To Whom Does the Land Belong?

The chapter employs a historical and analytical approach to presenting the process through which the colonial powers and subsequent governments maintained dominance of land ownership in South Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, and describes the progress towards land restitution and reform in post-apartheid South Africa. The necessity to redistribute land in post-colonial Africa within the context of this book, provides the backdrop to the need for land restitution and reform. This chapter also provides an overview of the existing policy framework that proposes to deal with the vexing problem facing South Africa, and explains that land reform has become complex and difficult in the continent and particularly in South Africa. The complexity does not only have to accommodate the land hunger problem, and agitation for land ownership, but the drafting and implementation of land tenure, restitution and redistribution policies to address the diverse challenges of confronting land reform in South Africa. Furthermore, it is required in the context of a democratic constitution that was crafted to transition peacefully into a democratic state or much desired “rainbow nation”, to prevent post-apartheid conflict and in particular “land-grabbing” actions that would have the potential not only to destabilise the state, but also that of the very buoyant agricultural economy.

The paper examines alternative modalities for the forthcoming process of land reform in South Africa. It is argued that the criteria of relieving rural poverty and maximizing allocative efficiency will conflict to some degree. However, it is possible to visualize a range of land reform options which encompass both of these objectives as a basis for the operations of the new multiracial government which will take office in South Africa on 27 April, 1994.

Land, a central resource for rural development and human survival, has become a recurrent feature of South African politics and a major source of conflict in the country. This prompted the African National Congress-led government to adopt land reform as a key mechanism in its quest to redress racial and class inequalities. However, despite the efforts of government to resolve conflict over land, massive agitation for access to land continues. Government’s failure to deal with this issue has stimulated civil society organisations to become proactive in effecting successful land reform. This paper examines the land reform programme in South Africa, assesses how government policy has affected human rights with respect to access to land, and explores the roles of civil society in the “land battle”. While the country’s Constitution upholds human rights to land use, property rights and human dignity, there is compelling evidence of social injustice, institutional negligence and instances of human rights violations by government, landowners and the landless population. The paper concludes that the land reform has fallen far short of the expectations of the black majority; hence, the need for “bottom-up” land reform driven by the interests of the majority and consideration of minority rights.

Introduction Who should be the primary beneficiaries of redistributive land reform in South Africa, and how will land redistribution contribute to the reduction of rural poverty? Fifteen years after the transition to democracy, these remain controversial and contested questions. Despite its poor performance to date, and concern over low levels of production on redistributed or restored land, there is little sign of land reform being abandoned by the ruling party, the African National Congress. The powerful symbolic resonance of the ‘land question’ means that it remains high on the political agenda of post-apartheid South Africa. Recently, however, there has been renewed debate on the economic rationales for land redistribution, with a particular focus on poverty reduction, employment and economic restructuring. At least at the level of rhetoric, the primary beneficiaries of land reform are now, as in 1994/95, being identified as ‘the rural poor’ and ‘small-scale farmers’, or ‘smallholders’, rather than the ‘emerging commercial farmers’ that government policy was fixated on under the Mbeki presidency. But what is a smallholder? In this chapter, I argue that the term is problematic because it tends to obscure inequalities and significant class-based differences within the large population of households engaged in agricultural production on a relatively small scale. Much usage of the term suggests that smallholders form a relatively homogeneous group, and it fails to distinguish between producers for whom:• farming constitutes only a partial contribution to their social reproduction; • farming meets most of their social reproduction requirements; • farming produces a significant surplus, allowing profits to be reinvested and,for some, capital accumulation in agriculture to begin.

The demand for land reform is a buming issue for the dispossessed in South Africa. Over the last 40 years, the National Party has achieved, through legal means and otherwise, a distribution of land that is radically distorted to favour white farmers. While white people comprise 13 per cent of the population, white farmers have had exclusive right to at least 83 per cent of agricultural land. Given the present political and economic climate, a severe shortage of skilled people, and the immense scale of the problem, reform will not be easy. This Viewpoint examines the lessons from the history of land-reform policies in Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile, as related to the authors by people who have worked on problems of rural poverty, landlessness, and dispossession.

Land reform in South Africa's national parks: a catalyst for the human–nature nexus

The newly‐elected South African government began in 1994 to make laws and implement a programme for land reform. It consisted of three dimensions: redistribution (transferring white‐owned commercial farm land to African users); restitution (settling claims for land lost under apartheid measures by restoration of holdings or compensation); and land tenure reform (to provide more secure access to land in the former bantustans). Only a few restitution claims have been so far resolved. After much rethinking a revised draft of a land tenure bill is to be presented to Parliament in late 2000, but as one stated aim is to give ‘land to tribes’, it remains to be seen whether it will bring increased democratisation, allowing for common resource management, or will entrench ‘decentralised despotism’. This article concentrates on the most actively pursued dimension of land reform: redistribution. Under the diverse influences of rights‐based activism of earlier years and of World Bank advice about a ‘market‐led’ approach, the government has set up mechanisms to help finance and facilitate ‘community’ initiatives to acquire land, to settle on it and, if possible, to make productive use of it. What was advocated as a more rapid and less bureaucratic approach than a government agency acquiring and administering resettlement has instead spawned a sprawling edifice, some of it out‐sourced to an array of consultants, often with little experience and few credentials, and has led to a protracted process of transfer of a much smaller amount of land in five years than, say, Zimbabwe managed in the same period. The reasons for this are examined. A policy rethink during 1999 has led to changes in emphasis which, hopefully, will speed up the redistribution of land, provide more back‐up to those resettled, and prioritise future grants for more productive agricultural use. This latter formula, however, is constricted by old‐fashioned ‘modernist’ (and often implicitly colonial) orthodoxies still current in South Africa, not least in the ANC and government. These are fixated on ‘commercialisation’ ‐ which usually translates into larger‐scale and high‐tech ‐ and the promotion of the interests of a would‐be black agrarian entrepreneurial class, rather than those of the propertyless. Some hope may derive from the inclusion of experiments in the new programme to chart an alternative to the ‘market‐led’ formula which would instead allow redistribution of land as an element within district‐level planning.

Since 1913, at least seven million South Africans, mainly Africans, have been uprooted or actively resettled for predominantly political purposes. This article provides a brief overview of the extent and the consequences of several different kinds of resettlement. It then argues that land reform in a post‐apartheid South Africa will require further resettlement, and considers a number of possible settlement patterns, as well as some of the problems likely to arise.

One of the primary stated aims of the South African government's land reform programme is to contribute towards reconciliation by addressing the injustices and inequalities of past land allocation. It is however not clear that the land reform initiative will be able to pursue its goals of distributive justice and reconciliation without in the process contributing to the very problems of inequality, competition and conflict that it seeks to overcome. The article outlines some of the ways in which this potentially contradictory process is likely to unfold, both in terms of the official approach outlined in the Green Paper on Land Policy, as well as in terms of likely developments on the ground. A related paradox is considered: that in order to overcome the land dispossession and disruption caused by forced resettlement, there will need to be further resettlement, as black people move onto formally white‐owned land. While in theory voluntary, and involving land gain, rather than loss, such resettlement is nevertheless likely to involve significant difficulties of its own. For land reform to stand any realistic chance of succeeding and of helping effect justice and reconciliation, we need to be as clear and honest as we know how as to what the real costs and unintended consequences are likely to be.

The land and the people are inextricably linked and inter-dependent. Place attachment provides a useful lens through which to examine land reform and people’s attachment to land. Sebastien’s framework of place identity and place dependence is used to appreciate how place attachment is expressed in the ancient biblical texts of Psalm 37 and Matthew’s Beatitudes despite lack of ownership. In contexts of injustice, place attachment was able to provide hope for the disenfranchised. The framework for place attachment is further applied to the more recent context of land reform in South Africa. The lessons from appreciating place attachment and the complexity of land as more than just an economic tradeable asset can provide valuable lessons to the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in redressing some of the many injustices of the past by appreciating the complexity of land, contributing to the conversation, and assisting the poor and marginalised as they create opportunities for the sustainable development of church land as responsible stewards fulfilling the Gospel imperative.

South Africa suffered a long history of colonization, racial domination and land dispossession that resulted in the bulk of the agricultural land being owned by a white minority. Black people resisted being dispossessed but were defeated by the superior arms of the newcomers. As Lewin has written, “whatever minor causes there may have been for the many Bantu-European wars, the desire for land was the fundamental cause.” Despite the claims that South Africa was largely uninhabited at the time of the arrival of Europeans, documentary evidence shows that in fact the land was inhabited. Thus the journal of the first European to settle at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck records incidents of confrontation with the indigenous Khoi-khoi (or Hottentots) in 1655.

The need for the current land reform programme arose from the racially discriminatory laws and practices which were in place for the largest part of the twentieth century, especially those related to land ownership. The application of these discriminatory laws and practices resulted in extreme inequalities in relation to land ownership and land use. This article provides an overview of the most prominent legislation which provides the framework for the policy of racially-based territorial segregation. It further discusses the legislative measures and policies which were instituted during the period from 1991 to 1997, aimed at abolishing racially-based laws and practices related to land and which eventually provided the basis to the current land reform programme.

land as a socio-economic right and secondly, women as a social category, and then reviews what is currently in place with regard to gender equality in land rights, in terms of the Constitution and at the level of state policy and implementation. Land rights constitute a distinctive category of socio-economic rights and the relationship between stronger land rights and enhanced well-being (for both men and women) is not a simple and unmediated one. At the same time, women’s interests in land are not uniform but are shaped by complex intersections among various issues, including the broader economic context, their social location, and the effects of social change on family forms and household structure. In the South African case, given general problems with the state’s programme of land reform, the question of what it means to infuse the principle of equitable property rights, more specifically land rights, with substantive equality is still an open one. Substantive gender equality in relation to land can also not be separated from other struggles for socio-economic rights.

Land reform in South Africa doesn’t need a new law: the state should release property it owns – economists

Land reform in South Africa is failing. Ignoring the realities of rural life plays a part