risks (erosion, insects and pests) and enhanced productivity of land, cattle and crops. The commissions were always known by the names of their chairmen (see Cross 1988 for more details). The Beaumont Commission, for example, delivered its report about the actual delimitation of land for black people in 1916, while the Tomlinson Commission of 1955 rejected the one-man-one-plot principle and argued instead for a move towards large(r)-scale farming. The Swart Report of 1983 advocated moving all the black people in the Ciskei to urban areas, arguing that the rural areas were unable to sustain their present populations. This would also have opened the way for large-scale farming. The knowledge and institutional culture of each generation of experts has laid the foundations for the next. In this way, expert practice and knowledge has been reproduced in its own image (Hebinck et al. 2011). Some of these experts are non–South Africans by birth and training (see chapter 3, this volume).

Tracing the policy histories serves to show that over the years, apart from changes and shifts (that is, discontinuities), the policies retained many common characteristics (that is, continuities in design and the knowledge repertoires that underlie them) even though they emerged from contrasting political ideologies and governance regimes. This chapter argues that the degree of continuity between past and present policy is surprisingly large, and significant to an understanding of current land and agrarian reform dynamics. The chapter draws attention to three important continuities: (i) The state, whether colonial, apartheid or post-apartheid, has taken the lead in agrarian development and coordinating agrarian transformation; (ii) In doing so, the state always relied heavily on expert discourses for the design of its planned interventions; (iii) State-led and expert-designed agrarian development discourses uncritically embraced linear, neo-liberal views of development, consistently relying on a paradigm of modernisation to define what constitutes resources, even though lip service has been paid to the value of indigenous knowledge systems.

The colonial and Union eras

During the early years of the colony, the state alienated the original inhabitants from their land. Its geographical reach was rather limited then. The early Dutch colonial state was preoccupied with extending its control over the immediate social and physical environment so that it could procure meat. Penn (2005: 30 ff) uses the term ‘policy’ to describe the creation and expansion of the frontier into the Cape interior. The search for meat for the VOC was supported by commando raids that ‘encouraged’ the Khoi and San to barter for meat. The granting of farms and issuing of grazing licences (in the form of loan farms) to Dutch settlers had a tremendous effect on pastoral production in the region but guaranteed the supply of meat to the Cape Town market. The advent of the loan farm system institutionalised a form of land tenure which provided cheap and easy access to vast tracts of precious grasslands for the semi-nomadic, cattle-keeping trekboers in the early eighteenth century. Trekboers lived, like the Khoi and the San, by harvesting wild resources. The intensification of land use that gradually emerged facilitated the cultivation of crops, sedentary cattle farming and capitalist accumulation. This was accompanied by the establishment of a vivid rural Afrikaner culture and the dispossession of the land of the Khoi, the San and, much later, also African peoples. Sending missionaries into the Cape hinterland was part of a deliberate policy to pacify the region and achieve political closure (Penn 1986: 67). The Khoi and the San were left with little choice but to hunt illegally for cattle and game on the land that had once been theirs.

The reach of the colonial state also expanded dramatically towards the east. Around 1770 the trekboers encountered the Xhosa, who had crossed the Kei River and were moving south. The Xhosa and the trekboers soon competed for the same resources (pasture, labour and cattle); both relied heavily on pastoral cattle farming (Mostert 1992; Penn 2005). Although their co-existence was relatively peaceful initially, it was always inherently unstable. In contrast to the northern frontier during the early eighteenth century (Penn 2005), where the Khoi and the San were brutally subjugated and absorbed as labourers, the Xhosa were, after an initial period of resistance during the 1820–1889 border wars, defeated, settled and incorporated as migrant labourers into the colonial economy.

The mindful and coordinated efforts of the state during the colonial period clearly aimed not just to establish control over land and labour but also to facilitate early forms of agricultural commodity production. Legislation, such as the Fencing Acts of 1883 and 1910, enabled measures to be taken to increase the productivity of pasture and livestock and in turn laid the ideological foundations for private property and commoditisation in the countryside (Van Sittert 2002). The state’s mindset in favour of agriculture is a response to its being the backbone of wealth production in the country, which has expanded to become the chief source of commodities for national and global markets. Even when diamonds and gold became the key sectors of the colonial economy, agriculture remained the major source of accumulation, albeit in different ways, for both African people and white farmers, most of whom were Afrikaners of Dutch descent.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a range of measures were taken that especially affected African agriculture, fundamentally reshaping the rural livelihoods of African people (Bundy 1988, Mayer 1980). In addition, the discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1880) marked the emergence of the mining sector in the country, which had a profound impact on the agricultural sector, both white and African (F. Wilson 1975). The mining and white agricultural sectors held considerable political power at the time (Legassick 1977). Together they pushed for the promulgation of legislation that would give them control over African labour (Seekings and Nattrass 2006; F. Wilson 1975). State revenue from the mines was spent on developing the commercial capacity of white capitalist farming, which had moved beyond nomadic livestock to become sedentary. The economic conditions encouraged white farmers to abandon the practice of keeping peasant squatters on their farms in favour of the development of their farms for large-scale production of crops and livestock. To facilitate further expansion of commodity, white farmers required access to and control over a permanent workforce. Legislation was enacted that denied Africans access to white-owned land by prohibiting different forms of tenancy. Various anti-squatting laws culminated in the Natives Land Act No. 27 of 1913. The 1913 act, which was followed by the Native Trust and Land Act No. 18 of 1936, identified the areas that should be set aside for black people. This was the first legislation to apply the principle of territorial segregation and separate land rights for ‘natives’ and ‘non-natives’, preventing Africans from purchasing land outside the ‘reserves’ and restricting accumulation within them. The ‘native’ areas were gradually reshaped so as to serve as labour reserves, which in turn had devastating consequences for black farming. By the late 1950s, African farming had declined substantially. A vicious cycle of overpopulation, deterioration of natural resources, migration and impoverishment increasingly manifested itself. Despite these segregation policies, some black people managed to purchase land (referred to as ‘black spots’), but they were often forced to allow others – officials, the church, missionaries – to hold the land in trust for them. These groups became subject to forced removals during the apartheid era (see Claassens and Cousins 2008; Van Leynseele forthcoming; Walker 2008).

A second set of legislation, including the Glen Grey Act (Cape Act No. 25 of 1894), was aimed at limiting the amount of land Africans could hold. The ‘one-man-one-plot’ principle and the intention to extend private tenure was of central importance and served the purpose of securing notions of individually owned property and drawing people into the monetary economy. Limiting the size of plots compelled landholders to seek additional income off-farm elsewhere so that ‘… during the coming generation a limited number will be agriculturalists, i.e., native farmers – and … the rest will have to go out and work’ (M. Wilson 1975: 65). Making the plots indivisible meant that all but the landowner’s eldest son had to find off-farm livelihoods, which they found en masse in the mines, factories, large farms and in the transport sector. Women were predominantly drawn into the commodity economy as domestic labourers. Raising taxes also served to increase the need for cash among rural Africans (Bundy 1988; Lewis 1984). A strict land-use model was implemented, hinging on land use in distinct categories of land, combined with tenure arrangements such as freehold, quitrent and communal (see chapter 14, this volume). However, the tenacity of local practices, rural opposition to tax increases and the limits of state capacity meant that tenure reform ‘fell away as a central administrative objective …, (Beinart and Bundy 1987: 141).

Before the early twentieth century, the state had actively intervened only to address land and labour questions and issues. At the turn of the nineteenth century and during the early years of the Union, Afrikaner nationalism drove land policy and was instrumental in the formation of specific agrarian institutions whose mandate and orientation were largely shaped by the political and economic needs of the then ruling elite and the state. The state was often resented by white farmers because of the interference of state officials who arrived at their farms to implement ‘corrective’ measures (such as preventing soil erosion, or stock control to prevent diseases from spreading). Nonetheless, the state implemented a series of interventions that gradually led to the situation where white farmers increasingly looked to the state to solve their problems. After the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the state started to support white-dominated, large-scale capitalist agriculture more aggressively. Mbongwa et al. (1996) point out that between 1910 and 1935, 87 acts were passed to legitimise the provision of state support to white farmers. The policies raised the price of agricultural commodities to well above market levels. The formation of the Land Bank in 1912, providing credit to capitalise white agriculture, was soon followed by a range of initiatives effectively subsidising white farming (see F. Wilson 1975: 136–153). Poor white farmers received state support to rationalise their enterprises and were provided with cheap credit. Cooperatives were formed and railway extensions, which largely bypassed black farming areas, were constructed. The state assisted the institutionalisation of an agricultural expert system by establishing a national Department of Agriculture (DOA) in 1924 and agricultural training colleges and research stations (F. Wilson 1975; Beinart 2003). This is also the period when numerous ‘white’ and ‘black’ universities (notably faculties of agriculture) and other agricultural institutions of higher learning were created, with the support of the state and corporate lobby groups.

Beinart (2003: 336) argues that the agricultural expert system became associated in rhetoric and policy with attempts to forge a unified and modern white nation from the early years of the twentieth century onwards (see also Anker 2001). Heinrich Sebastian Du Toit, a highly committed senior official in the DOA, played a key role in the construction of an agricultural (expert) discourse and practice. Du Toit travelled worldwide, and his experiences convinced him that the advances of science should be incorporated into farming. This would stimulate production and secure conditions for the proper tilling of the land in difficult and marginal environments. These advances were intended to benefit the mass of white Afrikaner landowners, rather than white farmers in general. Du Toit felt that many rural Afrikaners had been bypassed by the department’s research and publicity initiatives (Beinart 2003: 237). State support in irrigation cannot be disconnected from the poor white question. Brown (2001) situates the formation of the veterinary department, which dealt with animal diseases and breeding, and an entomology department at the turn of the twentieth century in a similar perspective.

As in Europe and the United States, expert knowledge was brought together in these institutions in order to facilitate agricultural and rural development (Brown 2001). Agricultural development, the leading role of the state, experts and expertise, Afrikaner nationalism and modernisation became intertwined. The frame of reference for most agricultural experts became the white settler farm. Black or African farming was either virtually absent from or on the margins of agricultural expert knowledge, even though some experts drew on African farming techniques (see Bundy 1988).

Land degradation in the ‘native reserves’ (for example, soil erosion, land denudation and the drying-up of springs) attracted the attention of the South African government. The 1932 Native Economic Commission called for a development programme to teach Africans how to use their land more economically and to halt resource degradation (M. Wilson 1975; Yawitch 1981). The Native Trust and Land Act No. 18 of 1936 provided the legal framework for government services to begin the reclamation and rehabilitation of the so-called native areas. The Act had two important objectives: to address the problem of overcrowding in the native areas by allocating additional land and to halt or prevent degradation on both old and new land allocations by means of land-use (betterment) planning. The South African Native Trust handled the allocation of additional land which became known as ‘trust land’. The Act ‘prevented the emergence of a stratum of rich or small capitalist farmers by rigidly insisting on a combination of communal grazing and one-man-one-plot agriculture’ (Cross and Haines 1988: 83).

The chief concern of betterment planning between 1936 and 1950 was the protection and rehabilitation of natural resources. The government introduced policies that were aimed at limiting livestock in order to arrest the perceived denudation of the rangeland. It also engaged in the construction of contour banks in an attempt to prevent soil erosion. The planning for these measures started in the late 1930s. Things proceeded slowly because there was much resistance to the plans. Substantial opposition to betterment became widespread in the mid-1950s, partly because betterment was implemented by the hated new system of Bantu Authorities (Cross and Haines 1988; De Wet 1987, 1989; Mager 1999; McAllister 1988, 1989; Yawitch 1981). Betterment angered people not only because it was externally imposed but ‘because it undermined the sense of security for old age which was one of the prerequisites of traditional tenure’ (Cross and Haines 1988: 83, citing Davenport 1956). Betterment elicited mixed reactions in the Ciskei. Reallocations and culling, for example, were disliked but education was welcomed (Hebinck and Smith 2007).

The African population especially resisted the restrictions on livestock numbers. Their opposition to limiting livestock numbers was shaped by their views about carrying capacity and the significance of cattle, views which contrasted markedly with those of the experts. The limiting of stock numbers and subsequent measures to cull were instigated by scientists and agricultural experts arguing that overstocking ruined the land and weakened cattle. The interplay of inadequate tenure, population pressure, lack of education and skills, and little scientific grounding of farming practices was held responsible for erosion (Laker 1975; Trollope 1985). The widespread system of kraaling, used by both white and black farmers, was seen as a prime example of ignorant farming that led to both overgrazing and selective grazing. These views emerged during the great drought at the beginning of the twentieth century, which brought environmental concerns to the fore in state circles and among the general public (Beinart 2003; F. Wilson 1975). Such views, held by many government officials and experts, were also sustained by the idea that communal farming was an inefficient means of raising cattle and crops as an economic resource and was destined to trigger ecological collapse. These views persisted for a long time. They still drove betterment planning 30 years later. This is not to say, though, that degradation and overgrazing never presented a problem. Gullies have resulted from overgrazing and ploughing in the Eastern Cape and in the rest of the country (Beinart 2003; Bundy 1988; Hoffman and Todd 2000; Lent and Mupakati 2007).

Apartheid, betterment planning and homelands

The apartheid era saw a consolidation and fine-tuning of the laws, acts and degrees issued before. The advent of the National Party government in 1948, however, changed the nature of state intervention dramatically. The Group Areas Act No. 41 of 1950 signalled the beginning of complete segregation. Native reserves were gradually transformed into independent ‘homelands’ with which white South Africa could maintain economic and political relationships. In 1955, the Commission for the Socio-Economic Development of the Bantu Areas within the Union of South Africa, headed by Tomlinson, released its report based on the most comprehensive investigation of socio-economic conditions in the native reserves ever undertaken (Tomlinson Commission 1955). The Commission’s brief had been to develop a rural policy of separate development. One of its key recommendations was that the rural population needed to be divided into a landless group and a group of progressive farmers. The Tomlinson Commission rejected the ‘one-man-one-plot’ principle of land allocation. Instead, it called for the allocation of landholdings that were large enough to form economic farming units. It also recommended the abolition of communal tenure and its replacement by a system of private tenure. This would be subject to restrictions, however, in order to avoid the accumulation of land. The commission recommended the development of urban centres and industries in the ‘native areas’ in order to accommodate people that were already landless as well as those who would become landless because of the plans. The commission’s plans would entail a fundamental restructuring of society in the ‘native’ areas, and called for a massive investment by the state to make this possible. The South African government rejected two of the commission’s key recommendations: the abolition of communal tenure and the establishment of white-owned industries. The financial implementation of the original plan was considered far too costly. Politically, too, the recommendations were unacceptable. The removal of 50 per cent of the population would lead to massive resistance. However, the Verwoerd government realised that it would have to make provision for the influx of vast numbers of people into the homelands, in any event. After all, its own grand apartheid plan envisaged that all non-white South Africans would become citizens of an ethnic homeland. Betterment planning after 1955 became part of a complex set of policies that were developed in response to the government’s desire to maintain control over the population in the ‘native areas’. Two key elements of betterment planning after 1950 contributed to improving control over the ‘surplus people’ residing in the homelands. Firstly, people were moved from dispersed homestead clusters to villages. Secondly, the government interfered with traditional leadership. Chiefs and headmen became government employees. They were expected to support government policy in order to maintain their status and benefits. Those who opposed the government were replaced (Westaway 1997). Together with the removals, this created a general atmosphere of distrust and protest.

In accordance with the objectives of apartheid, native areas or homelands were encouraged to adopt self-governance and become independent states. The general policy goal of controlling the African population in these areas was maintained by the governments of these new states, but there was also an effort to provide local livelihood opportunities for the resident people. African farming was supported by the state in the form of subsidised tractor services (called ‘Trust tractors’), an increase in public extension services and services supporting production, marketing and providing access to finance – services which would be supplied by parastatals. Several studies, however, have demonstrated that the implementation of betterment planning had an adverse effect on agricultural production largely because it separated homesteads from natural resources and disrupted the cooperative work arrangements that had been based on kinship relations (De Wet 1989; McAllister 1988). Large capital investments in agriculture, most notably the irrigation schemes in the valleys of major rivers, aimed to increase agricultural production. Many of these investments had limited success or were financially unsustainable. Agricultural banks were restructured to reduce their reliance on state subsidies, making access to finance by small-scale farmers more difficult than before. The public agricultural extension service was criticised for its lack of impact (Bembridge 1985; Steyn 1988), and its budget was reduced progressively.

Land and rural development policies under apartheid were ambiguous, to say the least. Cross and Haines (1988: 88–90) argue that state-designed and -funded programmes had little impact on poverty and land use. Programmes were designed in a ‘top-down, top-heavy management’ manner, and their benefits tended to accrue to elites. Instead of seeking inputs from the grass roots, a style of imposing reforms from above became the norm. Interventions were entangled with patron–client relationships. The approach to land questions was frequently overly technical and misdirected, because it tended to ignore actual constraints (see also McAllister 1988).

Post 1994: land and agrarian reforms and social policies

Land and agrarian reform has been one of the main areas in which the post-apartheid state has asserted itself since 1994. Land and agrarian reform were initiated alongside expanding the social security network. The scale and reach of social grants has expanded considerably since 1994 and has become a more significant factor in rural development (Devereux 2007; Francis 2002), in budget and in magnitude, surpassing the role of land and agrarian reforms.

Land reform and agrarian reform

Land reform in South Africa began even before the new government led by the African National Congress (ANC) took control of the country in 1994, albeit with more limited objectives. In March 1991, De Klerk’s government passed the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act (No. 108), which repealed the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts and all the other provisions that regulated ownership of land according to race. The differences between pre-1994 and post-1994 land reforms were both strategic and substantive. The post-1994 land and agrarian reform objectives were more comprehensive and overarching, encompassing restitution, redistribution and security of tenure.

Land and agrarian reforms entrenched, for the first time in history, equal rights to land, documented in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 (Act 108). An early initiative of the Mandela administration after the first democratic elections in 1994 was the articulation of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) 1994–1996 that set out to undo the legacy of apartheid, including the skewed distribution of land and income, racially discriminatory laws and regulations, and immense poverty. Land and agrarian reforms were initiated in order to correct and transform the agrarian structure (DLA 1996, 1997; DOA 2001). Government budgets for its land and agrarian reform programmes have grown since the mid-1990s, and some budgets have even tripled in size, but critique of the quantity and quality of service delivery soon surfaced (Aliber and Hall 2012; see chapter 3 in this volume for more details).

The state has shifted its policies and the allocation of its budgets over time from a more populist approach, which emphasised human and citizenship rights and gender and racial equity principles (during the period in which Derek Hanekom was minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs), to a more neo-liberal and paternalistic one (under ministers Thoko Didiza, Lulu Xingwana and Gugile Nkwinti). During the first years of the Mbeki administration the RDP was succeeded by the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme reiterating the importance of employment, with redistribution to be achieved through a neo-liberal economic framework of state intervention (Habib and Padayachee 2000; see also chapter 3 in this volume). The change in focus is also apparent in the move away from the Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG), which provided grants of R16 000 to people to access land if their monthly income was below R1 500 (Lahiff 2007: 1580; Williams 1996; see also chapter 3, this volume), and the introduction of the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme, which demands contributions from potential land reform beneficiaries themselves (DOA 2001; see chapter 3, this volume). LRAD has initiated ex post audits (replacing lengthy ex ante audits) and monitoring to make sure that its objectives are met (DLA 2008: 2). Land reform shifted from simple redistribution to market-led and assisted land reform, hinging on a policy of ‘willing buyer, willing seller’. The market-led reform is, according to many commentators (Hall 2004; Lahiff 2007; Naidoo 2011), little more than a programme of assisted purchase under which the main beneficiaries are likely to be white landowners and a small minority of better-off black entrepreneurs. GEAR in particular emphasised the productive use of redistributed land and public–private partnerships (Derman et al. 2010) to secure the continuation of a highly capitalised, globally well-connected, commercial agricultural sector in South Africa. However, in contrast to what was expected from GEAR in terms of efforts to increase employment and to restructure the commercial agrarian economy, the post-apartheid state also took steps to deregulate the economy and liberalise trade, generating opposite outcomes. The reforms led to a withdrawal of the subsidies white farmers had enjoyed for years but also instigated changes that were not foreseen: landholdings remained consolidated as large; farming became more capital-intensive; and agricultural employment decreased substantially (Hall 2009). These tendencies clearly shape the success of the objective of land reform to propel ‘emergent’ farmers beyond subsistence and encourage them to access markets, technology and capital. They reinforce, on the one hand, the views that small-scale (‘communal’) farming is incapable of supporting anything more than a life of poverty. On the other hand, particular, normative notions of viability emerged, denoting that good farming is embodied in technical recommendations around ‘minimum farm sizes’, ‘economic units’ and ‘carrying capacities’ (Cousins and Scoones 2010; see chapter 3, this volume).

The Zuma administration reaffirmed the commitment to land and agrarian reform objectives (redistributing 30 per cent of the land by 2013) but with a much stronger emphasis on rural development and simultaneously confirming the prominence of a productivist land reform discourse. The transformation of the old Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs into the new Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) was emblematic of this change of emphasis. DRLDR formulated a Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) ‘to create vibrant, equitable and sustainable rural communities. [This] will be achieved through a three-pronged strategy based on a coordinated and integrated broad-based agrarian transformation, rural development infrastructure, and an improved land reform programme’ (DRDLR 2009; Gwanya 2010: 11). The National Planning Commission (NPC) is responsible for developing a long-term vision for South Africa. It recently published its ‘Vision 2030’, which, together with The New Growth Path compiled by the Economic Development Department (EDD) in 2010, provides insight into how land and agrarian reform should proceed. Like the aborted Green Paper on Land Reform (DRDLR 2011), both documents target a transformation in the social relations of production to achieve social cohesion and development with a focus on supporting and expanding the smallholder sector – including communal farming – to 500 000 producers by 2020. The transfer of new technology to fuel productivity increases, tenure security and above all the creation of links into markets constitutes the rural insfrastructure to enable this transformation (NPC 2011: 145). These plans build on the expert discourse that poor farming practices, lack of markets and inefficient land tenure are the root of the problem. The NPC envisages vertical integration into existing markets but argues that preferential procurement strategies such as school feeding programmes and other institutional catering (food services to hospitals, correctional services and emergency food packages), in which the state is the main purchaser, should be put in place to serve as a market for small-scale producers. Such markets, however, are often situated in small- and medium-sized towns, away from where potential producers live. Such integration inevitably leads, as Li (2009) and Amanor (2009) argue, to the exclusion of the very people who are targeted by such development policies – smallholders and the poor – thus enforcing unequal development. A good example is the Agri-Park of the University of Fort Hare in Alice which facilitates the process whereby the added value of producing crops in the villages is realised elsewhere, in the towns. Farmer access to such markets is constrained by transport costs, quality standards, and lack of proper post-settlement support and adequate service delivery for smallholders (Aliber and Hall 2012). The NPC/EDD development discourse typically ignores that the markets that are formed, for instance, in the framework of the Massive Food Production Programme are beyond the control of small producers. Moreover, although supermarkets have become big players in rural food markets, they hardly procure from local small-scale producers. They prefer to buy from a limited number of producers, almost always large-scale farmers (D’Haese and Van Huylenbroeck 2005; Louw et al. 2007). Local, small-scale producers instead tend to ‘supply’ local, village-based ‘informal’ or nested (Van der Ploeg et al. 2012) markets which are largely absent from policy models.

State social policies: old age pensions and social grants

Old age pensions and a range of social grants constitute the core of the South African post-apartheid state’s social policy, which can be conceptualised as state transfers to rural people and regions. The central argument here is that these state transfers in combination with rural production, which includes both crops and livestock production as well as natural resource harvesting, form the backbone of the current rural and urban economy (see chapters 14, 17 and 18, this volume; Devereux 2007; Hebinck and Lent 2007; Neves and Du Toit 2013).

The establishment and institutionalisation of the old age pension goes back to white miners’ struggle for security in 1911 (Bhorat 1995). The grant scheme that was negotiated slowly evolved and was later broadened by the Verwoerd government to include Africans. From the mid-1940s onwards, various grants for blindness and invalidism were introduced. Child support and grants for HIV/AIDS affected people are a recent, but significant, addition to the social-grants system. Until 1993, however, the monetary value of old age pensions was determined by race. Black people received about half the amount that whites did. This was implemented by paying black people their pensions every second month. In 1993, the then government increased the value of welfare grants paid to African people by removing racial disparities. To qualify for an old age pension, South African males had to be 65 and females 60. This changed only in 2010, when the age of eligibility for males was lowered to 63.

The cash transfers have significant redistributive and welfare effects. They allow people to purchase food, clothes and other essentials of life but are also socially and symbolically significant. State transfers became even more significant during the 1990s, when the South African economy was restructured and deregulated. Unemployment rates increased because the economy failed to absorb new entrants into the formal labour market, and existing jobs were lost due to retrenchments in the private and public sector. As a result, social grants and old age pensions became a major source of income. As the size of the grant has increased over the years, these recipients have gradually achieved the status of ‘earners’. In some areas, widows account for 80 per cent or more of the beneficiaries. Consequently, old age pensions are often referred to as widows’ pensions (Sagner 2000: 547). The predominance of pensioners in the rural areas prompted Beinart (2001) to coin the term ‘pensionariat’. Pensions and grants support three generations in many homesteads (Lund 2009; Van Averbeke and Hebinck 2007). Over time, grants have become a major component of the monetary economy in many rural villages, varying in degree of importance amongst homesteads. This does not mean that land and/or food production is unimportant. In many homesteads food is grown to supplement wages and grants, and for petty cash (chapters 14–18, this volume; Aliber and Hart 2009; De Wet 2011; Hart 2007).

Conclusion

This chapter has drawn attention to the birth of a range of policy measures that, taken together, have shaped (but not determined) past and present agrarian development processes. A common thread has been the continuous reliance of the state on expert discourses of development. Expert consultants and scientists have come to play a significant role in the identification of key resources and how to deploy them in development models with broader application. This has allowed experts to give direction to pre-apartheid, apartheid and post-apartheid agrarian policy and to shape the domain of the applied agrarian sciences.

Another common element in agrarian and rural development policies is the consistently held premise that modern technologies, markets and related institutions represent the only relevant and productive path for development. This is manifested in the noted ideological shift from a human rights perspective to productionism and rationalism. This, in turn, can be explained by the influence on key policymakers of the commercial farming lobby and economists advocating a conventional linear model of agricultural development uplifting the emergent farmers from subsistence to commercial producers. Most policies are derived from what might be called ‘received wisdoms’ (Leach and Fairhead 2000) commonly based on untested assumptions about empirical reality. It is important, therefore, to question the nature of the knowledge that informs current agrarian reform and rural development policies, as well as the quality and quantity of service delivery and the slow pace of land restitution and redistribution.

A significant issue is that the productivist discourse that underlies these does not take sufficiently into account that the state’s social policies have been by far the most significant factor in (rural) development and that the role of agriculture, as narrowly defined by experts, has diminished dramatically. What this means for revitalising agriculture under the banner of the current CRDP is a critical question.

The trend that has emerged over the years is that more than ever, state and expert notions sanction projects or elements of projects both before and after a project has been established or a programme has been launched. Land reform increasingly is couched in terms of the conventional transfer of knowledge, manifested in the advice from expert-consultants, mentorship programmes and transformed institutional arrangements, as providing access to markets. Land reform, as Ben Cousins argues in chapter 3, is not meaningfully engaging with agrarian reform. After all these years, land and agrarian reforms are still at the crossroads.

References

Aliber, M. and R. Hall. 2012. ‘Support for smallholder farmers in South Africa: challenges of scale and strategy’, Development Southern Africa, 29: 548–562.

Aliber, M. and T. Hart. 2009. ‘Should subsistence agriculture be supported as a strategy to address rural food insecurity?’ Agrekon, 48(4): 434–458.

Amanor, K. 2009. ‘Global food chains, African smallholders and World Bank governance’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 9(2): 247–262.

Anker, P. 2001. Imperial ecology: environmental order in the British Empire, 1895–1945, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Beinart, W. 2001. Twentieth-century South Africa. New edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Beinart, W. 2003. The rise of conservation in South Africa: settlers, livestock, and the environment 1770–1950, New York: Oxford University Press.

Beinart, W. and C. Bundy. 1987. Hidden struggles in rural South Africa: politics and popular movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape, 1890–1930, London: James Currey.

Bembridge, T. 1985. ‘Agricultural and rural development in LDCs with special reference to South Africa’, Development Southern Africa, 2: 287–296.

Bhorat, H. 1995. ‘The South African safety net: past, present and future’, Development Southern Africa, 12(4): 595–604.

Brown, K. 2001. ‘Political entomology: the insectile challenge to agricultural development in the Cape Colony, 1895–1910’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29(2): 529–549.

Bundy, C. 1988. The rise and fall of the South African peasantry, London: James Currey.

Claassens, A. and B. Cousins (eds). 2008. Land, power and custom: controversies generated by South Africa’s Communal Land Rights Act, Cape Town and Athens: UCT Press and Ohio University Press.

Cousins, B. and I. Scoones. 2010. ‘Contested paradigms of “viability” in redistributive land reform: perspectives from southern Africa’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(1)_: 31–66.

Cross, C. 1988. ‘Introduction: land reform and the rural black economy in South Africa’, in C. Cross and R. Haines (eds) Towards freehold? Options for land and development in South Africa’s black rural areas, Kenwyn: Juta.

Cross, C. and R. Haines. 1988. ‘An historical overview of land policy and tenure in South Africa’s black areas’, in C. Cross and R. Haines (eds) Towards freehold? Options for land and development in South Africa’s black rural areas, Kenwyn: Juta.

Derman, B., E. Lahiff and E Sjastaad. 2010. ‘Strategic questions about strategic partners: challenges and pitfalls in South Africa’s new model of land restitution’, in C. Walker, A. Bohlin, R. Hall and T. Kepe (eds) Land, memory, reconstruction and justice: perspectives on land claims in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg and Athens: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press and Ohio University Press.

Devereux, S. 2007. ‘Social pensions in southern Africa in the twentieth century’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33(3): 539–560.

De Wet, C. 1987. ‘Betterment planning in South Africa: some thoughts on its history, feasibility and wider policy implications’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 6(1/2): 85–122.

De Wet, C. 1989. ‘Betterment planning in a rural village in Keiskammmahoek District, Ciskei’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15(2): 326–345.

De Wet, C. 2011. ‘Where are they now? Welfare, development and marginalization in a former bantustan settlement in the Eastern Cape, post 1994’, in P. Hebinck and C. Shackleton (eds) Reforming land and resource use in South Africa: impact on livelihoods, London: Routledge.

D’Haese, M. and G. van Huylenbroeck. 2005. ‘The rise of supermarkets and changing expenditure patterns of poor rural households: case study in the Transkei area, South Africa’, Food Policy, 30: 97–113.

DLA (Department of Land Affairs). 1996. Land Affairs Green Paper, Pretoria: Department of Land Affairs.

DLA. 1997. White Paper on South African land policy, Pretoria: Department of Land Affairs.

DLA. 2008. Land redistribution for agricultural development: sub-programme of the land redistribution programme, Pretoria: Department of Land Affairs.

DOA (Department of Agriculture). 2001. Land redistribution for agricultural development, Pretoria: Department of Agriculture.

DRDLR (Department of Rural Development and Land Reform). 2009. ‘Comprehensive rural development programme: the concept’, Pretoria: Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.

DRDLR. 2011. Green Paper on land reform 2011, Pretoria: Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.

EDD (Economic Development Department). 2010. The new growth path: framework. Pretoria: Economic Development Department.

Francis, E. 2002. ‘Rural livelihoods, institutions and vulnerability in North West province, South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 28: 531–550.

Gwanya, T.T. 2010. South Africa position paper on rural development: a model for the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme, Pretoria: Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.

Habib, A. and V. Padayachee. 2000. ‘Economic policy and power relations in South Africa’s transition to democracy’, World Development, 28(2): 245–263.

Hall, R. 2004. ‘A political economy of land reform in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, 31(100): 213–227.

Hall, R. 2009. ‘Dynamics in the commercial farming sector’, 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.

Hart, T. 2007. ‘The socioeconomics of subsistence farmers and the contribution of the social sciences to agricultural development’, in S. Ntutela and W. Gevers (eds) Science-based improvements of rural/subsistence agriculture, Pretoria: Academy of Science of South Africa.

Hebinck, P., D. Fay, and K. Kondlo. 2011. ‘Land and agrarian reform in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province: caught by continuities’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 11(2): 220–240.

Hebinck, P. and P. Lent (eds). Livelihoods and landscape: the people of Guquka and Koloni and their resources, Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.

Hebinck, P. and L. Smith. 2007. ‘History of settlement: processes and patterns’, in P. Hebinck and P. C. Lent (eds) Livelihoods and landscape: the people of Guquka and Koloni and their resources, Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.

Hoffman, T. M. and S. Todd. 2000. ‘A national review of land degradation in South Africa: the influence of biophysical and socio-economic factors’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 26(4): 743–758.

James, D. 2010. ‘Doing business with a development ethic: “new look” land redistribution in South Africa’, in B. Freund and H. Witt (eds) Development dilemmas in post-apartheid South Africa, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

Lahiff, E. 2007. ‘“Willing buyer, willing seller”: South Africa’s failed experiment in market-led agrarian reform’, Third World Quarterly, 28(8): 1577–1597.

Laker, M. (ed.) 1975. The agricultural potential of the Ciskei: a preliminary report, Alice: University of Fort Hare.

Leach, M. and J. Fairhead. 2000. ‘Fashioned forest pasts, occluded histories? International environmental analysis in West African locales’, Development and Change, 31(1): 35–59.

Legassick, M. 1977. ‘Gold, agriculture, and secondary industry in South Africa, 1885–1970: from periphery to sub-metropole as a forced labour system’, in R. Palmer and N. Parsons (eds) The roots of rural poverty in central and southern Africa, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Lent, P. and G. Mupakati. 2007. ‘The view from above: a history of land use in Guquka and Koloni, 1938–1996’, in P. Hebinck and P. Lent (eds) Livelihoods and landscapes: the people of Guquka and Koloni and their resources, Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.

Lewis, J. 1984. ‘The rise and fall of the South African peasantry: a critique and reassessment’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 11(1): 1–24.

Li, T. 2009. ‘Exit from agriculture: a step forward or a step backward for the rural poor?’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 36: 629–636.

Louw, A., H. Vermeulen, J. Kirsten and H. Madevu. 2007. ‘Securing small farmer participation in supermarket supply chains in South Africa’, Development Southern Africa, 24(4): 539–551.

Lund, F. 2009. The provision of care by non-household institutions, South Africa, Research Report 3, Geneva: UNRISD.

Mager, A. 1999. Gender and the making of a South African bantustan: a social history of the Ciskei, 1945–1959, Portsmouth/Oxford/Cape Town: Heinemann/James Currey/David Philip.

Mayer, P. 1980. ‘The origin and decline of two rural resistance ideologies’, in P. Mayer (ed.) Black villagers in an industrial society, Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

Mbongwa, M., R. van den Brink and J. van Zyl. 1996. ‘Evolution of the agrarian structure in South Africa’, in J. van Zyl, J. Kirsten and H. Binswanger (eds) Agricultural land reform in South Africa: policies, markets and mechanisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McAllister, P. 1988. ‘The impact of relocation in a Transkei betterment area’, in C. Cross and R. Haines (eds) Towards freehold? Options for land and development in South Africa’s black rural areas, Kenwyn: Juta.

McAllister, P. 1989. ‘Resistance to “betterment” in the Transkei: a case study from Willowvale District’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15(2): 346–368.

Mostert, N. 1992. Frontiers: the epic of South Africa’s creation and the tragedy of the Xhosa people. London: Pimlico.

Naidoo, L. 2011. ‘Poverty and insecurity of farm workers and dwellers in post-apartheid South Africa’, in P. Hebinck and C. Shackleton (eds) Reforming land and resource use in South Africa: impact on livelihoods, London: Routledge.

Neves, D. and A. Du Toit. 2013. ‘Rural livelihoods in South Africa: complexity, vulnerability and differentiation’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 13(1): 93–115.

NPC (National Planning Commission). 2011. National development plan 2030: our future – make it work, Pretoria: National Planning Commission.

Penn, N. 1986. ‘Pastoralist and pastoralism in the Northern Cape frontiers during the eighteenth century’, South African Archeological Society Goodwin Series: Prehistoric Pastoralism in Southern Africa, 5(1): 62–68.

Penn, N. 2005. The forgotten frontier: colonist and Khoisan on the Cape’s northern frontier in the 18th century, Athens/Cape Town: Ohio University Press/Double Storey Books.

Sagner, A. 2000. ‘Ageing and social policy in South Africa: historical perspectives with particular reference to the Eastern Cape’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 26(3): 523–553.

Scott, J.C. 1998. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Seekings, J. and N. Nattrass. 2006. Class, race and inequality in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

Steyn, G. 1988. A farming systems study of two rural areas in the Peddie District of Ciskei, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Fort Hare.

Tomlinson Commission. 1955. Summary of the report of the Commission for the Socio-Economic Development of the Bantu Areas within the Union of South Africa, Pretoria: Government Printer.

Trollope, W.S.W. 1985. ‘Third world challenges for pasture scientists in southern Africa’, Journal Grassland Society of Southern Africa, 2(1): 14–17.

Van Averbeke, W. and P. Hebinck. 2007. ‘Contemporary livelihoods’, in P. Hebinck and P. Lent (eds) Livelihoods and landscapes: the people of Guquka and Koloni and their resources, Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.

Van der Ploeg, J.D, J. Ye and S. Schneider. 2012. ‘Rural development through the construction of new, nested, markets: comparative perspectives from China, Brazil and the European Union’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(1): 133–173.

Van Leynseele, Y. forthcoming. ‘Landscaping people: spatial politics and territorialisation in South Africa’, Wageningen: Wageningen University.

Van Sittert, L. 2002. ‘Holding the line: the rural enclosure movement in the Cape Colony, c. 1865–1910’, Journal of African History, 43(1): 95–118.

Walker, C. 2008. Landmarked: land claims and land restitution in South Africa, Johannesburg/Athens: Jacana/Ohio University Press.

Westaway, A. 1997. ‘Headmanship, land tenure and betterment in Keiskammahoek, c. 1920–1980’, in C.J. de Wet and M. Whisson (eds) From reserve to region: apartheid and social change in the Keiskammahoek District of (former) Ciskei: 1950–1990, Occasional Paper no. 35, Grahamstown: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University.

Williams, G. 1996. ‘Setting the agenda: a critique of the World Bank’s rural restructuring programme for South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 22(1): 139–166.

Wilson, F. 1975. ‘Farming, 1866–1966’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds) The Oxford history of South Africa. Vol. II. South Africa 1870–1966, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wilson, M. 1975. ‘The growth of peasant communities’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds) The Oxford history of South Africa. Vol. II. South Africa 1870–1966, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Yawitch, J. 1981. Betterment – the myth of homeland agriculture, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations.