Reshaping SA’s cities must be part of land debate

Is the land debate chiefly about what happens in the countryside, or in the cities? As land expropriation demands produce one of the few serious policy debates we have seen in recent years, it seems largely taken for granted that at issue is what happens on farms.

Much of the discussion has centred on academics who study rural land issues, commercial farmers’ unions and activists in rural areas. This risks ignoring a crucial problem — the need to change land patterns in the cities. This has not come up much even though just about everyone in the debate is based in the cities and not terribly familiar with rural issues. This is not surprising.

Land is in focus because it symbolises something bigger — it’s really about who should enjoy the fruits of the economy. This is understandable, but it does not remove the need to tackle the land question — in the cities and in rural areas.

It is becoming clearer by the day that, despite the heat triggered by the land debate on both sides, it will end in a compromise that will leave the Constitution and the economy intact. What seems likeliest is a change that will allow expropriation without compensation, but will clearly define the conditions under which this is possible.

This will safeguard investment by making it clear what investors have to do to make sure they don’t lose their assets. But it will not settle the land issue because it will leave open the key question: how to redress past wrongs while protecting property rights.

That will need negotiation, not legal drafting.

When the bargaining begins, it will not achieve lasting economic change if it ignores the reality that SA’s cities are poverty traps. Apartheid used the law to force black people to live as far as possible from the hubs of economic activity. This meant people living in poverty had to travel long distances to their workplace. After the system ended, land markets produced the same effect. Land near the economic core was too expensive for low-cost housing, so poor people remained on the cities’ fringes.

This makes it impossible for people to do much about their poverty. Elsewhere — in Asia, for example — the poor live in the economic hub. They can, often merely by walking down a flight of stairs, find opportunities even if they can’t find jobs, which they usually can’t. Here, a poor person living on the outer fringes of the city cannot sell food on city street corners because they can’t afford the bus fare.

So the shape of our country’s cities is a prime cause of economic exclusion.

It is difficult to see how we can expect people to begin escaping poverty and joining the economic mainstream unless they live closer to the economic action.

Access to land in the cities is a core economic issue. It is also an issue that can only be tackled through negotiation. On the one hand, change is essential; this means land markets cannot be left to operate as they do now. On the other, seizing land for low-cost housing will destroy city property markets. This makes a bargain essential.

Former president Thabo Mbeki tried to start a conversation on this issue during his tenure by suggesting that developers who wanted permission for upmarket housing developments should be required to develop low-cost housing in the area.

This is, of course, only one idea — more debate on the issue will produce others. But until the discussion starts, land in the cities will remain a block to the fight against poverty.