Land Reform in South Africa: a Status Report 2008 Edward Lahiff
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Research Report Land Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2008 Edward Lahiff School of Government, UWC 1 Research Report Land Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2008 Edward Lahiff School of Government, UWC Land Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2008 Land Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2008 Published by the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, School of Government, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535, Cape Town, South Africa. Tel: +27 21 959 3733. Fax: +27 21 959 3732. E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.plaas.org.za Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies research report no. 38 ISBN: 9781868086849 July 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission from the publisher or the authors. Copy editor: Laurie Rose-Innes Cover photograph: PLAAS archives Layout: Designs4development, [email protected] Typeset in Frutiger Printing: RNK Graphics ii Contents Tables and figures iv Acronyms and abbreviations v Chapter 1: Introduction and overview 1 Chapter 2: Restitution 11 Chapter 3: Redistribution 21 Chapter 4: Critical issues for South Africa’s land reform programme 32 References 42 Land Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2008 Tables and figures Tables Table 1: Land transferred by redistribution and restitution, 31 March 2007 5 Table 2: Breakdown of land transfers, 31 March 2006 5 Table 3: Land claims settled in 2006/07 and cumulative total to date 13 Table 4: Claims settled, by province, 2006/07 15 Table 5: Unresolved rural claims, by province, 31 March 2007 16 Table 6: Rural claims settled – national summary, 31 March 2006 18 Table 7: Land reform projects by province, 2006/07 24 Figures Figure 1: Restitution claims settled (and projected), 1994–2008 14 Figure 2: Target and actual land transfers under the redistribution programme, 1994–2009 23 iv Research Report Acronyms and abbreviations AgriBEE agricultural broad-based black economic empowerment CASP Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme CPA communal property association CPI communal property institution CRLR Commission on Restitution of Land Rights DLA Department of Land Affairs LARP Land and Agrarian Reform Project LRAD Land Reform for Agricultural Development MAFISA Micro-Agricultural Finance Initiative of South Africa MoA Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs PLAS Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy PMU Project Management Unit SIS Settlement and Implementation Support SLAG Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant v Land Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2008 Research Report Chapter 1: Introduction and overview Introduction modest amounts of land to a small minority of the rural population, but leaves the underly- After 14 years of democracy in South Africa, ing structure of the agrarian economy largely there is agreement across the political and so- intact. cial spectrum that the state’s programme of land Debates around land reform since 1994 have reform is in severe difficulties. Almost since its been dominated by the extent of land redistrib- inception, the programme has been criticised for uted from white to black owners (or occupiers), failing to reach its targets or deliver on its mul- usually expressed as a proportion of the total tiple objectives of historical redress, redistribu- area of agricultural land owned by white people tion of wealth and opportunities, and economic at the end of apartheid. By March 2007, the land growth. Particular weaknesses – highlighted by reform programme in all its forms had trans- its political supporters and opponents alike – in- ferred somewhere in the order of four million clude the slow pace of land redistribution, the hectares – roughly 5% of white-owned land – to failure to impact significantly on the land tenure historically disadvantaged South Africans.1 systems prevailing on commercial farms and in Of the communal areas, and the widespread per- this, approximately 45% came from restitution ception that what redistribution of land has tak- and 55% under various aspects of redistribution, en place has not been translated into improve- including the Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant ments in agricultural productivity or livelihood (SLAG), Land Reform for Agricultural Develop- benefits for the majority of participants. Nev- ment (LRAD), commonage, farm worker equity ertheless, despite much political hand-wringing schemes, state land disposal and tenure reform and some changes in direction, the policy fun- (see below). damentals remain largely unchanged from the This quantitative measure provides only a crude formula that was put in place at the time of the indication of the pace and direction of land re- transition to democracy. Of particular interest, form, obscuring as it does equally important therefore, is not so much the chronic underper- issues of land quality and location, the socio- formance of a policy area that many saw as criti- economic profile of beneficiaries and the qual- cal to post-apartheid transformation, but the ity of post-settlement (or post-transfer) support, ability of the government to persist for so long if any. However, the ongoing attention to the with an approach that enjoys so little popular headline statistics for land transfer has been support and is clearly failing to deliver on its closely linked to a second prominent theme ostensible objectives. in land reform debates – the means by which The period following the National Land Sum- land is to be acquired from its current owners, mit of July 2005 witnessed heightened debate and particularly the market-based approach fa- voured by the state. about land reform policy and a flurry of policy initiatives not seen since the transition period a Effectively, the debate around market-based decade earlier. Much of this attention centred land reform to date has been limited to the on the principle of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’, degree of discretion granted to landowners which was roundly condemned by the summit around whether to make their land available to delegates, led by the Deputy President, the Min- the programme or, alternatively, the degree of ister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, the Direc- persuasion or coercion to be used by the state in tors-General of the Departments of Agriculture order to acquire land and the extent of compen- and Land Affairs, and assorted luminaries. Since sation to be provided. As argued elsewhere (La- 1. This and other statistics on the land reform programme then, the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) has hiff 2007a), the weakness of the market-based are the subject of considerable debate, due in large part to engaged in a stop-start process of consultations approach that underlies the South African land inconsistent and aggregated reporting by the relevant au- and the drafting of a variety of new policy pa- reform programme – loosely captured under the thorities. The highest cumula- pers. To date, this has yet to yield any significant slogan of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ – extends tive figure reported by the DLA is 4 211 140 ha, for the period challenge to the fundamental character of a well beyond this question of land acquisition, between 1994 and March 2007 (DLA 2007: 18). See detailed market-based reform programme that provides and has implications for the types of benefici- discussion below. 1 Land Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2008 aries accessing the programme, the often inap- and in communal areas – has received relatively propriate models of land use being imposed on little attention from policy-makers or imple- them,2 the general failure of post-settlement menters during the period under review and re- support and, ultimately, the slow pace of reform ceives only passing mention in official reports. and the generally disappointing performance Ongoing eviction and abuse of farm dwellers of land reform ‘projects’. Recent policy devel- undoubtedly remains a critical problem, as does opments in the areas of expropriation and the the long-delayed implementation of the reform proactive purchase of land tend to support the of communal tenure, but these issues require in- hypothesis that the means of acquiring land is depth research and analysis of their own, and only one element within a complex mix, and that will hopefully form the basis of future status re- changing this element alone will not necessarily ports. Finally, redistribution, while always central resolve other problems and contradictions that to South Africa’s land reform, appears to have have plagued the land reform programme since reached a critical juncture, in terms of changes its inception. Indeed, there is a likelihood – given within the redistribution programme itself, the recent policy pronouncements – that a more in- attention now being given within restitution to terventionist approach to land acquisition by the the restoration of high-value agricultural land, state may lead to an even more top-down and the setting of ambitious new targets and talk of conservative process that emphasises the de- greater use of expropriation. racialisation of the commercial agricultural sec- Between 2005 and 2006, the annual target set tor (that is, the substitution of a relatively small by the DLA for land transfers under the redis- number of whites by a similar number of black tribution programme (now referred to in of- ‘entrepreneurs’) at the expense of a more radical ficial reports as ‘land and tenure reform’) in- restructuring of the agrarian economy in favour creased by a factor of 16, however implausible of the mass of the rural poor and landless. this might be. Moreover, the introduction of the This Status Report looks at the state of land re- Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) and, form over the period 2005 to early 2008, with more recently, the Land and Agrarian Reform a particular focus on land redistribution. This is Project (LARP), together with a renewed politi- appropriate for a number of reasons.