9. South Africa

Photo:
Georges Gobet/AFP
The
persistent concentration of land along racial lines in South
Africa will either be resolved through a fundamental restructuring
of the government's land reform program, or it will be resolved
by a fundamental restructuring of property relations by the
people themselves. Which direction the country follows depends
to a large degree on the urgent and immediate responsiveness
of the government to the needs and demands of the country's
19 million mostly poor, black and landless rural people.
While
in 1995 only 48% of population of South Africa lived in rural
areas, fully 70% of the poor were found in the countryside.
South Africa is one the countries with the worst social indicators,
and 95% of the poor are black. Therefore, poverty is linked
to rural areas and to racial issues.
The
per capita income of a black person in South Africa is USD
$271, while it is $3,207 for a white person. The average monthly
wage for black people is USD $28 and $505 for white people.
The legacy of Apartheid has left 87% of land ownership in
the hands of just 60,00 white farmers, while literally millions
of black people try to survive under over-populated conditions
on the 13% of land. Some 7 million black people are workers
or sharecroppers on white-owned farms.
Historical
Overview
Relocation
and segregation of blacks from whites started as early as
1658, when the Khoi were informed that they could no longer
dwell to the west of the Salt and Liesbeck rivers, and in
the 1800s, when the first reserves were proclaimed by the
British and the Boer governments.
The Native Land Act was passed in 1913, which set aside only
10% of the land for black people. The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government
Act was enacted in 1959 to establish the Bantustans and make
the reserves the political homeland of black South Africans.
In the early 1960s, relocation camps were established. This
was an attempt to remove displaced labor tenants, unwanted
farm workers and unemployed urban people.
The
Land Acts and other related land laws, settlement planning,
forced removals and the Bantustan system, contributed to overcrowding
in the former homelands. It is estimated that more than 3.5
million Africans were forcibly removed and relocated to the
homelands and black townships between 1960 and 1980. The land
dispossession of the black population in South Africa was
driven by the need to reduce competition for white farmers
and to create a pool of cheap labor to work on farming estates,
mines and industry.
Even
after Apartheid, the new Constitution of South Africa committed
the country to a very conservative macroeconomic policy, giving
priority to industrial expansion, exports and foreign investments.
The
World Bank Model
Guiding
by the World Bank, the new government began the implementation
of a complex packet of agrarian reform measures. The land
policy had three components: land restitution, land redistribution,
and tenure reform. But the entire model is market-led. This
market-based approach utilizes the forces of the market to
redistribute land and is largely based on willing-buyer, willing-seller
principles. The model is based on the principle of "efficiency"
to assure and raise productivity, and a keystone is its ability
to maintain "investor confidence."
Generally
five economic criteria are used to judge the efficacy of World
Bank policies and decisions regarding resource allocation.
Four of the criteria relate to efficiency of the economic
system, while the fifth one is for equity considerations.
Thus, land can either be redistributed for purposes of efficiency
or equity. These two terms, efficiency and equity are opposing
economic terms which are often confused in many writings.
Both of these cannot always be achieved at the same time in
a given land redistribution.
As
of the end of 2001, less than 2% of land had changed hands
from white to black farmers through the land reform program.
Of the 68,878 land restitution claims received, only 12,678
had been settled, benefiting less than 40,000 predominantly
urban households, more than 40% of which received monetary
compensation instead of land restoration. While monetary compensation
is one form of redress, it cannot be considered agrarian reform
because it does not involve the transfer of land rights.
Faced
with this evident failure, the World Bank launched another
program in 2001, which requires beneficiaries to make a minimum
USD $500 contribution, clearly targeting "efficient"
producers, which means the beneficiaries were to be the landowning
black middle class, rather than the poor. The majority of
the poor cannot make the minimum contribution, and thus do
not qualify for land.
The
current policy limits development in several ways: it seeks
to concentrate resources in the hands of a small number of
black commercial producers who are unlikely to spend much
of their disposable income in the rural economy, while confining
the poor majority to ongoing dependency on rural farm wages
and paternalistic social relations; it limits the socially
transformative impact of land reform to a small number of
relative elites; and it delays the potential impact of asset
redistribution on the ability of the poor to take economic
risks and diversify their livelihood sources.
The
State has revealed a real lack of political will, sticking
to a narrowly legal discourse, without giving recognition
to the importance of democratization of the economy, or the
social function of land. Little attention is paid to the impacts
of these policies on poverty and economic development.
The
Landless Peoples Movement
In
South Africa today the government seems to have given up on
the poor, choosing instead to focus on creating an "efficient"
black middle class. The government is concentrating its resources
in the hands of a few black producers, provoking tense relations
with the mass of poor laborers. Thus it is not surprising
that landless black people have organized the Landless Peoples
Movement (LPM), calling for an immediate people's land reform.
The
movement grows out of the struggle against racism. It represents
the voice of the masses who have mobilized to get access to
land. It is a new movement, founded in 2001, which rejects
the land market model. They have carried out land occupations,
marches and sit-ins at government offices, calling for an
end to forced removals of farm workers from large estates.
The want to carry out a large campaign of occupations, and
they are emphatic in saying that to solve the problem of landless
people in South Africa one must tackle racism head on.
Popular participation, especially of young people and women,
can be transforming for a movement. Combined with education,
it can transform people's consciousness, and lead to recovery
of self-esteem, helping oppressed people take charge of their
lives.
Access
to land strengthens the participation of the rural people
in the labor market, beyond just generating employment. Agrarian
reform is a key step toward creating more equitable paths
to economic growth, which transfer income and power to the
excluded.
Text
based on THWALA, Wellington D. - The South African experience
on land reform
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