Overcoming Land Injustices: An Experimental Investigation Into the Justice and Injustice of Land Squatting in South Africa

Literature › Works

Gibson, James L. (2005). Overcoming Land Injustices: An Experimental Investigation Into the Justice and Injustice of Land Squatting in South Africa. Paper for the Spring Meeting of the Working Group on African Political Economy, UCLA, May 13-14, 2005.

Type	conference paper
Scope	Post-1994 South African economy
Method	survey fieldwork
Period studied	2004–2004
Regions	South Africa (national survey), urban South Africa
Themes	agriculture land, politics ideology elections, transition post apartheid, demography urbanisation, comparative theory, methods data sources, inequality poverty unemployment
Citation key	gibson2005a

Argument

Gibson uses a survey experiment embedded in a 2004 national survey to examine how South Africans judge the fairness of evicting a squatter from private land. The case pits distributive justice (need, deservingness) against procedural justice and property rights. Respondent race shapes almost every fairness judgment, and black respondents are far more likely to see the eviction as unfair. Procedural fairness in the eviction is the one factor that raises fairness judgments for all races. Among black respondents, group identity (national, racial or ethnic) conditions how much weight procedural and distributive considerations receive. The paper is a political-psychology study of post-apartheid land attitudes, not an economic history of apartheid.

Evidence and method

A 2004 face-to-face national survey by Markinor with 4,108 respondents (1,549 African, 1,362 white, 738 Coloured, 459 Asian). The African sample was an area probability sample with an 87.1% response rate. The other groups combined probability and quota samples and were post-stratified. Half of respondents heard one of 16 versions of a squatter vignette (2x2x2x2 factorial design). Analysis used OLS regressions and manipulation checks.

Findings

• Fairness judgments of the eviction diverge sharply by race: most blacks see it as unfair to the squatter, while most whites see it as fair. (p. 20)

  While 83.6 % of blacks view the outcome as unfair to the squatter (with 57.5 % believing it very unfair – data not shown), only a third of whites (33.4 %) assert that the outcome was unfair to Patience.

• The need and deservingness manipulations failed because virtually all respondents see squatters as needy (a ceiling effect). (p. 18)

  92.2 % of those told of Patience’s dire need judged her to be needy, whereas 88.0 % of those hearing that Patience had only ordinary need thought her needy.

• Landowner non-use of land has little effect on fairness judgments, contrary to a popular argument justifying squatting. (p. 24)

  In general, however, these findings run counter to popular arguments in South Africa that the lack of use of land justifies squatting. For most South Africans, it does not.

• Procedural fairness has the strongest experimental effect on fairness judgments among whites, Coloured and Asian respondents. (p. 24)

  among whites, 46.2 % judged the squatter to be fairly treated when she was summarily evicted, but 70.9 % thought it fair when she was evicted through due process procedures

• The respondent's own race has a large effect on fairness judgments that persists when procedural justice is held constant. (p. 26)

  Race is strongly related to the assessments of the fairness of the treatment of the squatter — 0 = .45. Even holding procedural justice constant, the differences between blacks and whites in fairness assessments are tremendous

• Most respondents do not see the dispute as zero-sum: fairness to squatter and landowner is positively correlated within each racial group. (p. 21)

  Nonetheless, not even white South Africans judge fairness to the two parties in zero-sum terms, as indicated by positive, not negative, correlations between these two fairness variables, within each racial group.

• Perceived procedural justice is the strongest predictor of fairness judgments for every racial group. (p. 28)

  Whether the squatter is perceived to have received procedural justice is the strongest predictor of overall fairness judgments for South Africans of every race.

• A majority of blacks hold anti-squatter policy preferences, although black opinion is more divided than that of other groups. (p. 30)

  while 61.4 % of blacks support strict enforcement of anti-squatter laws, the comparable figures for whites, Coloured people, and Asians are 84.7 %, 74.3 %, and 84.9 %, respectively.

• Procedural justice matters most for black South Africans with a national identity, and deservingness matters most for those with an ethnic identity. (p. 33)

  Perhaps the most important findings from this table concern the dramatically stronger role of procedural justice perceptions among those adopting a South African identity, coupled with the minimal influence of deservingness among national identifiers.

• The author concludes that squatters' claims are seen as legitimate, so fair process is owed even where eviction is accepted. (p. 35)

  South Africans of all races respond with more favorable fairness judgments when the squatter is accorded some degree of due process.