Land, citizenship and the consolidation of constitutional democracy in Southern Africa

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Merle Lipton (2010). Land, citizenship and the consolidation of constitutional democracy in Southern Africa. International Affairs 86(5). Royal Institute of International Affairs / Blackwell Publishing.

Type	journal article
Scope	Post-1994 South African economy
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	1970–2010
Regions	South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Southern Africa
Themes	agriculture land, transition post apartheid, politics ideology elections, comparative theory, bantustans removals influx
Citation key	lipton2010

Argument

Lipton reviews three books (Becoming Zimbabwe, Alden and Anseeuw's Land, liberation and compromise, and Gibson's Overcoming historical injustices) on land and the stability of constitutional democracy in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia. She agrees that unresolved land ownership shapes growth, national identity and democratic consolidation, and that Mugabe used land seizures to deflect from economic mismanagement. She disputes the books' claim that 'neoliberal' international constraints explain slow land reform, arguing that governments did not use the powers they had under their own constitutions, and that domestic interests (chiefs, ruling-party elites, white farmers, weak state capacity) mattered. Her main criticism is that the books neglect the economics of land and agricultural reform.

Evidence and method

A review of three books, drawing on their material (Gibson's public opinion surveys, Alden and Anseeuw's case studies and interviews, historiographical chapters on Zimbabwe), plus the World Bank's 1994 report on South African agriculture, ministerial statements and press sources.

Findings

• Land ownership remained racially skewed at the end of white rule, and majority rule brought little change (p. 1)

  In South Africa, 86 per cent of the land was reserved for white people who, in 1970, comprised 18 per cent of the population (now down to 10 per cent).​

• Gibson's surveys show a sharp racial divide on returning land taken under apartheid (p. 7)

  90 per cent of black and 36 per cent of white citizens supported the return of land taken away under apartheid

• Unemployment, not land, is the top concern of black South Africans, and Gibson does not link the two (p. 7)

  Gibson, for example, does not relate his finding of the ‘considerable importance’ of land to the finding that the prime issue for 85 per cent of the black population is unemployment.​

• Lipton argues that neoliberal constraints only partly explain slow reform because welfare and interventionist policies contradict the label (p. 8)

  its huge expansion of welfare grants (received by a quarter of the population); its highly interventionist affirmative action policy; and its maintenance of banking regulation and exchange controls

• The World Bank itself recommended substantial redistribution, undermining claims that international institutions blocked reform (p. 8)

  which also urged South Africa to redistribute 30 per cent of white-owned land to black citizens within 15 years

• Land reform budgets went unspent while other affirmative action was pursued assertively (p. 8)

  South Africa has never fully spent the budget it allocated for this purpose, in contrast to its assertive affirmative action policies in other sectors, such as Black Economic Empowerment.

• Ruling parties rely on chiefs for the rural vote, and the 2004 Communal Land Rights Act favoured chiefs at the expense of small farmers (p. 9)

  tailoring the 2004 Communal Land Rights Act to favour the chiefs—to the dismay of rural NGOs, and at the cost of small farmers, especially the many who are women.

• Elite self-interest in acquiring farms is an obstacle to reform (p. 9)

  ‘The land issue is not a top priority because every Minister has already got his farm’

• Black farmers lack the supports given to white farmers, depressing productivity and interest in farming (p. 7)

  Such supports are taken for granted for white farmers and for urban employers and workers, but seldom for black farmers, contributing to their low productivity and, hence, lack of interest in farming.

• Mugabe used land to divert attention from economic and political threats, with severe consequences (p. 3)

  These involved the violent takeover of most white farms; the eviction of hundreds of thousands of farm workers and their families; and the collapse of agriculture