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Land reform and agriculture
uncoupled: the political economy
of rural reform in post-apartheid
South Africa
Ben Cousins
Restructuring of the rural economy has been somewhat on the margins of political and policy debate in post-apartheid South Africa, but recently this has begun to change. A wide-ranging resolution adopted by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) at its watershed Polokwane conference in 2007 asserted the vital importance of land and agrarian reform for the reduction of rural poverty. Land reform and rural development were identified as priorities by the Zuma government after the 2009 election.
This chapter traces the evolution of post-apartheid policies on land and agrarian reform in South Africa, with a particular focus on land redistribution and agricultural production. It examines the influence of different interest groups on emerging policies, and assesses the impact of these policies to date. The chapter argues that the fundamental flaw in post-apartheid rural reform policies has been the failure to couple land and agricultural reform in a coherent and effective manner, with the latter hamstrung by policymakers’ uncritical acceptance of the superiority of large-scale commercial farming and scepticism about the ‘commercial viability’ of small-scale systems of production. The state has thus attempted to implement land reform without engaging in meaningful agrarian reform, thus severely constraining its impact on rural poverty and inequality.
Policy processes in the transition to democracy
The period of multiparty negotiations between 1990 and 1994 saw a number of shifts taking place in the South African political landscape which influenced the stances of different political groupings in relation to land and agriculture. The ANC had not seen rural areas as a priority for many years (Dolny 2001: 33; Levin and Weiner 1996: 97–98, 107), and in 1990 the party brought few concrete proposals for rural reform to the negotiating table. The Freedom Charter of 1955 had stated that ‘the land shall be shared by those who work it. Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided among those who work it, to banish famine and land hunger. The state shall help the peasants with implements, seeds, tractors and dams’ (ANC 1955). Although imprecise, the Charter clearly envisioned radical transformations in both the nature of property land rights and their distribution, perhaps even implying nationalisation of land. In the early 1990s, as multiparty negotiations began, nationalisation was still seen as a possibility by some activists (Dolny 2001: 50), but by 1993 it was clearly off the agenda of the ANC. Under discussion, rather, was the wording of a property clause that would protect existing property rights, but at the same time allow for land reform (Levin and Weiner 1996: 108).
Hall (2011) describes the convoluted and contested process of formulating policy stances on land and agriculture in the early 1990s. Agricultural policy and economic rationales for land reform were domains captured by the World Bank, other foreign advisors, and a grouping of South African agricultural economists based largely at the Development Bank of Southern Africa and at the University of Pretoria, who positioned themselves as politically neutral experts with local knowledge. The World Bank and other foreign agricultural economists favoured redistribution to small-scale farmers, citing the inverse relationship (IR) between farm size and productivity, but their arguments were met with scepticism by many of the South African economists (Hall 2011: 172). According to Hall, a middle ground emerged, a vision of a ‘mix of farm sizes, which could offer opportunities for entry by the poor while taking advantage of the economies of scale where they did exist, and making possible mutual support and equipment sharing between white and black, large and small farmers’ (Hall 2011: 172–173). There was also agreement amongst the economists on the need for further deregulation and liberalisation of the agricultural sector.
The World Bank also strongly promoted its favoured model of ‘market-assisted’ land reform, in which grants would be provided by the state for applicants to purchase land on the open market, with ‘willing buyers’ negotiating prices with ‘willing sellers’. At a Land Policy Options conference in 1993, convened jointly by the ANC-aligned Land and Agriculture Policy Centre (LAPC) and the World Bank, this was effectively the only model on the table. A target of transferring 30 per cent of commercial farmland from whites to blacks in five years was proposed, and later accepted as policy. Hall (2011: 186) argues that by 1994
… the policy discourse was internally contradictory, an amalgam of competing visions. It embraced efficiency and equity, the state and market, ‘the poor’ and ‘emerging farmers’, women and men, agricultural and non-agricultural land uses, commercial and non-commercial production, allowing the remaining fundamental differences to be elided.
The negotiated settlement decisively altered the framework of debate on land reform. In particular, it saw an accommodation of the interests of large-scale commercial farming interests, through acceptance of a ‘willing seller, willing buyer’, ‘market-assisted’ approach to land acquisition and redistribution. The dominant discourse of the time was ‘feasibility’, referring not only to how coherent, practical and affordable policy proposals were, but also how realistic in political terms, given the negotiated (and compromised) character of the political transition (Cousins 2004). Tellingly, an anodyne notion of ‘rural development’ was what land reform would contribute to, rather than a thorough going agrarian reform aimed at addressing structural inequality (Wildschut and Hulbert 1998).
Land redistribution and agricultural policies and their implementation, 1994–1999
The 1997 White Paper on South African Land Policy set out the rationale for land reform, and outlined how it would seek to achieve its ambitious goals: addressing the injustices of dispossession in the past; creating a more equitable distribution of land ownership; reducing poverty and contributing to economic growth; providing security of tenure for all; and establishing a sound system of land management. Its vision was of ‘a land reform which results in a rural landscape consisting of small, medium and large farms; one which promotes both equity and efficiency through a combined agrarian and industrial strategy in which land reform is a spark to the engine of growth’ (DLA 1997: 7).
Land reform would have three sub-programmes: restitution, 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 LRAD programme saw a rise in the number of redistribution projects, beneficiaries and hectares transferred, but the latter never amounted to more than around 250 000 hectares a year, or 10 per cent of that required to achieve the overall target of 30 per cent of farmland by 2014 (Lahiff 2008: 23). The focus on nurturing black commercial farmers failed to bear fruit, with relatively few grants provided to individual applicants, and very few at the upper end of the sliding scale. In its first two years, the programme provided 41 per cent of its grants at the lowest end (R20 000), and 40 per cent at the R30 000 level (Lahiff 2008: 3).1 Most applicants continued to pool their grants, unsurprisingly, given the small size of the grant relative to the cost of large farms and the absence of any thrust to subdivide. Group size declined in some provinces, but remained large in others. Grant size was not adjusted for inflation, yet land prices across the country increased in the early 2000s, and grants decreased in value in real terms as a result (Hall 2010: 181). Available evidence suggested the persistence of ‘the dichotomy of large group projects for the poor and small (household or individual) projects, albeit with relatively large per capita land areas, for the better-off’ (Lahiff 2008: 26).
Inadequate post-settlement support continued to be a problem, in part because investment in farm infrastructure through the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP) was not ‘synchronised’ with LRAD (Lahiff 2008: 37), suggesting that poor coordination between different government departments and different levels of government had not yet been addressed. Within the programme, bureaucratic and time-consuming processes for lodging and approving applications, establishing legal entities, identifying farms for sale, writing business plans, negotiating prices, reaching sale agreements and paying for land meant that the process of acquiring land was daunting for beneficiaries, the so-called willing buyers, and unattractive to landowners, the ‘willing sellers’ (Lahiff 2007: 1585–1589). It was also challenging for officials, who were expected to meet numerical targets for land transfer rather than for well-planned projects likely to be sustained over time (Walker 2008: 144).
Dissatisfaction with land redistribution continued to be expressed by beneficiaries, the NGO sector, commercial farmers, analysts and commentators, and this led to the organisation of a National Land Summit in 2005. The summit agreed on a review of the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ approach, the expanded use of expropriation, and a more prominent and proactive role for the state in land redistribution. The following year saw several new policy thrusts: area-based planning, a proactive land acquisition strategy, a review of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’, a draft Expropriation Bill designed to help speed up restitution, and reports being commissioned on foreign land ownership, land ceilings and land taxes (Lahiff 2008: 7–9). The radical tone was maintained in a resolution adopted at the ANC’s National Conference in Polokwane in December 2007, which emphasised the need for an ‘integrated programme of rural development, land reform and agrarian change’; support for smallholder farmers, farm dwellers and women and a review of market-based land redistribution.2
Nothing came of the review of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’, or of proposals for land ceilings and land taxes, and the draft Expropriation Bill was withdrawn after receiving a hostile reception from landowners, farmers and opposition parties. Area-based planning, which was intended to integrate land reform into local development plans drawn up by municipalities, was implemented from 2007, and the proactive land acquisition strategy (PLAS) was adopted as policy in 2006. In the latter, the state purchases farms directly from landowners rather than providing grants to beneficiaries, and these are then allocated to redistribution applicants on the basis of three- to five-year leasehold agreements, after which the lessee may be offered an option to purchase outright (Lahiff 2008: 8). The LRAD grant range was increased to a maximum of R431 000 in 2007 (Aliber and Hall 2010: 20), indicating renewed attention to the needs of emerging farmers.
These new programmes fared little better than their predecessors. The impact of large increases in the land reform budget from 2003/04, perhaps due to political pressure arising from numerous reports of failure, was eroded by rising land prices (see figures 3 and 4 in Greenberg 2010: 5–6), and underspending on redistribution continued to be a problem.3 Area-based planning was outsourced to consultants, a common response to capacity weaknesses in government, and there was little indication that land reform had been integrated into the development plans of local government bodies, which are also often undertaken by consultants, reflecting the continuing crisis of capacity within rural local government. By late 2009 the area-based process was still in the planning stage, with no plans having been implemented as yet (Umhlaba Rural Services 2009: 111).
Funding for agricultural development by provincial departments increased considerably after 2005 while remaining a very small proportion (less than 3 per cent) of the national budget (Aliber and Hall 2010: 5). Spending took various forms, including spending on extension services, infrastructure development via CASP, loans through the Micro-agricultural Financial Institutional Scheme of South Africa (MAFISA), and research. In relation to the first three of these, around 13 per cent derived benefits from 58 per cent of provincial spending. Aliber and Hall (2010: 8) estimate that between 2005 and 2008 there was an annual average of 61 000 CASP beneficiaries and about 2 500 farmers per annum received loans from MAFISA. These figures mask a highly skewed distribution: in 2009, for 322 national CASP projects, 50.7 per cent of funds went to 2.6 per cent of beneficiaries; taking all small-scale farmers into account, ‘the lion’s share of state funding … goes to less than 0.02 per cent of them’ (Aliber and Hall 2010: 12). The bulk of funds went to land reform projects, and communal areas were largely excluded. The implicit criterion for CASP funding was ‘commercial viability’, and the imperative to spend large budgets resulted in officials scaling down the number of projects and scaling up the size of each project (Aliber and Hall 2010:16).
Redistributive land reform and rural development under the Zuma government, 2009–2012
After the elections of 2009 the Zuma government identified rural development, food security and land reform as priorities, and a Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) was launched (DRDLR 2009). At its core was a job creation model through which para-development specialists would train community members to be gainfully employed in rural development projects. The overall goal is to create ‘vibrant and sustainable rural communities’. The new Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) was to have a key coordinating role in partnerships with other government departments and local government bodies. A series of CRDP pilots was launched in selected sites, one in every province. New land reform policies had not been announced by the end of 2012, but a moratorium on LRAD projects was imposed in 2010 and only the PLAS programme appears to be operational at present. Restitution claims continued to be approved, but in 2011 spending on new projects was suspended due to the mounting backlog of unpaid claim settlements (Kleinbooi 2011: 7).
The long-promised Green Paper on Land Reform was finally published for comment in August 2011, but was only eleven pages long and contained only general statements of principle. Its main focus was on a possible alternative, ‘fourtier’ tenure system, comprising leasehold on state land; freehold ‘with limited extent’, possibly implying restrictions on land size; ‘precarious’ freehold (that is, with obligations and restrictions) for foreign owners; and communal tenure. It also contained proposals for several new institutions such as a Land Management Commission, a Land Rights Management Board, and a Valuer-General. Two of the measures proposed – a recapitalisation programme aimed at investing in failing land reform projects, and partnerships with commercial farmers – do not resolve the systemic failure to provide effective support to smallholder farmers. Only a few sentences in the 2011 Green Paper address the connections between land reform and agriculture, and these are extremely vague.
Land redistribution continued to falter. Aliber and Hall (2010: 10) show that in 2007/8 the PLAS programme contributed the largest share of land acquired for redistribution, but it benefited ‘larger-scale beneficiary farmers’. A midterm review report released in May 2012 reports that a total of 882 238 hectares was redistributed to 10 447 beneficiaries between 2009 and 2012, but does not disaggregate these by type of programme (DRDLR 2012: 20). Case studies suggest that many PLAS beneficiaries are relatively well off and have other business interests, but nevertheless often fail to pay rent, without this proving to be a barrier to renewal of their leases (Ranwedzi 2011). The midterm review reports that a number of established (white) commercial farmers are acting as either ‘strategic partners’ or ‘mentors’ (264 and 117 respectively) to land reform beneficiaries, and that some have been appointed in order to ‘graduate smallholder farmers into commercial farmers’ (DRDLR 2012: xx). The underlying presumption that large-scale, capitalist agriculture is the desirable norm is clear.
An early assessment of the CRDP pilots (Umhlaba Rural Services 2009: 7–8) found the following weaknesses: lack of an agreed overall vision and strategic plan; insufficient conceptual understanding of the CRDP; lack of clarity on the constitutional mandate and legislative framework; lack of alignment and integration of budgets; failure to integrate relevant government policies and programmes; lack of clarity on authority and accountability; uncertainty and confusion as to who is leading the pilots; insufficient community participation; and lack of clear time frames or a functioning system of monitoring and evaluation. The conception of rural development embodied in the CRDP is highly problematic. The programme involves funding of a plethora of micro-projects within selected districts within the former ‘homelands’, and it is not clear how multiplying such projects is envisaged to lead to ‘the emergence of rural industrial and financial sectors marked by small, micro and medium enterprises and village markets’ (DRDLR 2009: 18).
It is unclear how these projects link up with or contribute to the ‘agrarian transformation’ component of the CRDP, which focuses on improved levels of agricultural production in communal areas, or to the land reform component – which appears to be prioritising ‘emerging commercial farmers’ on medium- to large-scale farm units (in practice, if not in theory). A coherent overall strategy to reconfigure the inherited (and largely intact) unequal agrarian structure, and the associated spatial divide between sparsely settled commercial farming areas and very densely settled ‘communal areas’, is conspicuous by its absence.
Recent agricultural sector reform initiatives
Within the agricultural sector, ‘reform’ has been taken to mean the opening up of opportunities for black business interests and emerging farmers. A policy framework for black economic empowerment was published in 2004, followed by an Agri-BEE Charter in 2008, the key objectives being to encourage black ownership and control of agribusinesses. A scorecard establishes targets for variables such as equity ownership, employment of senior managers and employment equity, the main incentive for companies being to secure procurement contracts from government. A survey of 30 large companies by the Agricultural Business Chamber in 2010 revealed that 30 per cent had completed a scorecard with a further 50 per cent ‘in progress’. Half of the businesses had black ownership of between 14 and 35 per cent, and there were high scores for enterprise development, average scores for preferential procurement and low scores for management control, employment equity, and skills development (Van Rooyen et al. 2010: 4). Some companies were attempting to support emerging farmers, but in most cases this was limited to a few individuals and small groups in the former ‘homelands’ and it appeared that many of these initiatives would not be sustained (Van Rooyen et al. 2010: 5).
A range of private sector actors within the agro-produce sector, from large sugar and forestry companies to individual commercial farmers, have embarked on farmer support programmes, some involving land reform beneficiaries (Kleinbooi 2009; Mayson 2003). It is unclear just how many farmers or land reform beneficiaries are benefiting from these private sector projects, but indications are that only limited numbers are involved. There appear to be few examples of successful contract farming schemes, with the much-vaunted sugar industry subject to precipitous declines in smallholder cane production in recent years (Dubb 2012), and negative experiences abound in Limpopo province irrigation schemes (Tapela 2005). This seems to be the case for fresh produce contracts with supermarkets too: apart from a few localised examples (Louw et al. 2007; Vermeulen et al. 2008), the character of these value chains means that ‘in the absence of a wider set of procurement regulations and incentives, the practices and requirements of dominant market actors exclude small-scale farmers’ (Aliber and Hall 2010: 35).
In summary, attempts to ‘transform’ agriculture by supporting the entry of significant numbers of emerging black commercial farmers appear to have met with limited success to date. This outcome probably has much to do with the highly competitive nature of the sector, as well as sector-wide policies, such as deregulation, which have been distributionally regressive. The sector has become increasingly integrated into global markets for both inputs and outputs, and profits are strongly influenced by global conditions and exchange rates. Trends such as the growing concentration of farm ownership and declining levels of employment have been noted above.
Some government policy documents stress the potential for agriculture to create new jobs and help reduce unemployment. The New Growth Path document published by the Economic Development Department, for example, suggests that opportunities for 300 000 households in ‘agricultural smallholder schemes’ can be generated by 2020 (EDD 2010: 18), and the National Development Plan (NPC 2011: xx) asserts that one million new jobs can be created in agriculture and related industries over the next two decades. Many will come from labour-intensive forms of small-scale farming in communal areas and on redistributed land. The National Planning Commission suggests that there is potential to expand the area under irrigation from 1.5 million hectares to 2 million hectares (NPC 2011: 197), and asserts that market opportunities exist for increased production of fruit for export and vegetables for the domestic market, as well as niche crops such as nuts, olives and berries which are small-scale and labour-intensive in character (NPC 2011: 201–204). Both documents assert that more effective land reform policies will also be required, but there is little that connects their proposals to those set out in the 2011 Green Paper. The lack of overall coherence in government policy, and the absence of any attempt to identify the reform of agrarian structure as a central challenge, persists.
The incoherence of post-apartheid policymaking on land and agriculture
How have the key challenges of rural reform been responded to by post-apartheid policies on land redistribution and agriculture? Firstly, in relation to an unequal and spatially divided agrarian structure, land and agricultural policies have not been conjoined within a coherent, overall strategy aimed at reconfiguring both the distribution of land and current systems of production and marketing; if anything, these policies have pulled in opposite directions. The key thrust in agricultural policies has been liberalisation and deregulation – that is, on state withdrawal and the promotion of ‘market efficiency’ (which, its advocates in the early 1990s argued, would create opportunities for efficient small farmers). Land reform, in contrast, was premised on state intervention in land markets, in order to acquire land for black South Africans unable to afford to do so themselves. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, land reform policies have not actively promoted small-scale farming. The withdrawal of state subsidies to commercial farmers has boosted increasing concentration within the sector, and if anything, has raised, rather than reduced, barriers to entry by small-scale farmers.
Secondly, in relation to the challenge of defining the beneficiaries of land redistribution, the early emphasis in policy was on a broad and ill-defined category, ‘the rural poor’, but also included were women, farm workers, labour tenants and ‘aspirant farmers’. Emerging black commercial farmers were identified as an additional key target group after 1999. Given the hegemony of the large farm model, the latter have been the main focus of the limited ‘transformation’ initiatives undertaken in the agricultural sector to date. In recent years a rhetoric of supporting ‘smallholders’ through land reform and agricultural development in communal areas has emerged, but the term is poorly defined, and the means whereby they will be enabled to overcome barriers to entry, and compete with large-scale capitalist enterprises in an increasingly competitive and concentrated sector, remain unclear. In practice, the recent evolution of the PLAS programme suggests that land redistribution may be subject to elite capture by black business people.
Thirdly, in relation to the mechanisms for land redistribution, a combination of political, ideological and pragmatic considerations was probably responsible 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
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