Land: policy clarity or muddying the waters?
LAND REFORM is once again high on the development agenda. Post- socialist countries in Asia and Europe have seen a substantive shift in control over land from state and collective units to smallholders.
Governments across Africa, Asia and Latin America recognise customary land rights by issuing formal titles to local people. Policymakers in parts of Latin America and Africa implement programmes that redistribute land from large landowners to landless people and tenants ( farm dwellers).
All these programmes have one commonality: they seek to establish and/ or enhance land rights and access to land by disadvantaged groups by way of legal and administrative acts.
South Africa has a notorious history of alienating the majority of its people from access to, and the use and ownership of land. Dispossession and forced removals of African people under colonialism and apartheid resulted in extreme land shortages and insecurity of tenure for much of the black population. Thus, land reform is a development imperative.
The intended objective can be summarised as bringing about the fundamental transformation of property rights to ( re) address the history of land dispossession and lay the foundations for the social and economic emancipation of the rural and urban poor. The land reform process has social and economic underpinnings, making it a complex and difficult endeavour.
Land reform has been implemented through three government programmes: restitution, redistribution and tenure reform.
Agriculture is a vital sector as a catalyst for economic development.
However, the need to sustain a viable and affordable food system is equally important, and the government has acknowledged this. Therefore, the key challenge is to find a balance between maintaining a viable agricultural economy and improving the pace of land reallocation and transformation to achieve inclusivity for previously disadvantaged individuals ( PDIS).
The South African agricultural sector remains relatively dualistic in structure, encompassing just more than 30 000 large commercial farmers who produce nearly 95 percent of agricultural output, and millions of small- scale farmers whose farms are typically characterised by poor infrastructure and unco- ordinated production systems.
The overall agricultural sector contributes 2.6 percent to gross domestic product, providing 847 000 jobs, largely to low- skilled labour, and gen
erating more than R146 billion from foreign markets. There are 93.5 million hectares used for agriculture. Farm debt was R158.3bn, with agricultural capital assets at R470bn in 2017.
Government allocated R30.3bn to agriculture, while the private sector funds allocated to agriculture were R744m. Despite this indisputable role in the economy, the country, through the Nation Development Plan, committed to an inclusive economy.
The land debate is sensitive, and the lack of reliable and unbiased land ownership numbers adds to the distortion of the debate. The numbers on agricultural land ownership and redistribution are highly contested, primarily because of the methods used to collect the data. Despite the lack of consensus, they offer some good insight into the land redistribution patterns, which indicate that about 72 percent of agricultural land is owned by large commercial farmers. This implies that 24 percent of previously white- owned land has been redistributed.
The quantum of redistributed land has not translated into production growth, implying that other factors are required to unlock the meaningful participation of PDIS in the formal food system.
Scholars have identified lack of post- settlement support, group characteristics and conflicts, and limited access to markets as the chief factors causing limited success of PDIS. It is clear that the government must incur costs to realise meaningful participation of PDIS in the food system. Such costs include investing in human capital, markets, rural infrastructure, and in efficient and effective post- settlement support mechanisms.
In 2009, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform evaluated the implementation of land reform programmes. It found most projects were not successful. The Recapitalisation and Development Programme was introduced in 2010 to address the challenges.
Although land redistribution is an important means of production, it is not sufficient. South Africa is food- insecure at household level with more than 13 million people living under the poverty line. The gazetting of the Land Expropriation Bill and its ultimate promulgation into law will provide policy clarity that the market so desperately needs, even if there are dissenting views.