THE PROMISE OF LAND UNDOING A CENTURY OF DISPOSSESSION IN SOUTH AFRICA Edited by Fred Hendricks, Lungisile Ntsebeza and Kirk Helliker CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .. ..... .. • . • ••••• •• .. •. .. ....•..•.• • •• , vii AUTHOR PROFILES ....... •...•• .•••••• • .. .........•. •. • •••.• ix LAND QUESTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA .....•.••.......•.....• ' •••. FRED HENDRICKS, LUNGISILE NTSEBEZA AND KIRK HELLIK.ER PART 1: STRUCTURES AND STRUGGLES OF LAND IN SOUTH AFRICA Published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2013 2 RHETORIC AND REALITY IN RESTITUTION AND REDISTRIBUTION: 10 Orange Street Sunnyside ONGOING LAND AND AGRARIAN QUESTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA •••••••. 27 Auckland Park 2092 FRED HENDRICKS South Africa +2711 628 3200 3 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME: www.jacana.co.za RURAL LAND TENURE AND DEMOCRACY IN THE FORMER BANTUSTANS • .. 54 ©Individual contributors, 2013 LuNGISILE NTSEBEZA All rights reserved. 4 REPRODUCING WHITE COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE ...... ..• ...•••. 76 ISBN 978-1-4314-0816-0 KIRK HELLIK.ER Cover design by publicidc 5 URBAN LAND QUESTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA: Cover phmograph of Promise L.iml clo. e to Mothibisrad in the Norrhcrn Cape by Rcjoi c Mawda THE CASE OF CAPE TOWN .•••.••.....•.•.. ..••.•...•.. ... 103 c~ in Adohi; ~ra.mond J0 .5/14pc FRED HENDRICKS AND RICHARD PITHOUSE Prumd and bound by Ulrra Lirhu (Pry) f..rd,Johanncsburg Job no. 00020 13 · 6 SOUTH AFRICA'S COUNTRYSIDE: PROSPECTS FOR CHANGE See a complete list ofJacana tides at www.jacana.co.za FROM BELOW ••.•........••••••••• •• ..••••..•..•..•. •••. 130 LUNGISILE NTSEBEZA Contents v PART 2: THEORY, HISTORY AND Poucy 7 L!VfNG fN A THEORETICAL INTERREGNUM: CAPJTAL LESSONS FROM SOUTHERN AFRICAN RURAL HISTORY ........ ............ ... 159 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BILL MARTIN 8 PROSPECTS FOR SMALLHOLDER AGRJCULTURE JN SOUTHERN AFR!CA. • . 18 5 TENDA! MuRJSA 9 GLOBAL Fooo REGIME: IMPLICATIONS FOR FooD SECURrTY ......... 214 PRAVEEN }HA THIS BOOK ts BASED ON A research project funded by the South Africa PART 3: INTERN ATfONAL CASE STUDIES Netherlands Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD). We are grateful for the support, and we would especially like to thank Anshu 10 ZIMBABWE'S FAsTTRAcK LAND REFORM: IMPLICATIONS Padayachee, SANPAD's CEO, for her guidance and institutional backing. We FOR SOUTH AFRICA .................... ... ........ .. .. 251 also thank Mindy Stanford for copy editing and proofreading the manuscript SAM MoYo and Ruth Longridge for editing the references. Maggie Davey at Jacana was always an email or phone call away and we thank her for managing 11 THE ''AGRARIAN QUESTION" AND THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE: the difficult process of dealing with academic authors. We are grateful to INDIA's STORY OF RURAL Soc1AL TRANSFORMATION ............... 283 Karen Kouari, the Humanities Faculty Officer at Rhodes University, for PRAVEEN }HA AND SURINDER 5 }ODHKA taking care of all the logistics for the project with her cusromary efficiency 12 DIVERSIFfCATfON STRATEGIES IN THE NETHERLANDS and good humour. We are indebted to the two reviewers of the manuscript. We responded to their reports by revising certain sections of the book and in AGRICULTURAL SECTOR . ................. .. ........ ...... 314 MARJA SPJERENBURG AND HARRY WELS our view, it is better for their efforts and we would like to record our thanks. PART 4: CONCLUSION 13 COLONIAL PASTS AND DEMOCRATIC FUTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA , ..... 341 FRED HENDRICKS, LUNGJSJLE NTSEBEZA AND KIRK HELLJKER INDEX .......... ........ ............... ...... .. .. 359 v1 The Promise ofLand Acknowledgements vii Sam Moyo is Executive Director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS). He holds a PhD in Development Studies and Environmental CHAPTER 1 Management from Newcastle, England. His major publications explore the political economy and dynamics of rural transformations, including the LAND QUESTIONS IN nature of social movements and land reform. SOUTH AFRICA Tendai Murisa holds a PhD from Rhodes University and is currently Fred Hendricks, Lungisile Ntsebeza working as a Programme Specialist at the Dakar-based TrustAfrica. His and Kirk H elliker research interests include agrarian and land reform, rural institutions and social organisations, collective action and civil society. Lungisile Ntsebeza has a PhD from Rhodes University. He is currently the Director and Holder of the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies and '~s a nation, we neglect land reform at our peril" the NRF Research Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa - George Devenish, Business Day, 21 January 2013 at the Centre for African Studies. His research interests include the role of traditional authorities in democracy. A CENTURY AFTER THE 1913 NATIVES' LAND ACT, there remains a land crisis Richard Pithouse teaches Politics at Rhodes University. He is currently in South Africa. How are we to understand the many dimensions of this completing a PhD on Social Movements in South Africa and his research crisis so that we can realistically move beyond the current inertia( For one interests include: urban studies, Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko. thing, an engaged scholarship has to seek ways out of the current impasse in both thinking and policy-making. This book is an effort to heed the timely Mar-ja Spierenburg obtained her PhD degree in ocial 'cienc· ar rh call of George Devenish (who was involved in drafting South Africa's 1993 Unjvecsity of Arnsrerdam in 2003. he is currenrly Associate ProfC\isor in die Interim Constitution) not to neglect this question. It does this by spatially Deparrment of rganizarion ciences ar rhe VU University Am rerda.m, a.nd carving South Africa's land into three categories: white commercial rural Scienrific Dirccror of rhe CERES .Research d1ool for Resource rudie for areas, former reserves and urban areas. Besides state and church land, this Development. Her research foe use on che role of the privare.~eccor in narurc covers the overwhelming mass of the land surface of the country. While there conservation and land reforms in so urhern Africa. are clearly discernible dynamics associated with each of the three land types, as will become clear in the individual chapters, there are also broader land­ Harry Weis (PhD, VU Univct iry Am rerdam) i Direccor of tbc Research related problems that affect the country as a whole. Masrers in African cudics ar rhe African rudics Centre in Leiden, rhe The approach is to highlight pertinent questions within each of the Netherlands, and i Associate Profe,~sor ac rhc Dcparrmcnr of rganizacion three categories and then to relate these particularities to broader problems Sciences at VU University Amscerd:im. His research inrcresrs focus 11 associated with historical circumstances. Essentially, the book argues that organisational srrue-tures of cooperation in (private) wildlife con crvarion in outhern Africa. in South Africa the 1994 transition from apartheid to democracy has not translated into a thoroughgoing process of decolonisation. In fact the very bases of colonialism and apartheid remain intact, since racialised inequalities in both access to and ownership of land persist in the present. With state-driven attempts at land reform having failed to meet even their own modest targets, a fundamental change in approach is clearly necessary x The Promise ofLand Land Questions in South Africa 1 for South Africa to move beyond the impasse that prevails between the "power-to" (or power for) change rather than "power-over", is fundamental objectives of the policy and the means for realising these. Moreover, it is in this respect. necessary to question the targets set for land redistribution: will these really While social movements clearly engage with the state and hence involve assist in ushering in a changed dispensation for the majority? Even if the themselves in a politics of demand, they also pursue a "politics of the act" state's current land policy were to be implemented in full, the question often independently from the state. This entails mobilising and organising remains as to whether this would satisfy calls for greater equality in access for the purpose of building alternative forms of production, livelihoods and to land. As such, a major thrust of this book is that social movements have social relations in the here-and-now. This more autonomous form of social­ a critical role to play in charting a new course, both in respect of access to movement politics is regularly viewed with suspicion by states, but, and this land and i_n influencing broader policy options. The growing agency being is the second importance of such movements, it may pre-figure the type of e~pressed rn renewed demands for land, and the increasing legitimacy being democratic post-transformation society that these movements envisage (such given to such demands from alJ quarters including the state, suggests that as a society based on the food sovereignty model). This form of politics needs something is afoot that needs to be watched and analysed. In sum, the book to be encouraged. argues for fundamental changes in policy along with an appreciation of A third reason for highlighting social movements arises from contemporary the possibility that further struggles from below, in the vein of those that social imaginings of the South African nation. Regularly, those who have surfaced very recently in the Western Cape, are likely ro emerge in experience socio-economic marginalisation and exclusion (such as urban the new circumstances. Conceptually, the book grapples with rhe interplay