South Africa’s Land Reform in Historical Perspective: Land settlement and agriculture in Mopani District, Limpopo, 19th century to 2015 Michelle Hay A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, August 2015. Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It has been submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted for any degree or examination in any other university. Signed Michelle Hay, August 2015 i Acknowledgements I first began to seriously imagine myself as a historian during one of Peter Delius’s fascinating lectures on pre-colonial South African history. Peter’s encouragement to follow that path led me to do my honours, masters and PhD. As my supervisor he has been intellectually stimulating and challenging, and given me enormous support. I may not have finished, and certainly would not have enjoyed the research and writing as much as I did, without Peter’s mentorship and friendship. I cannot thank him enough. Ripfumelo Mushwana, my research assistant, interpretor and friend, helped me to interview people but also taught me a lot about being young in Mopani district today. Without her and her impressive diplomatic skills, I would not have been able to conduct such an interesting range of interviews, with so little stress. Thanks to her and her partner Jonas also for welcoming me into their home. Many people allowed me to interview them and taught me a lot. I cannot list them all but I am enormously grateful to them. I would like to thank my colleagues in the History Department of Wits University, who have allowed me the space and time to write. I would like to thank especially Mucha Musemwa and Sekiba Lekgoathi for their encouragement, and Stacey Sommerdyk, Andrew MacDonald, Clive Glaser and Prinisha Badassy, for their friendship, support and kindness. This thesis began with funding and support from the NRF Chair in Local Pasts and Present Realities, led by Phil Bonner and Noor Nieftagodien. The feedback I received at the seminars and PhD reading group I attended, where I presented some of my work was enormously valuable. For a few years I also received funding from the Oppenheimer Foundation, without which my studies would not have been possible. I also received conference funding from the National Research Foundation and Wits University. Deborah James and Cherryl Walker have both been inspiring and encouraging. Thanks to Cherryl for reading drafts of my ‘Tangled Past’ article, and for her extensive feedback and editing, and to Deborah for enjoyable and stimulating discussion. Huge thanks to my family who have all been supportive, my mom Wendy, my dad Malcolm and his wife Rose, and Al, Mel, and Kirsty for their faith in me, and help when I most needed it. My friends gave me support, but most importantly, fun distractions, Dani, Laetitia, Claire, Faeeza, Jo-lee, Anne, Kath, Mary and Dave. And thanks to Andrew Bowman, for proofreading my thesis and for making my life easier and happier in the final stretch of thesis writing. ii Abstract This thesis explores the hypothesis that South Africa’s land reform programme is based on a set of assumptions about the country’s past which are inadequate and have contributed to the failure of policy. The impact of these assumptions is that they support particular models for restitution and rural economic development which became ‘accepted wisdom’ within international development agencies, government, and amongst land activists in South Africa, but which were and still are inappropriate in the South African context. To test this hypothesis I look at the history of land settlement and agriculture in Mopani district of Limpopo province. In particular, I look at how ordinary people accessed and lost rights to land over the nineteenth and twentieth century, and how land became tied up in struggles for political authority and access to resources. I show how the importance of ethnic identities and a sense that land belongs to ‘indigenous’ people of a particular ethnicity, deepened during the Bantustan era. I argue that policymakers could have learned from past government policies. This includes the 1936 Native Trust and Land Act which called for the state to purchase farms from private landowners for African settlement, and smallholder irrigation schemes and co-operatives, which were intended to improve agricultural production in the reserves and homelands. What this history reveals is that land settlement patterns and experiences of land loss were far more complex than the simplified narratives on which land restitution was based. The poor performance of agriculture in reserves and bantustans cannot be blamed on past government policies intended to destroy a peasantry, or on land loss alone, rather there were many challenges and constraints. Women maintained an interest in agriculture throughout the twentieth century, but were not taken seriously by those attempting to improve African agriculture. Africans interested in commercial farming were constrained in how much land they could access. The idea that Africans are naturally communal, and that restitution and development should target ‘communities’ is deeply problematic. Policy failed to take into account these realities. The consequences have been that land restitution has failed to bring redress, restituted farms have failed as commercial operations, those with a real interest in agriculture continue to face constraints, and smallholder irrigation schemes continue to perform poorly. iii Contents Acknowledgements i Abstract ii List of Maps and Tables iv List of Abbreviations v Introduction 2 Chapter One: From Early Times to 1903 33 Chapter Two: Living on the Land: Authority and Land Settlement 1902 65 to 1947 Chapter Three: African Agriculture from 1902 to the 1940s 105 Chapter Four: Government Policies to Improve African Agriculture 139 1930s to the 1960s Chapter Five: Land Settlement and Agriculture during the Bantustan 174 Era, 1960s to 1994 Chapter Six: Land Restitution, 1994 to 2015 214 Chapter Seven: Land Reform and Agriculture, 1994 to 2015 257 Conclusion 297 iv List of Maps and Tables Map 1 The geographic region 18 Map 2 Mopani district 19 Map 3 Detail of A. Merensky ‘Original Map of the Transvaal or South 37 African Republic’, 1875, showing the northern and eastern lowveld and escarpment Map 4 Composite Map of N.J Van Warmelo’s maps of ‘tribes’ 72 Map 5 Agricultural Projects in Gazankulu, 1985 191 Fig. 1 African Population Returns, 1906 – 1910 80 Fig. 2 Cattle in Haenertsburg District compared to Pietersburg 109 District: 1905 to 1910 Fig. 3 Livestock in Haenertsburg District, 1905 – 1910 110 Fig. 4 Income from Irrigation Schemes in Letaba District 156 Fig. 5 Income on irrigation schemes per plot size 157 Fig. 6 Change in membership and value of produce, Letaba Bantu 161 Farmers’ Co-operative 1949 – 1960 Fig. 7 Annual Calendar Rainfall 1949 - 1999, Letsitele Valley, Letaba 167 District Fig. 8 Agricultural projects in certain districts of Lebowa and 189 Gazankulu Fig. 9 Annual Calendar Rainfall 1949 – 1999, Letsitele Valley, Letaba 199 District Fig. 10 Land under irrigation and dams in Gazankulu 1969 – 1975 203 Fig. 11 Percentage of households engaged in agriculture per income 279 category, 2011 Fig. 12 Percentage of Agricultural Households by Type of Activity 281 Fig. 13 Percentage of Agricultural Households in Specific Activity 281 v List of Abbreviations ANC: African National Congress AZAPO: Azanian Peoples’ Organisation BEE: Black Economic Empowerment COLA: Commission on Land Allocation CPA: Communal Property Association CRDP: Comprehensive Rural Development Programme CRLR: Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights DBSA: Development Bank Southern Africa DoA: Department of Agriculture GFI: Gross Farming Income IARC: Industrial and Agricultural Requirements Commission LBFC: Letaba Bantu Farmer’s Co-operative LRAD: Land Redistribution and Development grant LRLCC: Limpopo Regional Land Claims Commission NAD: Native Affairs Department NEC: Native Economic Commission NFA: Native Farmers’ Association NP: National Party NGO: Non-governmental Organisation OH: Operation Hunger PLAAS: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies RLCC: Regional Land Claims Commission SABRA: South African Bureau of Racial Affairs SANT: South African Native Trust vi SEPC: Social and Economic Planning Council SLAG: Settlement and Land Acquisition Grant ZAR: Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek vii Introduction The aim of this thesis is to explore the hypothesis that South Africa’s land reform programme is based on a set of assumptions about the country’s past which are inadequate and have contributed to the failure of policy. The impact of these assumptions is that they support particular models for restitution and rural economic development which became ‘accepted wisdom’ within international development agencies, government, and amongst land activists in South Africa, but which were and still are inappropriate in the South African context. In this thesis I will look at a history of land settlement and agriculture in Mopani district of Limpopo province, showing how historical realities shaped the way policy unfolded, and how a lack of appreciation of history impacted on what policies were formulated and how they were implemented. As the initial phases of land reform failed, policymakers searched for new explanations for