Implementation Challenges of Land Redistribution Programme in South Africa

2.1 Land reform issues in South Africa: A brief history

The degree to which SAs indigenous people experienced dispossession at the hands of the European (mainly British and Dutch) colonialists was far greater than in any other African country – and it lasted for an exceptionally prolonged time [9]. In fact, Moseley and McCusker [10] affirm that given all the examples of the unequal distribution of land globally, SA is effortlessly one of the most severe cases of a land imbalance concerning the population. As a consequence of anti-apartheid campaigns, the apartheid-era land concentration statistics became general knowledge: the majority of the people, 70% to be exact, remains currently cramped in roughly 13% of the overall land area of SA [11]. The elements that shaped this skewed distribution of land were not only the Afrikaaner-led nationalist government's programmes (1948-1994); however, it also resulted from over three centuries of land dispossession in favour of the white-minority colonists [12].

Moreover, European settlement started in the early 1650s following the Dutch East India Company's arrival at the Cape of Good Hope; it then spread eastward and northward over 300 years [13]. By the dawn of the 20^th century, large portions of the country’s land; mainly, the majority of the prime agricultural land had already been earmarked for the white minority population. However, the vast numbers of Africans remained restricted to “Native Reserves” (later called Bantustans or African Homelands), which accounted for a fractional percentage of the country’s land [13]. Following the 1960s, the settler colonies within Southern Africa went to great lengths to resist the then ubiquitous movements to decolonize Africa, which led to SA not transitioning from the race-based apartheid regime to a democratic, all-inclusive system of governance until 1994 [13].

According to the Republic of South Africa [6] contrary to most other countries that possessed unequal land allocation, SAs history is wrought with particularly racially-biased policies, has obvious implications for the ownership of land and its distribution [14]. SA's heritage of inequity was cemented by enacting two very well-known Acts: The Natives Land Acts of 1913 and 1936. In particular, the apartheid government legalized land dispossession through the Natives Land Act of 1913 [6]. The former Act (of 1936) limited land ownership by indigenous people to 7%, giving white people effective control over 93% of the land in SA [15]. Also, the latter Act (of 1936) made further provision for a mere 13% of SA's land to be reserved for non-whites – who also happened to represent the majority (roughly 90%) of the country’s population [14].

According to the World Bank [16], SA experienced extreme inequalities in land distribution due to spatial segregation measures. In addition to the imposed restrictions on indigenous farmers’ farming activities, such land inequity gave life to deeply entrenched inequalities between the indigenous and white farmers [6]. By 1994, following the first South African democratic elections, some 60,000 white farmers inhabited 87 million hectares of privately owned land [17]. According to the World Bank [16], these commercial farms' contributions amounted to roughly 95% of SA's aggregate agricultural produce and guaranteed the country self-sufficiency in many agricultural goods.

Therefore, land reform formed part of the ANC's many key promises when it assumed power in 1994 [18]. One of the rationales behind the formulation and subsequent implementation of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was the Land Reform Programme's significance in redressing the historical injustices resulting from the involuntary evacuations and restrictions upon access to land [18]. To resolve overcrowding in specific rural areas within the former Bantustans and Reserves as well as to promote the accessibility of both farm and residential land, the land reform programme was recognized as the government’s centrepiece for growth, employment, and redistribution (i.e., the GEAR strategy) [18]. This latter strategy was founded upon the premise that the SAs land reform process is not merely a crucial feature of the country’s socio-political transition but a prerequisite condition regarding the country's social, economic, and political stability of the country [14]. Accordingly, the ANC intended to redistribute 30% of SA's land in the first five years of being in the office [18]. As would be expected, this, however, necessitated the implementation of modified economic policies [14].

Moreover, during the initial land redistribution conference in SA, convened in Johannesburg in 1993, the then ANC secretary-general, now president Cyril Ramaphosa, made a point that SA is not exactly exclusive in its inequitable distribution of land; rather, it is unique in the form of policies and programmes which moulded the situation [18]. Additionally, SA’s new Constitution, finalized in 1996, laid the foundation for a somewhat more liberal democracy. However, it also stressed the importance of socio-economic rights and placed an unambiguous mandate upon the state to redress the past imbalances [9]. The Constitutional clause on property guarantees the land rights of the incumbent landowners; however, it further obliges the state to take reasonable steps to enable citizens to gain equitable access to land and promote tenure security [6]. The Constitution further permits specific rights of redress to those who were dispossessed of property after 19 June 1913 due to discriminatory laws and practices and therefore set a legal foundation for a potentially effective land reform strategy/programme [9].

2.2 Land reform challenges in post-apartheid South Africa

The ANC government faced a catalogue of challenges emanating from the legacy of apartheid when it was democratically elected into power in 1994 [19]. For instance, it dawned on the ANC that, if it were serious about a better life for all, it had to reverse the exclusion of black South Africans from the private property ownership system [19]. In reality, the democratic government had to bridge the terrible gap that white South Africans possessed to secure individual tenure and title to their properties whilst their indigenous counterparts had insecure rights to land [7]. Through its White Paper on South African Land Policy, the democratic government articulated its policy direction regarding the issue of security of tenure:

“Redistributive land reform cannot in itself ensure national economic development, but it is a necessary condition for a more secure and balanced civil society. It is an essential precondition for the success of the government’s growth, employment and redistribution strategy. In contributing to conditions of stability and certainty, land reform is a necessary element of sustainable growth.” [4].

The implication in the above statement is that the democratic government viewed the land reform process as a mechanism for bringing about sustainable and equitable growth of the country's economy; thus, land access was considered a cultural, political, and economic issue. Essentially, the land was seen as a critical enabler for effective participation in the mainstream of the country’s economy [20]. However, the major challenge facing this dream was that the narrative of land reform within a country (SA) which conformed to a dominant narrative of liberal market imperatives, as is demonstrated in the extract from the White Paper below:

“The government is committed to a land reform programme that will take place on a willing-seller-willing-buyer basis. Rather than become directly involved in land purchase for the land redistribution programme, the government will provide grants and services to assist the needy with the purchase of land.” [4].

Ironically, the policy that was supposed to serve as a mechanism for ensuring equitable access to land for all – willingly embraced the principle of willing-seller-willing-buyer, recommended by the World Bank – was the very obstacle that would later impede the effective redistribution of land [20]. In reality, however, this conformity to liberal market ideologies reduced the transformative agenda into a mere outcome of markets and severely restricted the state's role in redistributing land equitably [20]. In other words, the direction taken by the democratic state reinforced the historical or currently existing inequitable patterns of access to land. Regarding perspectives on the delivery of the promise of land, the democratic government set itself a target of 30% redistribution of the white-owned agricultural land by 2014/15 [21]. However, by 2016, the state had only redistributed 5.46% of commercial farmland [21]. The High-Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change, which was tasked with the responsibility of evaluating state policy and its ability to fulfil delivery targets, and make recommendations to improve state capacity, remarked as follows, regarding the land redistribution programme:

“There are still 7,000 unsettled, and more than 19,000 incomplete, ‘old order’ claims (claims lodged before the initial cut-off date of 1998). At the present rate of finalizing 560 claims per year, it will take at least 35 years to finalize all ‘old order’ claims; new order claims (lodged in terms of the now-repealed Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act of 2014) that have already been lodged will take 143 years to settle; and if land claims are re-opened and the expected 397,000 claims are lodged, it will take 709 years to complete Land Restitution.” [21].

The above report points to the inefficient and unsustainable manner in which the policy on land redistribution has been implemented. In addition, the High-Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change also remarked that the Land Claims Commission, which its primary basis is to manage land claims and the redistribution process, has been inefficient and dysfunctional:

“Implementation has been poor at every level. Whilst the budget has been criticized for not being high enough to cover the costs of restitution (for example purchasing [the amount of] land required) the Commission has consistently underspent the budget, suggesting that the fundamental problems lie with capacity and systems. Choices around spending have been poor. There has been political meddling in land restitution, both in terms of unreasonable targets for redistribution, as well as in terms of individual restitution awards, which has damaged the integrity of the process.” [21].

Alexander [20] has argued that part of the problem of the unfulfilled promise of the delivery of land has been the characterization of landlessness as homelessness. For instance, the government has acknowledged the landless “as having land needs insofar as they needed land for building homes, but not necessarily for other purposes” [20]. Alexander [20] further remarks that the government’s obsession with pleasing markets has been central to this trajectory. The question that this raises for this study is whether the meaning and experience of being a beneficiary of the land redistribution programme have transcended the need for land for building homes?

2.3 Land redistribution programme: Global perspective

Kinsey [22] argues that a more significant majority of the citizenry have not succeeded in realizing the intended forecasts in neither productivity nor production since they possessed insufficient means to transform such resources (land) into an improved livelihood or enhanced household welfare standards. Moreover, Chimhowu [23] adds that access or transfer of land without sufficient post-transfer support may leave them vulnerable for most poor households in Zimbabwe. According to Chimhowu [23], the Expenditure Survey of 1995 found the scourge of poverty most prevalent amongst resettled farmers. The survey stressed that land reform or ‘assetting’ had failed to lift vulnerable households from poverty.

In a Latin American study conducted by López and Valdés [24], using income to land elasticity estimates for 8 Latin American countries, the income-generating potential for land seemed negligible for these eight sampled countries. Likewise, Deininger and Binswanger [25] also suggest that land reform beneficiaries in Zimbabwe can expect to experience a Z$165 per annum increase in their per capita expenditures. In a similar study that seeks to examine the agricultural land reform’s impact on the Korean economy, Jeon and Kim [26] discover that economic growth and agricultural production were affected somewhat favourably by abolishing the tenancy system in rural Korea. They also found that the land reform redeployed income from landlords to tenants; however, the general public and government also benefited from it.

Just like Antwi and Oladele [27] and Jeon and Kim [26], Jayne et al. [28] find the following: concerning the relationships between land and income inequality for each surveyed country (i.e., Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, and Mozambique), they discovered the existence of a positive correlation between household per capita land holdings and per capita income (the total of livestock, non-farm, and farm income). The Jayne et al. study supports Dikgang and Muchapondwa [29] study conducted in India, which uncovered visible improvements in the alleviation of rural poverty and other related rural economic aspects due to the adoption of land reform programmes. In a related study, Chirwa [30] examines the performance of agricultural investments, productivity, and food production following a land reform programme implementation in Malawi. The author concludes that, of those smallholder farmers able to partake in the community-based land development programme, they tend to have better overall welfare and also tend to be more productive than non-participants – this is largely because they are able to gain increased access to land and capital resources, and thus are more likely to buy enhanced maize seeds [30]. On further investigation, the econometric results revealed that the latter positive effects were driven mainly by access to financial resources and not the change in land tenure per se [30]. Chirwa [30] and Byamugisha [31] arrive at the same conclusion, which acknowledges the importance of having complementary financial assistance for land reform programmes to have any noticeable impact on poor smallholder farmers.

Albeit, Benin and Pender [32] claim that even though land redistribution is such a heavily debated topic, there is still insufficient evidence regarding the actual influences of land redistribution from Africa's perspective. For instance, in the Amhara region (Ethiopia), land redistribution has had a relatively positive effect on land productivity through improved access to land for farmers who are willing and capable of purchasing inputs such as herbicides fertilizers [32].

2.4 The challenges of land redistribution in South Africa

There are various reasons why any country might wish to adopt some particular form of a land reform programme. According to Deininger and Binswanger [25], such reasoning could range from preventing social turmoil and lessening poverty to relieving political pressure from peasants and augmenting productivity. In SA, however, the post-apartheid government (i.e., the ANC) has decided to embark on land reform programmes that go much deeper than those cited above [33]. As stated above, in SA, the issue of land dates as far back as 1913 and 1936 when the then National Party government adopted the Natives Land Act of 1913 and the Natives Land and Trust Act of 1936 [33]. Following SA’s 1994 democratic elections, the ANC, which was elected into power, vowed to redress the past's imbalances, such as those on the unequal distribution of land [18]. According to Binswanger and Elgin [34], a land reform programme can typically be deemed successful if it improves the beneficiaries’ income, consumption, and wealth – of course – amongst many other socio-economic variables.

Anseeuw and Mathebula [18] conducted a municipal-level study to investigate the existence of any correlation between development and land reform within the Mole-mole Municipality in SA. Anseeuw and Mathebula's [18] study contained all the 42 land reform projects currently underway within the selected study area and found that, although all of the farms were profitable, they could not achieve effective growth, some experiencing drops in production levels. Thus, these farms are having a difficult time developing and maintaining their agricultural production. Another study in SA by Moseley and McCusker [10] revealed “no significant benefit to the livelihood systems of participants that could be linked directly to land redistribution projects since numerous indicators seemed to depict either zero or limited impact on the economies of households. In fact, interviewees advocated that the programmes were “depleting social capital and increasing the conflict” [10].

Lahiff and Li [9] provide an overview of SA’s land reform from 1994 to 2011 – with a particular focus on land redistribution and cite that there exist a plethora of reasons as to why government policies and the associated execution thereof has failed to produce the expected socio-economic outcomes since 1994. They further add that, due to poor project designs, a shortage of support services, and working capital constraints, it has resulted in a minimal impact on the livelihoods of beneficiaries – irrespective of them having received land [9]. Therefore, they conclude that no evidence exists to suggest that any improvements in employment, income, economic growth, and agricultural efficiency have materialized due to land redistribution within these two South African provinces [9]. A study tracking land redistribution failures by Dikgang and Muchapondwa [29] concluded that distributed land negatively affects per capita income and contributes to aggravated poverty.

Table 2. Participants responses to the interview questions