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Land Reform, Equity and Growth in South Africa: A Comparative Analysis

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Weideman, Marinda (2003). Land Reform, Equity and Growth in South Africa: A Comparative Analysis. PhD thesis, Department of Political Studies, Faculty of Arts. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (submitted July 2003, re-submitted November 2004).
Type thesis
Scope Post-1994 South African economy
Method mixed
Period studied 1652–2003
Regions South Africa, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, former homelands, Western Cape, Zimbabwe (comparative), Brazil, Kenya, Mexico, East Asia (comparative)
Themes agriculture land, origins segregation, bantustans removals influx, inequality poverty unemployment, labour markets wages, transition post apartheid, comparative theory, resistance social movements, demography urbanisation, macro fiscal finance debt
Citation key weideman2003

Argument

The thesis evaluates post-1994 South African land reform against the White Paper's criteria: equity, political stability, poverty alleviation, food security, environmental sustainability and agricultural productivity. Its argument is that the market-based, demand-led programme has not met them. It draws on comparative material from about 30 countries, fieldwork in two Mpumalanga communities, and 26 interviews with policy actors. Chapter 1, the part most relevant to apartheid economic history, presents dispossession as a state-driven process running from 1652 through the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts to apartheid removals, betterment planning and influx control. Chapter 3 argues that the state, not the market, built white commercial agriculture and that it was only partly liberalised in the 1980s. The author concludes that small-scale farming succeeds only with a 'package of prime movers' of state support, that the farm-size 'inverse relationship' may be an index of poverty, and that policy ignores socio-economic and gender differentiation and beneficiary participation.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature (Bundy, Keegan, Beinart & Bundy, Surplus Peoples' Project, PLAAS, NLC, World Bank-linked LAPC volumes); government White Papers, Land Bank reports and census data (1996 census, October Household Surveys); newspaper reports; 26 interviews with policy actors and activists (mostly 2001); about 80 fieldwork interviews and conversations in the Solane and Sheba communities (Mpumalanga, 2001); extensive international case-study literature.

Findings

  • Land dispossession and exclusion were enormous by 1991, before any reform. (p. 8)

    In 1991, approximately 80% of the South African population were still prohibited from owning or leasing land in over 80% of the country.

  • The 1913 Land Act is read as a labour-control and anti-peasant measure, not only a land-allocation measure. (p. 10)

    preventing the rise of a class of commercially successful black farmers, ensuring a supply of migrant labour for mines and farmers, and maintaining low wages

  • Apartheid removals were massive and came from several policy streams (farms, black spots, urban relocation). (p. 12)

    Between 1960 and 1982, approximately 1 200 000 people were forcibly removed from farms, a further 600 000 through black spot and bantustan consolidation policies, another 700 000 through urban relocation

  • Homeland populations roughly doubled and more through resettlement and consolidation, intensifying overcrowding. (p. 14)

    As a result of these policies, the population in the bantustans increased from 4.5 million to 11 million between 1960 and 1980.

  • The state, not the market, shaped South African agriculture. (p. 26)

    To a large extent, it was the state and not the market that determined the nature of agricultural production in South Africa.

  • Mechanisation of commercial farming was accompanied by falling farm employment in the 1970s. (p. 67)

    As the commercial agricultural sector began to mechanise, agricultural employment began to decrease (2.67% annually between 1970 and 1980).

  • White farm debt rose sharply in the 1980s, driving bankruptcies and fiscal pressure. (p. 69)

    In 1985, the value of the average farm had risen by nearly 200% to R730 000, while the average debt had increased by over 500% to R184 000.

  • Liberalisation did not displace white commercial dominance of output and land. (p. 72)

    in 1996, approximately 90% of South Africa’s agricultural production still came from the white commercial agricultural sector, which still owned 85% of the agricultural land.

  • Homeland farming was marginal to national output. (p. 74)

    By the early 1990s, homeland areas produced only 6% of the gross value of agricultural production – little of which reached commercial markets.

  • Commercial farm employment fell sharply in the 1990s. (p. 356)

    between 1988 and 1998, 140 000 regular jobs were lost, indicating a decline of approximately 20%

  • Small-farm 'efficiency' is reinterpreted as a symptom of poverty. (p. 97)

    Far from being an index of efficiency, the inverse relation reflects the desperate struggle of poor and marginal peasants to scratch a bare subsistence from inadequate patches of land.