Dispossession and redress: The challenges of land reform

20141120: Reos/Vumelana think piece primer for TSP – Final draft V03

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Dispossession and redress

The challenges of land reform

A think piece reflecting on past, present and future trajectories in South Africa

Rick de Satgé

Phuhlisani

Final draft

Contents

1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 3

2 Where have we come from? ........................................................................................................... 5

2.1 A snapshot of dispossession and the erosion of rights ........................................................... 5

2.2 Land, livestock and social continuities .................................................................................... 7

2.3 Elevation of traditional leadership .......................................................................................... 7

2.4 Influx control and migration ................................................................................................... 8

2.5 Changes in land use ................................................................................................................ 8

3 What have we tried to do since 1994? ........................................................................................... 8

3.1 Evolution of the land reform programme............................................................................... 8

3.2 The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa ................................................................... 9

3.3 Overarching policy development ............................................................................................ 9

3.4 Restitution ............................................................................................................................. 10

Institutional challenges and claim settlement obstacles .............................................................. 10

Systemic weaknesses in the Commission ..................................................................................... 13

The consequences of restitution .................................................................................................. 13

3.5 Redistribution ....................................................................................................................... 13

The Settlement and Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG) ..................................................................... 13

Grant for the Acquisition of Municipal Commonage .................................................................... 13

Land Reform for Agricultural Development (LRAD) ...................................................................... 14

The Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) ........................................................................... 14

Recapitalisation and Development Programme – RADP .............................................................. 15

Focus on a well-resourced few ..................................................................................................... 15

3.6 Tenure reform ....................................................................................................................... 15


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Land holding and business entities ............................................................................................... 16

Tenure security for farm workers and labour tenants ................................................................. 16

Transformation of certain rural areas ........................................................................................... 17

Tenure reform in ‘communal areas’ ............................................................................................. 17

3.7 CRDP ...................................................................................................................................... 17

4 What has gone right? .................................................................................................................... 18

5 What has gone wrong and why? .................................................................................................. 18

5.1 Constant shifts in approach .................................................................................................. 18

5.2 Functional uncertainties ....................................................................................................... 19

5.3 Failure to learn, share and follow through ........................................................................... 19

5.4 Intergovernmental fragmentation ........................................................................................ 19

5.5 Ignoring real land needs........................................................................................................ 19

5.6 Area based and environmental planning .............................................................................. 20

5.7 Inadequate and piecemeal post-settlement support ........................................................... 20

5.8 The rise of predatory elites and the demise of the developmental state ............................ 21

5.9 Land, natural resources and political capital ........................................................................ 21

6 Where are we now? ...................................................................................................................... 21

6.1 Confronting the failure of land reform ................................................................................. 22

6.2 What has been achieved? ..................................................................................................... 23

6.3 Who owns what? .................................................................................................................. 23

7 Current policy trajectories: High level critique ............................................................................. 24

7.1 Land reform in the NDP ........................................................................................................ 25

7.2 The Green Paper on Land Reform ......................................................................................... 26

7.3 Exploring key policy threads ................................................................................................. 27

7.4 Restitution ............................................................................................................................. 27

Implications of reopening claims .................................................................................................. 27

7.5 Redistribution ....................................................................................................................... 27

The Agricultural Landholding Policy Framework .......................................................................... 28

7.6 Tenure ................................................................................................................................... 29

In communal areas ........................................................................................................................ 29

8 Transformative scenario planning: Actors and issues .................................................................. 31

8.1 Who is involved? ................................................................................................................... 31

State actors ................................................................................................................................... 31

Private sector ................................................................................................................................ 31


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NPOs and civil society ................................................................................................................... 31

8.2 Issues ..................................................................................................................................... 32

9 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 33

References ............................................................................................................................................ 34

1 Introduction

The land question in South Africa remains a contested and often poorly understood issue. Land is

infused with multiple and contested social meanings which find expression in conflicting narratives

and rationalities. The dominant narrative is of loss in which a once prosperous South African

peasantry was systematically marginalised, dispossessed and refashioned as precarious rural labour

tenants, farm workers and rural-urban migrant wage workers. This transformation of the South

African countryside was achieved through centuries of colonial incursion, protracted border wars

and conquest. This multifaceted conflict triggered waves of social turmoil in the form of enforced

migration associated with the mfecane and millenarian expressions of social desperation, such as the

Xhosa cattle killing in the nineteenth century. The discovery of diamonds and gold, followed by the

emergence of a capitalist agricultural sector created an enormous demand for labour. This was

satisfied through a battery of legislative measures and associated social engineering in the twentieth

century, which resulted in the further erosion of majority rights, restricting access and controlling

use of land. The 1913 and 1936 Land Acts were buttressed by legislation from the apartheid era to

completely recast the rural landscape.

In the first half of the twentieth century the responses of an increasingly differentiated rural

population to these forces were characterised by a complex amalgam combining militant resistance,

accommodation, non-compliance, adaptation and evasion. Successive state administrations

countered with harsher restrictions – evictions, forced removals, the elaboration of the homeland

system, the institution of labour bureaux and influx control – resting on a foundation of ‘betterment

planning’, coupled with the elevation and co-option of ‘chiefs’ and traditional leaders to extend state

control over the countryside.

These chapters speak of humiliation, loss and anger but also chronicle the agency of rural people

who combined persistent, low level non-compliance employing “the weapons of the weak” (Scott,

1985), with flashes of insurrection and acts of defiance. The most recent chapters in this story evoke

contemporary resilience in the face of thoroughgoing deagrarianisation, continuing deprivation,

structural poverty and tenure insecurity. They recount the declining demand for unskilled rural

labour and the erosion of rural livelihoods, reliant on migrant remittances and latterly social grants.

It is a story that demands redress and reconstruction which the land reform programme was

intended to provide, but which, thus far, has singularly failed to deliver.

But while this narrative of dispossession is dominant, it is not the only story. There are numerous

counter narratives presented by the possessors of high value land that seek – in various ways – to

disassociate themselves from the toxic legacy of land dispossession and the resultant stark social and

economic inequalities. These aberrations are attributed to ‘apartheid’ and distant forces of history,

perceived as increasingly remote from contemporary responsibility. While these possessors are far


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from homogenous, given the enormous concentration and stratification which has taken place in

commercial agriculture, their voices combine to speak of property rights, investment and the

workings of global value chains and markets. They evoke husbandry, conservation, fertility, technical

expertise, national food security, exports, economic growth, employment and prosperity. They argue

for orderly change, compensation and market-led land reform. They propose mentorship, strategic

partnerships and contract farming to support emerging black commercial farmers, but as things

currently stand, these measures are widely regarded to have failed to provide adequate solutions to

the stubborn and systemic legacies and problems sketched above.

These contesting voices and narratives clash at a dangerous conjuncture in post-democratic South

African history. Social and political risk is exacerbated by mounting indications of total system failure

within the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR), along with concerns about

the viability of the measures proposed in Chapter 6 of National Development Plan (NDP), aimed at

creating “vibrant, equitable, sustainable rural communities contributing to food security for all”.

Gibson has noted that “the land issue is a classic example of distributive justice, pitting the have-

nots against the haves”. He continues to note that “land is more than “just” an issue of economic

inequality” as this is “overlaid with the history of the injustices of colonialism and apartheid” and

that “this sense of historical injustice interacts with contemporary inequality to create a volatile

political brew” (Gibson, 2008: 703). In a national representative survey conducted in 2004 85% of

black respondents were reported to believe that "most land in South Africa was taken unfairly by

white settlers, and they therefore have no right to the land today." This survey found that 2 out of

every 3 black people survey agreed that "land must be returned to blacks in South Africa, no matter

what the consequences are for the current owners and for political stability in the country."(Gibson,

2009)

Given this backdrop this short think piece sets out to:

• briefly trace an outline of where we have come from;

• examine how we have tried to address the toxic legacies of our history over the past two

decades since 1994;

• review the current issues, shifts trends and actors shaping the future land and agrarian

reform agenda.

The piece argues that the past, present and future of land reform are intimately connected with

national choices about economic strategy and the capacity within the state to implement its policies

and programmes. The Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation(DPME) has recently

highlighted the risk to current growth-led strategies of “the Marikana effect – where the benefits of

growth are captured by a few so conflict persists and growth stops” (The Presidency, 2014). Such

elite capture thrives in the absence of legible, equitable policy and a capable state – factors that may

have some relevance for the development of future land reform scenarios.

Recently Von Holdt has argued that:

South Africa is torn between the persistence of an exclusionary socio-economic structure

marked by deep poverty and extreme inequality on the one hand, and on the other the

symbolic and institutional rupture presented by the transition to democracy. This relationship


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produces a highly unstable social order in which intra-elite conflict and violence are

growing… a social order which can be characterised as a violent democracy”.

(von Holdt, 2013: 591)

2 Where have we come from?

2.1 A snapshot of dispossession and the erosion of rights

The 19th

June 1913 is set down in S25(7) of the Constitution as the start of the period in which

dispossession is legally recognised, while the Restitution of Land Rights Act (No 22 of 1994) imposed

December 31st 1998 as the deadline for the lodgement of claims1. The restriction on restitution

claims prior to the date of the promulgation of the 1913 Natives Land Act was partly in recognition

that the complexity and violence of the rapid change that characterised 19th century South Africa

would be extremely difficult to unravel, and would also have deep contemporary economic

consequences.

Although Sol Plaatje characterised the 1913 Land Act as "the start of deliberate and systematic

framework to deny black South Africans their birth right” (Plaatje, 1916) Delius and Beinart (2013),

have argued that it also had a function of staving off further dispossession. Recent scholarship also

suggests that in fact the Land Act was not that successful in preventing Africans from purchasing

land outside the scheduled areas (Feinberg and Horn, 2009). As with the implementation of all

legislation there was a long lag time between promulgation and the development of systems and

institutional capacity for enforcement.

The 1913 Act purported to set aside:

• 77% land which was demarcated for private ownership by whites and white owned

companies,

• 8% reserved solely for African occupation,

• 13% reserved as Crown Land for game reserves, forests and other uses.

However in practice such neat distinctions were hard to draw. As Beinart (1994: 11) has argued “it

would be a mistake to draw too hard a dividing line between types of land at the turn of the

century”. While the Act set out to precisely demarcate land ownership, it left out extensive areas of

African freehold property and unsurveyed state land. Walker and Platzky (1985) argue that the 1916

Beaumont Commission – established in terms of the Natives Land Act – ignored an estimated 1.5

million hectares which had been bought by Africans, together with significant areas of unsurveyed

state land on which thousands of people resided. The Beaumont Commission recommended

increasing the land set aside for Africans to 13%, but it was the 1936 Native Trust and Land Act

which provided the basis for formalising and extending the size of the African reserves, which sought

to give effect to these recommendations (Tong, 2014). It was recognised in the 1913 Act that the

Reserves were already overcrowded and resource stressed. The 1936 Act made provision for the

purchase of 6.2 million hectares of ‘released land’ from white farmers in areas adjacent to the areas

1 The lodgement date has since been extended by the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act (No 15 of

2014) to 30 June 2019. It would require a constitutional amendment to change 1913 as the cut-off date for a

claim to be considered to be valid. There is some political impetus to revisit this as much of the dispossession

in South Africa took place prior to 1913.


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scheduled in the 1913. The Act established the South African Native Trust (SANT), which purchased

all reserve land not yet owned by the state, and assumed responsibility for administering African

reserve areas. The Act formalised the separation of White and Black rural areas and provided the

foundations for the apartheid homeland system which was to follow.

The SANT also took responsibility for the administration of this land, imposing systems of control

over livestock stocking rates, introducing the division of arable and grazing land and enforced

villagisation (called ‘betterment’) under the guise of modernising African agricultural systems.

Section 13(2) of the 1936 Act empowered the Minister to expropriate African people living outside

the Reserves which provided the basis for forced removals under a variety of circumstances:

• evictions and displacement from white owned farms including labour tenants,

sharecroppers and surplus workers;

• group areas removals, removal from mission lands and urban relocations;

• homeland consolidation and “black spot” removals;

• betterment within the reserves;

• conservation, forestry and related removals;

• removals from land which became SADF military training areas;

• internal removals in scheduled and released areas due to consolidation of homelands

and construction of dams, irrigation schemes etc.

The long-term and contemporary impacts of forced removals remains poorly understood. In the

table below Simkins provides data illustrating the impact of these removals between 1960 and 1980

which resulted in “a radical increase in the proportion of African resident in the reserves” (1981: 6).

Table 1: Net migration between region types of domestic Africans 1960 – 1980 (the - minus sign denotes net emigration)

Decade Metropolitan Other urban Rural Homeland

Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female

1960-

1970

-31 050 -206 222 68 173 -25 518 -271 483 -436 759 234 720 668 499

1970-

1980

-265 012 -321 797 40 200 -8 157 -229 857 -303 355 454 668 633 309

De Wet (1994: 360) cites SPP which identified 11 different categories of relocation arguing that “up

to 1982, ranked by cause, the largest categories of removals were:

• people either being evicted from or leaving white-owned farms (1,129,000 people);

• people being moved in terms of the Group Areas Act (No. 41 of 1950) which prescribed the

provision of separate residential and trading areas for Coloureds, Indians and Whites

(834,000 people);

• urban relocation, whereby African townships in white South Africa were deproclaimed, and

their inhabitants were settled in newly established urban settlements within the homelands

(730,000 people);

• homeland consolidation and 'black spot' relocations (614 000 people)”.

De Wet notes that “the figure of 3.5 million relocatees does not include people resettled within the

homelands in terms of the implementation of Betterment planning, which SPP (1983, Vol. II:110)


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estimates 'has probably removed more people in more places with greater social consequences and

provoking more resistance than any other category of forced removal in South Africa'”.

What is important are the cumulative social impacts associated with these numbers and their

impacts on intergenerational poverty and vulnerability, which continue to resonate unaddressed in

the present. This has been closely indexed to the 87: 13 ownership ratio envisaged by the Land Acts

which came to dominate academic and policy narratives about the distribution of land in South

Africa. However more recent research discussed later in this think piece suggests that a more

accurate ratio is:

• 67% white commercial land;

• 15% communal areas which are predominantly state owned;

• 10% of other state land;

• 8% remainder including urban areas (Walker and Dubb, 2013).

2.2 Land, livestock and social continuities

Land dispossession and forced resettlement on this scale did immense damage to the South African

social fabric. Land is invested with symbolic value and social meaning and is an essential platform

enabling societal continuities. In rural settings family entitlements to land provide the site for the

homestead, the kraaling of livestock and for the burial of family members. Setsiba (2012: 11) cites

Mbiti, (1969; 1975) and Ngubane (1977) to observe that in African social systems “death does not

alter or end the life or the personality of an individual, but only causes a change in its condition. The

deceased member of the family becomes an important extension of the living. Hence they are called

the ‘living dead’ or ancestors”. Gumede (1990) notes the universality of ceremonies such as

‘ukubuyiswa’ in South Africa to mark the return home of the spirit of a deceased family member.

In this social context, loss of land represented the severing of these fundamental social ties and

spiritual continuities. Likewise restrictions on the keeping of livestock also had important social

implications. Ainslie (2013: 36-37) notes that “cattle, goats and sheep in rural South Africa are

markers of social relations and of cultural and ritual identity, but central to their usefulness is that

they have multiple meanings and uses, as well as economic value”. The keeping and slaughter of

cattle and goats remains a way “by which people maintain meaningful connections with their

ancestors” and “represent a culturally potent symbol of a ‘proper’ African homestead” (ibid.). These

factors make it clear that the land reform programme cannot usefully be conceptualised as focusing

solely on the restoration or redistribution of land for agricultural production. It has to serve a much

deeper social and economic agenda.

2.3 Elevation of traditional leadership

The homeland system which was the cornerstone of Apartheid ‘separate development’ elevated the

power of chiefs and distorted institutions of traditional leadership, which increasingly came to

espouse “a hierarchical, bounded and monolithic notion of culture”(Albertyn, 2009) – a deeply

conservative reading that seeks to preserve the status quo, along with the unequal social and gender

roles embedded within it. These continuities have played a significant role in influencing the

direction of rural governance, tenure policy, legislation and land rights management in South Africa

post 1994.


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2.4 Influx control and migration

The Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development published in 1984 examined how land

dispossession and forced removals were closely linked with the “denationalisation of black citizens

and the creation of the independent homelands” (Chaskalson and Duncan, 1984: 3). Here state

labour bureaux – where all men aged 15 and above were required to register – set out to control the

movement and employment of workers, regulating an elaborate system of migrant labour. This

system of influx control resulted in “broken families, poor living conditions, a loss of respect for the

law, a sense of insecurity, a loathing of officialdom, and poverty” (ibid.: 23). The eventual collapse of

the system in the 1980’s was mirrored by rapidly escalating urbanisation and the rise of informality.

However it appears that the ‘normalisation thesis’ which posited that rural people would move to

the urban areas permanently has not materialised to the degree projected (Todes, 2001; Cox et al.,

2004). Many people who work in the urban areas retain their rural homes. The nature of long term

urbanisation trends remain a matter of some speculation.

2.5 Changes in land use

Rural removals and dispossession were often followed by major changes in land use which has had

major implications for subsequent land valuations and far reaching economic implications associated

with the implementation of the land reform programme. In provinces such as Limpopo and KwaZulu-

Natal the land from which people were removed was often transformed into capital and

management intensive orchards or sugar plantations. Numerous removals also took place related to

the establishment of parks and protected areas. Fig (2004) observes that the colonial model of

conservation involved alienating communal land for nature conservation, removing the people, and

fencing nature in. People became poachers on what had been their own land. Other land was

converted to forestry contributing to the 1.5 million hectares of timber plantations of which 40% are

now under claim (Clarke, 2012). The mining sector has also been linked to dispossession and

removals. Overall these changes in land use and investment in it, following forced acquisition

present major challenges. A key question is how to address rights of the dispossessed while not

undermining the rural economy and negatively impacting on employment up and down the value

chain.

3 What have we tried to do since 1994?

This section provides an overview of the evolution of the land reform programme and tracks the key

shifts in the emerging approaches.

3.1 Evolution of the land reform programme

Land reform featured strongly in the Constitutional negotiations. In 1993 a small ANC working group

started to develop the Restitution Programme and the Restitution of Land Rights Act (No. 22 of

1994) was one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the new democratic parliament prior to the

finalisation of the Constitution in 1996 (Act No. 108 of 1996). The Department of Land Affairs was

established in 1994 and incorporated the former Department of Regional and Land Affairs, itself a

successor to the Department of Native Affairs (Hall, 2004). It inherited an old guard of government

officials but also recruited staff from NGOs which had been in the forefront of resistance to

apartheid land policies. A land reform pilot project was initiated in 1995 to test a range of


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approaches and develop institutional systems, while a new land reform policy framework was being

negotiated through an extensive process of consultation.

3.2 The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa

As is clear from the preceding sections the South African journey to constitutional democracy has

been long and violent. The need for land reform is firmly entrenched in the Bill of Rights which

obliges the state to:

• enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis (s25)(5);

• ensure that persons or communities whose tenure was legally insecure in the past are

enabled to obtain tenure that is legally secure, or to obtain comparative redress (s25)(6);

• entitle those dispossessed through racially discriminatory laws and practices the rights to

restitution or comparative redress (s25)(7).

However it is clear that the constitutional compromises with respect to the protection of property

rights remain contested:

It is important to note that in recognising and protecting property rights the constitution

ratifies the outcome of over three centuries of colonial and apartheid violence – conquest,

dispossession, and the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, as well as the successive labour regimes

of slavery, forced labour, migrant labour and cheap rightless labour on the basis of which

capital accumulation took place. Not only was the constitution born in violence, in this sense

it obscures the founding violence of South African society.

(von Holdt, 2013: 593)

These contestations have become increasingly prominent in South African political discourse,

accelerating exponentially as recognition of the widespread failures within the land reform

programme has become inescapable.

3.3 Overarching policy development

The approach to the land reform of the new government was influenced by the strong support of

international institutions including the World Bank for market led agrarian reform (MLAR) (Lahiff,

2007). Government policy revolved around the transfer of 30% of agricultural land (25 million ha) to

800,000 black people by 2014, a figure that was somewhat arbitrarily selected without sufficient

attention being paid to the location of this land. It appeared that the 30% target would be

implemented uniformly across the provinces without prioritising particular Districts for land

acquisition where there was high demand. This was particularly problematic given that agricultural

land varies from low value extensive rangeland in the Northern Cape and Karroo, through to dryland

arable and grazing land, as well as high value arable irrigated and arable land in higher rainfall areas

in the eastern parts of the country. The willing buyer willing seller model meant that the department

was restricted to land which came onto the market. These land portions were scattered across the

countryside making land reform and the provision of post settlement support expensive and difficult

to co-ordinate.

As noted above the initial focus of legislation and implementation was on restitution. ANC policy

indicated the urgency of the restitution process. The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights


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(CRLR) was established separately from the Department in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights

Act (No. 22 of 1994) while the Land Claims Court was established in 1996.

The Department of Land Affairs produced a draft framework on land policy, issued in 1995 and a

Green Paper in February 1996. This was followed by the White Paper on South African Land Policy in

April 1997 in response to its constitutional obligations and to provide a framework for the

redistribution, tenure security and restitution programmes.

3.4 Restitution

The Restitution Act was signed by President Mandela on 17th

November 1994. The Commission

opened its doors in 1995. Five commissioners took office on 1 March 1995. Staff had to be

appointed, offices found, systems established, people trained and the right of restitution, access to

alternative land or compensation had to be communicated to all those that had been dispossessed.

When the CRLR began work it inherited some 3,000 claims from the defunct Advisory Commission

on Land Allocation (ACLA), initiated in terms of the Abolition of Racially based Measures Act (No. 108

of 1991) passed in the last years of the old regime.

From the 1st

May 1995 eligible claimants were given three years to lodge claims. This period was

extended to the cut-off date of December 31st

1998. A Stake your Claim campaign was run to

communicate the Restitution Claim process nationally. A total of 63,455 claims were reported to

have been lodged (Hall, 2011), however there remained speculation that many more claims had

been submitted, which were incomplete and were not formally recorded. It has been argued that “it

is certain that a great many losses for which valid claims could have been lodged were not submitted

– mainly because people did not know about, or did not sufficiently understand the process”(Turner

and Ibsen, 2000: 11). As some claims were split in the process of investigation the number of claims

rose to 79,693 by 2004 (Hall, 2011).

Restitution claims have been lodged in a variety of settings reflecting the diverse nature of removals:

• in urban areas relating to group areas removals:

o an estimated 87% of settled claims have been urban and the majority have been

settled by means of cash compensation to individual households;

• on privately owned agricultural land;

• on conservation land;

• on forestry land;

• on mining land:

o Mining include cases like the Richtersveld where dispossession reaches back pre

1913 where the land of Khoi and Nama people was annexed by the British Crown in

1847;

• On state land:

o Betterment claims have been largely excluded from restitution to date but the

Amendment Act now allows for betterment claims to be considered. These involve

compensation rather than land as people were moved from one place to another on

state land within the Reserves.

Institutional challenges and claim settlement obstacles


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The combination of establishing the Commission as a new institution with an uncertain relationship

with the DLA and feeding into a court-based claim settlement process meant that very slow progress

was made in settling claims. Just 47 claims were settled in the first five years of the programme (Hall,

2011). Between 1994 and 1998, the DLA was able to research 350 rural land claims. The Restitution

Research Directorate in the DLA focused on governmental and archival material, whereas the

Commission directly interacted with, and obtained information from the claimants, their legal

representatives and other interested parties.

Much restitution research depends on the archival records in the custody of the National Archives of

South Africa. Many of the records relating to forced removals were unordered and unsorted and

resulted in the process of research being unnecessarily protracted. A further problem was that many

records remained scattered in government offices around the country, often in unknown locations,

because of the diverse nature of the departments which administered apartheid policy. As quickly

became clear claims varied enormously in terms of scale and complexity. The Restitution Act

distinguishes between personal and community claims. Community claims joined large numbers of

people and created complex legal questions about community membership.

“The number of claims lodged do not provide one with the magnitude of the task - one claim could

involve thousands of individuals. District Six, for example, is registered as one claim but includes a

total of 2 293 claimants and each of these represents several different households. Elandskloof

represented 230 families in 1996 but this would grow over the year to involve 350 families; the

Lohatlha claim in the Northern Cape was estimated to include 5,000 families.”

(Mesthrie, 1999: n.p)

Concerns about this slow progress prompted a Ministerial review in 1998 (Du Toit et al., 1998) which

was the first process evaluation of the Restitution programme. This led to a changed approach

requiring an amendment to the Act which gave the CRLR power to negotiate settlement

agreements. The review2 identified an overwhelming array of problems impacting on the restitution

process including:

• the proliferation of claimants which stem from the way which the Act has been interpreted

and framed which resulted in “a wide allocation of the right to claim” and meant that even a

single dispossession can surface “scores of conflicting descendants” and made the

processing of claims an “impossibly onerous task”;

• the “crisis of unplannability arising out of the absence of a reliable database”;

• the “absence of any coherent or nationally consistent set of management structures,

policies, systems and procedures”;

• the legal and procedural intricacies of the Restitution Act which led to “the evacuation of

administrative authority” and the “disempowerment of claimants”;

• the structural contradiction in the Restitution Act which created the Commission that was

“apparently independent and accountable to parliament”, while being located in the DLA

with the Director General (DG) as the accounting officer;

• a lack of guidance with regard to the meaning of the concept "just and equitable"

compensation;

2 Version 3 of this document cited here has no page numbers throughout.


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• the confusing framing of options which offered compensation or restoration – often

conflating restoration with settlement;

• the adversarial relationship between the Commission and the DLA.

A recurrent theme throughout the operational life of the Commission has been the haphazard

nature of systems development, data management and accountability structures. These challenges

have been aggravated by continual processes of restructuring and business process re-engineering

which has seen claim settlement shift from a predominantly legal process to an administrative one;

from restitution research being managed in house, to being outsourced and then brought back in

house again. Then there are differences in the processes and approaches to claim settlement

adopted in the different regions. These processes of change combined with the turnover and

redeployment of staff, poor systems of induction and inadequate on the job training and mentoring

have impacted on the development of the requisite institutional capacity to properly investigate

process and settle claims.

There are numerous interpretations of the success of the Commission. In its latest annual report the

Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform states that there is a “good story to tell” about the

Restitution programme announcing that the Commission has settled 77 610 claims, acquired 3,07

million hectares at a cost of R17 billion and awarded financial compensation to the value of 8 billion

rand (Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, 2014). However these figures remain open to

interpretation. The reliability of data produced by the DLA/DRDLR relating to restitution within the

Commission, and to land reform more broadly, has been a recurrent concern. Cousins et al (2014: 2)

argue that “government claims that 97% of (restitution) claims have been settled… is misleading”.

Of the total claims ‘settled’, 20 592 had yet to be ‘finalised’ and fully implemented by August

2013. Another 1 507 gazetted claims had not been settled, and a further 7 226 had not yet

been gazetted (Gobodo, 2013). If all of the latter are indeed gazetted, this would mean that

37% of claims remain to be fully implemented – 20 years after restitution was begun.

Likewise UCT’s Centre for Law and Society (2013: 2) notes that:

According to the Ad Hoc Committee on the Legacy of the 1913 Land Act, 20 592 claims (or

25.87 per cent of the total land claims registered with the Department) have not yet been

finalised or the settlement agreement has not been fully implemented. Around 50% of the

land already acquired for restitution has still not been transferred to the beneficiaries.

Several claimants have been waiting for over ten years for the implementation of their

settlement agreement.

The passing the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act has reopened land claims for another five

years and DRDLR estimates that 397,000 claims will be lodged “which at present rates of progress

would take 144 years to finalise” (Cousins et al., 2014: 2). The new Act formally opens the doors to

betterment claims, but the pilot Cata betterment claim in the Eastern Cape is reportedly bogged

down in disputes and the land has not been transferred to the land holding entity, despite a court

order directing this in May 2013 (ibid). Cousins et al (2014: 4) argue that the process of reopening

claims will result in conflicting counter claims which are likely to be used to strengthen the positions

of chiefs and traditional councils that claim jurisdiction over land lost in the past.


13

Systemic weaknesses in the Commission

An assessment of the literature indicates that many of the problems identified early in the

implementation of the programme (Du Toit et al., 1998) remain unresolved today. This raises serious

questions about the efficacy of the Restitution programme and the extent to which it has fulfilled its

constitutional mandate and realised its developmental potential. Recent evaluations of the

Restitution Programme by the HSRC and Genesis Analytics in 2013 are not in the public domain, but

are reliably reported to contain evidence of serious systemic and operational weaknesses. This

suggests that the reopening of claims could overwhelm an already depleted institution, where

morale is low and systems are dangerously weak.

The consequences of restitution

Much of the critique of restitution has focused on the rights based dimensions, but much less has

been written about its economic impacts and the overwhelming difficulties presented by the

settlement of large community claims.

Aliber and Cousins (2013: 158) observe that “restitution projects tend to be extreme versions of

SLAG-based projects, characterized by continuity with previous land use, but with beneficiary

numbers that are large even by the standards of SLAG”3. This has meant that many restitution

projects have had little alternative but to employ farm management companies and engage strategic

partners, often with poor records of success and negligible benefits for land claimants.

3.5 Redistribution

A variety of grants and sub programmes have been phased in and out over the life of the land

redistribution programme.

The Settlement and Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG)

From 1995 – 1999 the programme sought to enable groups of the landless poor to purchase land

using the household-focused SLAG which was pegged to the value of the housing subsidy at the

time. Because of the low value of the grant large groups of beneficiaries had to be pool their grants

in order to purchase and develop land. This resulted in many SLAG projects being socially and

economically unsustainable. There are numerous failed projects from this era of land reform which

are sometimes referred to as ‘legacy projects’ – some of which have been targeted through the

Recapitalisation and Development Programme (RADP) introduced for projects in distress. SLAG was

phased out in 2000 when the large group based production model was recognised to be a failure.

However despite its failure group based schemes still continued to dominate land reform practice.

Grant for the Acquisition of Municipal Commonage

Commonage became a focus of land redistribution in the mid-1990s when the Department of Land

Affairs (DLA) sought to make old commonage available to poor black residents of small towns

through the introduction of the Municipal Commonage Policy which was approved in June 1997. This

also enabled municipalities to acquire and manage additional commonage through a specific Grant

for the Acquisition of Municipal Commonage. In 1999 this grant was extended to enable

municipalities to invest in infrastructure development on commonage to the value of 25% of

purchase price of the land (DLA, n.d.-a). However in 1999, following a review of the redistribution

programme the DLA focused much of its energy on the new Land Reform for Agricultural

3 See below for a discussion of the original redistribution Settlement and Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG).


14

Development (LRAD) programme, and while commonage projects continued to be supported, they

were no longer regarded as a priority programme for land acquisition. More recently there have

been arguments that commonage should play a much bigger part in the land reform programme, as

it also aligns well with the strategic objectives of the National Department of Agriculture (Atkinson,

2013).

Land Reform for Agricultural Development (LRAD)

In August 2001 the DLA launched the Land Reform for Agricultural Development (LRAD) Programme

which offered two grants:

The LRAD grant

LRAD introduced a new grant for individual black South Africans who did not have to be poor to

qualify, as was the case with the SLAG. LRAD entitled those with savings, or those who could access

loans to a larger grant (PSC, 2011). The grant ranged between R20 000 and a R100, 000, where the

grant amount escalated in proportion to the level of own contribution in labour, cash or kind (DLA,

n.d.-b). The value of the grant was adjusted over time. In 2008/9 financial year LRAD grants were

increased to R111 520 at the lower end, and R430 857 at the upper end (DRDLR, 2009). Groups

made use of LRAD to acquire land but on the whole the groups were relatively smaller in size than

those in the first phase of the redistribution programme. In some cases officials sought to restrict

the size of the groups to no more than 15 members (Jacobs et al., 2003). However where land prices

were high this was not possible. In a review of land reform projects in the Western Cape in 2006 it

was found that:

• more than 88% of the projects had a group size of over 21 beneficiaries, and more than 60%

of the beneficiaries belonged to groups of over 100 members;

• there was a direct correlation between large group size and low project sustainability (Agri-

Africa Consultants, 2006) .

The switch to LRAD represented a dramatic scaling down in the numbers of people nominally

accessing land:

For South Africa as a whole, between 2001–2 and 2005–6, only about 3,900 households

benefitted from LRAD per year, while between 2006–7 and 2008–9 there were fewer than

2,000 households, despite annual expenditure in excess of R1 billion (Aliber et al.

(forthcoming)).

(Aliber and Cousins, 2013: 158)

The Settlement and Production Land Acquisition Grant (SPLAG)

The little used Settlement and Production Land Acquisition Grant (SPLAG) was a sub component of

the LRAD programme intended to provide for both settlement and agricultural production land

needs of people living and/or working on rural land. SPLAG was targeted at farm workers and

occupiers, labour tenants and others requiring long term tenure security in terms of tenure

legislation. It was intended for the establishment of agrivillages and rural farming settlements with

individual farming plots. The grant could be used in conjunction with LRAD (DLA, n.d.-c) and was

available between 2007 and 2009.

The Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS)


15

Following the National Land Summit in 2005, PLAS was introduced to replace LRAD in terms of

Section 10(a) of the Provision of Land and Assistance Act (No. 126 of 1993). PLAS was to be linked

with a land reform Area Based Plan (ABP) at municipal level which would identify land needs and

guide land acquisition strategies. PLAS enabled the “state [to] proactively target land…without first

identifying beneficiaries” (DLA, n.d.-c). PLAS land was ‘warehoused’ by DRDLR which could enter

into caretaker agreements before the land was allocated to selected beneficiaries, who were

supposed to serve a probation period before entering into a lease agreement. DRDLR has reported

that between 2009 and 2012 a total of 882 238 hectares was redistributed to 10 447 beneficiaries,

but the precise breakdown of this data is not available.

Recapitalisation and Development Programme – RADP

The RADP is more commonly referred to as Recap which has been conceived as a contract based

five-year support programme, which if it is based on PLAS is linked to the 'use-it-or-lose-it' principle

espoused by Minister Nkwinti. This holds that if the land users do not ‘perform’ to the standards set

out in their contract the farm can be taken back and “redistributed to other deserving, able and

committed people” (NERPO News, 2012). Those who satisfy the requirements of the contract after

five years are now expected to pay a rental on the land.

The DRDLR has made strategic partners a requirement for the Recap programme. They are required

to manage the enterprise, train beneficiaries before eventually exiting. This insistence on strategic

partners continues to a centre piece of policy, despite widespread recognition “that the partnerships

often do not work well (and) transfer little in terms of skills” (Binswanger - Mkhize, 2014a: 9).

It has recently been proposed that the RADP will to be linked to the establishment of a Rural Co-

operative Financing Facility4 in which the Minister has proposed that DRDLR will deposit all funds for

Restitution, Redistribution and Tenure programmes and make it “compulsory for participants in the

three Programmes to use Rural Cooperative Financing Facility for borrowing, lending, investments

and savings” (NERPO News, 2012).

Focus on a well-resourced few

Several commentators (Hall et al., 2003; Aliber and Cousins, 2013; Lahiff and Li, 2014) have observed

that the focus of the redistribution programme has been to create a small class of black commercial

farmers, which has meant that the land needs of the majority for small portions of land has largely

been ignored. This has resulted in a radical shrinkage of the number of individual benefitting from

redistribution and an enormous expansion in the benefits which beneficiaries can accumulate

through various programmes such as the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP)

and the Recapitalisation programme. As Binswanger-Mhize (2014) has noted this puts land reform in

its current form completely out of step with the objectives of the NDP.

3.6 Tenure reform

Tenure reform is acknowledged as the weakest link in the land reform programme. It is also

probably the most complex component. In its original conceptualisation the land reform programme

consisted of three pillars – restitution, redistribution and tenure reform. However tenure reform is a

crosscutting issue and its separation from restitution and redistribution is widely regarded as a

4 This proposal appears to originate from Commission 3 established in terms of the Green Paper Policy process which was

tasked with developing financing models and systems


16

mistake. Tenure security is a foundational issue across all domains, whether on land acquired

through the land reform programme, or on farms and in rural and communal areas.

Land holding and business entities

Given the predominance of community claims and group based redistribution projects, land

transferred in terms of restitution or redistribution is generally the property of a landholding entity.

This is usually a Communal Property Association (CPA) or a Trust in terms of the Trust Property

Control Act (No. 57 of 1988). Enormous problems have been encountered given that these

landholding entities have been established, but never adequately supported. There has been an

almost total failure to specify substantive rights of individual CPA members or Trust beneficiaries,

which have exacerbated the problems experienced by group based schemes in land reform. The

majority of group based projects are a consequence of lack of choice in programme design and a

failure to address subdivision. This has channelled most people into large or small group production

systems, frequently governed by an externally determined business model. Such projects have met

with a high rate of failure as they seldom provide what people need or want. Problems identified by

previous studies with group based production models remain largely unaddressed.

This is meant that the majority of CPAs are no longer compliant with the CPA Act (CSIR, 2005).

Likewise there are numerous landholding trusts which have collapsed, or where the Trustees have

used their powers to dispose of land and assets ignoring the rights of the beneficiaries. This has

resulted in formal complaints being raised by the Master of the High Court concerning the number

of failed Trusts established by the DLA and DRDLR and a moratorium being imposed on the

registration of Trusts in land reform (DoJ&CD, 2011: n.p.). It is also widely recognised that

landholding entities – be they CPAs or Trusts – are not appropriate vehicles for running an

agricultural enterprise. This has meant that in many of the large group projects there are very

complex institutional arrangements, which can combine landholding entities with development

trusts and operating companies. This can make projects unwieldy and dependent on external

support. Institutional complexity can open spaces for unscrupulous operators to engage in corrupt

and irregular practices.

Tenure security for farm workers and labour tenants

The Extension of Security of Tenure Act (No. 62 of 1997) was passed with the intention of securing

the tenure of farmworkers and preventing the eviction of long-term occupiers. However there is

consensus that this legislation has been poorly enforced and has been ineffective in preventing

displacement from farms following labour disputes or retrenchment. There remains very little

reliable research which accurately profiles movement on and off farms, but the proliferation of

informal settlements ringing small and medium-sized rural towns in farming districts throughout the

country is testimony to the ongoing downscaling of the agricultural labour force. While the NDP

seeks to dramatically increase rural agricultural employment, the combination of deregulation,

mechanisation and concentration of ownership in the agricultural sector have resulted in the

continuing shedding and externalisation of labour, shadowed by mounting social conflict as

evidenced in 2012 farm worker strikes in the Western Cape.

A Draft Tenure Security Bill was introduced in 2010 which was subsequently abandoned. In 2013 an

ESTA Amendment Bill was gazetted. The Legal Resources Centre in their submission on the

Amendment Bill expressed concerns about the lack of procedural safeguards to protect workers who


17

have been dismissed from subsequent eviction. The submission also highlights the disconnect

between the Bill and other new policy measures proposed, including the establishment of a Land

Management Commission and Provincial Land Rights Management Boards (LRC, 2013).

Transformation of certain rural areas

The Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act (No. 94 of 1998) aimed to transfer land in twenty-

three former coloured rural areas to a municipality, CPA or other body approved by the Minister

(Wisborg and Rohde, 2003). However like many other pieces of legislation passed by the DLA/DRDLR

TRANCRAA has been slowly implemented and poorly supported. Wisborg has noted that “limited

guarantees of public support for the proposed new landholding organisations created uncertainty”

characterising TRANCRAA as the “ ‘democratisation of disempowerment’ , characterised by debates,

studies and drafting of rules rather than material and institutional change” (2006: i).

Tenure reform in ‘communal areas’

In the democratic era land in the former homeland areas has become a new site of struggle. There

are fundamental questions about who actually owns this land. While much of this land is registered

in the Deeds Office as being owned by the Republic of South Africa CLS cites is strong legal opinion

that “virtually all land in the former homelands is owned by the families who have invested in and

inherited it over generations” (CLS, 2014: 3).

Currently, as CLS has observed “there is no legislation beyond the Interim Protection of Informal

Land Rights Act (IPILRA) to secure the land rights of the estimated 16.5 million people living in the

former Bantustans”. IPILRA was introduced in 1996 as a temporary solution that would protect

people living in communal areas from being deprived of their land rights. IPILRA (Act No. 31 of 1996)

aimed to protect informal rights in land. It was premised on the conception that the occupiers of

land in communal area should be regarded as if they were the owners. However despite this

protection, custodianship over land in the communal areas has increasingly become a vehicle for the

extraction of rents and profits. The latest report and briefing by the Ingonyama Trust which manages

about 2,8 million ha in KwaZulu Natal states that it has “adopted the leasing system as a medium for

securing land tenure rights”(ITB, 2014) on the land under its jurisdiction. This is in direct

contravention of the provisions of IPILRA and the rights of people living in communal areas.

3.7 CRDP

In addition to restitution, redistribution and tenure reform there has been an emerging focus on

rural development through the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme. In 2010/2011

DRDLR conducted a progress performance assessment study on all CRDP pilot sites in eight

provinces and in 2011/2012 financial year the department conducted a mid-term evaluation study

which was named ‘The Socio-Economic Impact of CRDP Pilot Projects on the Livelihoods of

Communities’. However very little data is publicly available about the progress of the CRDP.

Researchers at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) have observed that “the CRDP appears

similar to its predecessor, the ISRDP, in that much of the activities appear to be ad hoc, rather than

comprehensive or integrated. Furthermore, under the CRDP existing activities are often refunded, or

those that have collapsed, rekindled”(Hart and Jacobs, 2013: n.p).

Existing indications are there are serious concerns about the appropriateness and sustainability of

CRDP projects. Despite the investment in Councils of Stakeholders these structures have become


18

difficult to maintain and members of local communities have reported feeling marginalised by state

officials.

4 What has gone right?

While land reform in South Africa has experienced a wide range of problems there are examples of

approaches and programmes which show promise. These approaches are built around carefully

facilitated area wide initiatives which bring together a range of actors. Binswanger-Mkhize

(2014b)has argued that if properly supported the Besters and eDumbe pilots in KwaZulu-Natal have

potential for effective and sustainable land reform. Binswanger- Mkhize reviews how the Besters

model was initiated by the Besters Commercial Farmers Association in partnership with the then DLA

and 170 farm worker families on 14 farms which combined comprised nearly 20% of the District. This

model did not involve whole farm transactions but the simultaneous sale of 14 portions of the

fourteen farms for a single negotiated price. Internal subdivisions were negotiated to allocate

housing and arable land. A herd of cattle owned by the CPA and stock owned by individuals were

managed side by side.

Hornby (2013) provides a more fine grained assessment highlighting the workings of the model

where a commercial beef herd provided an annual pay-out to members in the form of cash,

heifers/oxen, meat and insurance and provided subsidies to stock owned by individual households

which were used for ceremonies, lobola and were also sold. The model while commercially

successful encountered social problems and power dynamics associated with household

differentiation and conflicts of interest over finite grazing resources. As larger producers emerged so

others were marginalised, threatening the sustainability of the CPA. However despite these issues it

is an approach worth exploring further.

Elsewhere there have been examples of community private partnerships. The work of the Business

Trust on the Maruleng and Bushbuckridge Economic Development Initiative (MABEDI) provided a

suite of support services to enable partnerships with investors which reportedly “raised R1,5 bn with

the potential to benefit 3,300 families and create 4,975 jobs” (Vumelana Advisory Fund, 2014).

Similar initiatives have included the Cata Forestry project and the Moletele Farms South East Cluster.

Vumelana has attributed the success of these projects to “skilled transaction advisors, community

facilitators and property institution –administrators” (ibid.: 2014).

While share equity schemes have come in for much criticism there are some good practice

examples, usually where producers promote equity and worker benefits as a basis for entry into

preferential Fair Trade markets which emphasise a transparent delivery chain that audits wages,

working conditions and benefits of workers involved in production. Examples here include Mouton

Citrus and other enterprises in the fruit sector.

5 What has gone wrong and why?

5.1 Constant shifts in approach

Binswanger-Mkhize (2014) examines how a similar pilot to the Besters case discussed above was

planned at eDumbe municipality in Kwazulu-Natal to try and develop a single strategy to address


19

combined farm dweller claims and restitution claims in the municipality. This involved a whole range

of state and non-state actors. Proposals involved 22 500 ha of subdivision by 56 commercial farmers

for 2974 beneficiaries at a cost of 124 million rand. However after an enormous investment of time,

together with the drafting and testing of an operational manual, the programme was arbitrarily

suspended at the time of the creation of the DRDLR and the diversion of resources into the CRDP.

Clearly actions such as these do immense damage to local relations and undermine trust in the

credibility of the state.

5.2 Functional uncertainties

The DLA/DRDLR appears to be constantly involved in protracted and ongoing processes of

institutional restructuring. This has impacted on the productivity of its staff and its institutional

intelligibility to the landless, along with other state and non-state actors.

5.3 Failure to learn, share and follow through

The operations of the DLA/ DRDLR and the CRLR have been characterised by a failure to learn and

follow through. Ad hoc decision making and a focus on securing “quick wins” has limited the

potential for reflexive practice. The outsourcing of planning and other functions has seldom been

accompanied by oversight and management capacity to ensure continuity. Poorly conceptualised

Terms of Reference (TOR) frequently reflect state simplifications of complex issues and problems.

Such TORs often require results within unrealistic time frames that repeatedly compromise the

quality and restrict the depth of the work required. There is a high incidence of cases where

commissioned research, strategies, plans and policy proposals have been completed and signed off –

often after processes that required significant investment of time by a wide range of public, private

and civil society actors – only to disappear without any evidence of follow through or subsequent

implementation by the state. Likewise publicly funded research and evaluation studies frequently

remain embargoed and their findings prevented from entering the public domain. The increasing

prevalence of stillborn processes of this nature contributes significantly to the declining levels of

trust in the state displayed by citizens, the private sector and civil society organisations.

5.4 Intergovernmental fragmentation

In practice land reform, land rights management, agricultural and rural development, livelihoods

diversification, household food security and poverty eradication remain institutionally and practically

fragmented, both in policy and in space. The absence of grounded area-based approaches,

combined with the persistent neglect of the social and the institutional contributes to the failure of

many development interventions supported by the state. This is compounded by thin

understandings of the structural factors shaping the livelihoods of the poor.

5.5 Ignoring real land needs

Research conducted into land needs in South Africa (Aliber et al., 2006, Andrews et al., 2009)

indicates that there is a high demand for relatively small portions of land. Almost half of people

surveyed seek l hectare or less while 25% seek 1 – 5 ha. In depth research also reveals the important

contribution that natural resources, ecological goods and service contribute to the livelihoods of the

poor (Shackleton et al., 2000; Shackleton et al., 2007; Shackleton et al., 2008), yet this is seldom

factored in when planning for land reform.


20

Secure access to land provides the basis for essential social and cultural continuities while potentially

improving household food security. While there has been much policy discussion about supporting

the smallholder sector, a range of unresolved issues relating to the subdivision of agricultural land

have prevented the creation of smallholdings as part of the land reform programme. According to

some commentators:

“The failure to subdivide is arguably the single greatest contributor to the failure and

underperformance of the land reform programme…because it forces [beneficiaries] to work

in groups whether they want to or not”.

(Lahiff and Li, 2014)

Likewise Binswanger-Mkhize (2014) argues that “the focus on the creation of viable commercial

farms is the root cause for the failure of the land reform programme”. Despite strong and persistent

arguments for promoting subdivision there is little evidence of PLAS land being used to create

individual smallholdings, despite the fact that land acquired through the Provision of Certain Land

for Settlement Act (No. 126 of 1993) is exempt from laws governing the subdivision of agricultural

land and the establishment of townships.5 Where land has been subdivided this has mostly involved

informal subdivision as a coping strategy employed by beneficiaries remaining on the land, often

following on from the failure of planned group based production projects. While subdivision offers

opportunities it is also clear that it is not a panacea and comes with its own set of challenges,

including enabling equitable access to water and land of equivalent production potential, but with

careful participatory planning these obstacles are not insurmountable.

5.6 Area based and environmental planning

For a period DLA/DRDLR invested heavily in processes of area based planning at municipal scale and

also developed policies and guidelines for the integration of environmental planning into land

reform. A review of the ABP process in 2012 found that an estimated 20 and 30 million rand was

awarded to consulting consortia to prepare ABPs in different provinces. It stated that:

The actual costs of this planning exercise far exceed the fees and disbursements paid to

consultants and include thousands of hours of time invested by officials and local citizens

involved in workshops and consultation processes… Large, detailed and expensive documents

and plans have been produced but there is little or no evidence of the implementation of

these plans or improved delivery of services to the landless. There are instances where it can

be reasonably surmised that the failure to either complete or implement the plans has

undermined co-operative governance and public trust in the DRDLR.

(Phuhlisani Solutions, 2012: 22)

The Besters and eDumbe initiatives provide practical examples of the as yet, unrealised potential of

area based planning and implementation.

5.7 Inadequate and piecemeal post-settlement support

Right from the outset of the land reform programme there have been problems in conceptualising

and providing consistent and appropriate post-settlement support. This was taken up by the CRLR in

5 Section 2(4) Act 126


21

2005 when in partnership with Belgian Technical Co-operation (BTC) it set in motion an 18 month R9

million process to develop an evidence-based settlement and implementation support strategy

(Sustainable Development Consortium, 2007). An initial review highlighted:

• poor intergovernmental relations, limiting the coordination of the effective support;

• lack of shared accountability and interdepartmental key performance indicators;

• poorly assessed project feasibility complicated by contesting understandings of ‘viability’

and whole farm acquisition strategies;

• inappropriate business planning paradigms which frequently privileged continuity of

production of the previous landowner and assumed group based production models;

• low levels of benefits derived from productive activities from the existing land reform

projects.

The strategy reviewed the experience of providing post-settlement support in international land

reform programmes including Brazil, the Philippines, Australia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The

evidence from international experience indicated that securing access to land was just the first step

in a larger process to ensure that new landowners have:

• clearly determined and secure rights;

• enhanced individual household livelihood security; and

• access to training, institutional development services, finance, business advice, technical

support and markets.

It highlighted that the provision of settlement and implementation support was a critical success

factor if the overall goals of land reform were to be attained. A detailed strategy was developed and

officially launched by the then Minister of Land Affairs in 2007, before falling off the departmental

agenda and disappearing once again, largely without a trace.

5.8 The rise of predatory elites and the demise of the developmental state

There have been several high-profile examples of corruption associated with the land reform

programme. This can be regarded as indicative of broader trends in South African society which

reflect the emergence of contesting political and economic elites. As early as 2010 COSATU

cautioned that “if we don’t act decisively, we are heading rapidly in the direction of a full-blown

predator state, in which a powerful corrupt elite increasingly controls the state as a vehicle for

accumulation”(COSATU, 2010: 1). The fracturing of ruling elite is carried over into the workings of

the state, acting as a further brake on its effectiveness.

5.9 Land, natural resources and political capital

The context described above provides the impetus for new mechanisms to retain political support.

This is reflected in moves identified above to transfer land in the communal areas to traditional

councils, thereby cementing alliances and opportunities for accumulation.

6 Where are we now?

The present conjuncture is characterised by a great deal of uncertainty and rising political

contestation over the future direction of the land reform programme. In 2011 the 52nd

Conference


22

of the ANC identified land reform and rural development as a priority. This was followed by

resolutions at the 53rd

National Conference in Mangaung which proposed “a radical and rapid break

from the past without significantly disrupting agricultural production and food security” (ANC, 2013:

25).

The ANC Manifesto for the National elections in 2014 somewhat ambiguously states that:

The willing-buyer, willing-seller approach to land reform has not worked, and is being

replaced by the principle of just and equitable compensation in line with Section 25 of the

Constitution. We have a comprehensive programme of land reform, underpinned by de-

racialisation of the rural economy, democratic allocation and use of land, and production for

guaranteed food security.

(ANC, 2014)

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on the other hand espouse a radical populist programme to

address poverty, inequality and the slow pace of land reform advocating “expropriation of South

Africa’s land without compensation for equal redistribution in use” (EFF, 2014). Following the

election certain recent policy positions taken by the DRDLR appear to be framed as measures to

outflank the political threat posed by the EFF.

6.1 Confronting the failure of land reform

The dominant perception is that land reform has failed, or at the very least is in deep trouble.

However there are widely differing explanations as to the causes of its malaise. These range from

racially encoded assertions about the capabilities of black people acquiring and utilising land which

have a long history in South African development discourse, through to the incompetence of the

state and its (market-led) strategies for implementing the land reform programme. Aliber and

Cousins (2013) draw on the literature to identify a variety of other causal factors including:

• Inadequate extension and support services;

• Low skills levels of many land reform beneficiaries;

• Inadequate budgets;

• Inadequate capacity for the maintenance of essential production infrastructure;

• Barriers to market entry faced by small scale producers in an environment characterised the

dominance of large agribusiness interests;

• Failure to subdivide and make available smallholdings for smallholders;

• Deeply flawed group based production models.

They go on to emphasise the inadequacies of the large scale commercial farming model “which had

led to unworkable project design and/or projects that are irrelevant to the circumstances of the rural

poor”.

These narratives pay very little heed to the deep complexities to be confronted in addressing the

deceptive simplicity in the constitutional injunctions which provide land reform with its mandate.

Land and agrarian reform in its attempts to enable citizens to access land on an equitable basis,

ensure their tenure security across a wide variety of circumstances, effect restitution or comparative

redress while simultaneously restructuring the overall agrarian system can be best understood as a

“wicked problem” (Rittel and Webber, 1973)


23

They are composed of inter-related dilemmas, issues, and other problems at multiple

levels of society, economy, and governance. These interconnections—systems of

systems—make Wicked Problems so resilient to analysis and to resolution.

(Horn and Weber, 2007: 1)

This requires an approach in which multiple perspectives on the divergent social understandings,

problems and potential solutions emerge directly from the actors who are impacted and affected by

these issues in different ways. It also requires a much deeper and more sober conversation than

that which we have been able to achieve to date which is premised on an improved shared

understanding of issues and problems while not discounting the dynamics and distortions of power

and the implicit opportunities for political advantage.

6.2 What has been achieved?

According to Lyne (2013) by 2012 the Restitution and Redistribution programmes combined had

transferred 7.95 million ha and that if private transactions are included some 12.5 million ha or

about 15% of total commercial farmland have been transferred. Between 1994 – 2014 a total of

some 460,000 households are said to have benefitted from government assisted land purchases –

amounting to about 20ha per household. However the land transferred has not been subdivided

into smallholding s and much is regarded to have remained underutilised which fuels heated

debates about the efficacy of current land reform models.

According to the ANC election manifesto “nearly 5,000 farms, comprising 4.2 million hectares, have

been transferred to black people, benefiting over 200,000 families (and) nearly 80,000 land claims,

totalling 3.4 million hectares, have been settled and 1.8 million people have benefited (ANC, 2014:

30).

While the statistics focus on the quantitative aspects of the land purchased and transferred much

less is known about the relationship between costs and the net benefits or losses of the land reform

programme in macro- socio-economic terms, or what constitutes a reasonable time scale for

assessing its results.

6.3 Who owns what?

As South Africa marked the centenary of the 1913 Land Act PLAAS has pointed out the 87:13 land

split which continues to dominate land reform discourse requires a critical reassessment. These

much quoted figures derive from the targets envisaged by the Land Acts which had not been fulfilled

by 1994. Walker and Dubb (2013) provide the following breakdown of land ownership in South

Africa:


24

Figure 1: Source: Walker and Dubb, 2013: PLAAS Fact Check No 1.

The PLAAS Fact Check notes that a more accurate contemporary ratio is 67: 15 with 67% making up

‘white’ commercial agricultural land and 15% ‘black communal areas. As highlighted in preceding

sections the productivity of land in South Africa is highly differentiated:

Today there are under 40,000 farming units covering about 67% of the country (Stats SA

2009). The agricultural quality of this land varies, with only 13% classified as arable and over

a third located in the arid Northern Cape where just 2% of the population resides.

(Walker and Dubb, 2013: 2)

However even this data on the number commercial farms from the census needs to be regarded

with caution as the census data excludes small farming units which have a turnover below the

R300 000/annum, which is the VAT threshold (van Wyk, 2014).

7 Current policy trajectories: High level critique

Currently there appears to be poor articulation between the National Development Plan (NDP) and

the policy processes and strategies within the DRDLR. The linkages between DRDLR and DAFF also


25

appear weak and poorly co-ordinated. At Provincial scale the working relationship between these

two departments may be virtually non-existent.

7.1 Land reform in the NDP

The National Development Plan and the New Growth Path have been cited as government’s key

policy imperatives promoting inclusive agro-food value chains for poverty alleviation (Jacobs, 2012,

Cousins, 2013, Hendriks, 2013, Thamaga-Chitja and Morojele, 2014). Strategic Objective 6 of the

National Development Plan of 2011 envisages an integrated and inclusive rural economy with the

potential to create close to 1 million new jobs by 2030. In order to achieve this, South Africa needs

to:

• Expand irrigated agriculture;

• Use some underused land in communal areas and land-reform projects for commercial

production;

• Support job creation in the upstream and downstream industries;

• Develop strategies that give new entrants access to product value chains and support from

better-resourced players (National Planning Commission, 2012: 197).

Practically the NDP envisages the establishment of District Land Reform Committees comprising

representatives from DRDLR, WCDOA, the District and relevant Local Municipality, organised

agriculture, commodity groups and land reform beneficiaries. These committees will be “responsible

for identifying 20 percent of the commercial agricultural land in the district and giving commercial

farmers the option of assisting its transfer to black farmers” (NPC, 2012: 227). The NDP notes that

land reform and rural development “will require credible programmes, significant resources and

stronger institutions such as agricultural departments in local and provincial government”(NPC,

2012: 194). However it fails to elaborate its approach to land reform and as Walker has observed:

The primary focus of the NDP is on the non-agrarian economy, and its proposals on land

reform and rural development more generally are sketchy and require more development. It

glosses certain politically charged areas, notably current calls to scrap the property clause in

the Constitution and nationalise white-owned land, the specific content of tenure reform in

the communal areas, and the appropriate role of traditional leaders in rural land

administration and government. In this regard it is of concern that the NPC has announced

that it will hold back on promoting its model for land reform pending the finalisation of the

DRDLR’s Green Paper process.

(Walker, 2012: 10)

Critics have noted that the NDP and proponents of smallholder development strategies more

generally frequently overlook or underestimate the impacts of highly concentrated food retail and

production systems and global value chains which create enormous barriers of entry to smallholder

producers and distort the rural economy (Neves and Toit, 2013; Neves, 2014).

Unions have also criticised the NDP for aligning itself with the interests of capital rather than the

poor. Organised labour has expressed concerns about the failure to limit the structural power

behind retail value chains which are impacting on agricultural growth and inclusion (COSATU, 2013).

While the NDP seeks to create large-scale employment in the agricultural sector it acknowledges

that the creation of new jobs in agriculture will not be easy, given that it is a sector which overall has


26

been shedding labour for years. The NDP remains largely silent about production models for land

reform and says little about the performance of the programme to date.

7.2 The Green Paper on Land Reform

While the National Planning Commission was consulting on the NDP the DRDLR went through a

protracted and largely closed internal process to develop a Green Paper. A long version was leaked

in 2010 and a much shorter paper was released September 2011 which met with an almost uniform

critical and hostile response. This was articulated by community-based formations such as Tshintsha

Amakhaya which demanded the scrapping of the green paper and its re-drafting through a close

collaborative process (Tshintsha Amakhaya, 2011). The LRC stated that “the most fundamental flaw

the green paper is the failure to articulate a clear purpose”(LRC, 2011: 1). It noted that the

“recognition of the constitutional imperative for land reform was a glaring omission from the

document… and that in terms of the constitution the document had no authority to implement what

it proposes” (ibid.:1). The omission of a discussion of communal tenure and customary law from the

green paper was highlighted as a major shortcoming, together with its complete disregard for the

Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa adopted by the African Union.

A four-tier system land tenure system proposed in the Green Paper comprising:

• State and Public land: leasehold

• Private land: freehold with limited extent.

o No land ownership by foreign nationals

o Convert current ownership into long term lease after land audit has been finalized.

• Foreign land ownership

o A combination of leasehold and freehold

• Communal tenure with institutionalized use rights.

o Taxation of under-utilized land, in both communal and commercial areas.

The four tier system of land tenure proposed by the green paper has largely been dismissed as a

crude simplification of the complexities of the rural landscape in South Africa. The LRC noted that

the Green paper was out of step with the NDP, which proposed a district based approach to land

purchase at scale, not unlike that piloted in the Bester’s initiative above.

In comments on the Green paper Agri SA noted that “the general approach… seems to be one of

radical change and a fundamentally different approach to land reform” cautioning that “radical

reform often has radical and damaging consequences”(Agri SA, 2011). They reiterated the approach

set out in the Agri SA Land Policy document which supported a programme consistent with the

strategic plan for South African agriculture, based on free market principles and by means of forums

at local and provincial levels. Agri SA argued strongly that the failure of land reform was due not to

policy shortcomings but to poor implementation:

The point of departure of the Green Paper is that current policies have failed. The facts of the

matter are however that no proper statistics exist to measure what progress has been made

and no proper monitoring was done on the execution of existing land reform programmes. It

has moreover become abundantly clear that corruption has been rife and played a significant

role in the excessive prices paid for some farms. The solution for a failure in implementation

does not lie in a radical change in policy. No new policies will be implemented successfully


27

unless the reasons for poor implementation are addressed. Many examples exist of poor

management of administrative processes, poor communication, poor planning, valuations

done incorrectly, no or inadequate post settlement support, lack of commitment, skills and

work-ethic on the part of government officials, flawed processes and a lack of monitoring of

projects.

(Agri SA, 2011)

Following the release Green Paper on Land Reform the Minister established the National Reference

Group (NAREG). Six working groups or commissions were established on the Land Management

Commission, the Land Rights Management Board, the Office of the Valuer-General, the Three/Four-

Tier Tenure System, Communal Tenure Policy and necessary Legislative Amendments.

Instead of proceeding to develop an expanded White Paper the DRDLR opted to produce a range of

policy documents which are briefly profiled below. Organised agriculture through Agri SA became

closely involved in this process, including the drafting of policy documents relating to the proposed

Office of the Valuer-General, tenure security on commercial farms, the Land Rights Management

Board and the tripartite system of land ownership. Agri SA presented its arguments against

proposed limitations on private land ownership and what it characterised as “the manipulation of

land values, possible draconic powers for the Land Management Commission and a land tax”(Agri

SA, 2013).

7.3 Exploring key policy threads

The sections below briefly explore contemporary policy threads.

7.4 Restitution

Ostensibly the reopening of Restitution is to “address the land needs of those who could not meet

the December 1998 cut-off date for the lodgement of claims”(DRDLR, 2014: 4). There are also

indications of possible moves to revisit the promulgation of the 1913 Land Act as the historical

baseline for the consideration of claims. This is partly to “address the land plight of decedents (sic) of

the Khoi and the San” (ibid.: 4).

Implications of reopening claims

There has been a mix of concern expressed within the land sector, coupled with wider social support

for the reopening of the claims process. Concerns within the land sector relate to the potential to

overwhelm an already beleaguered Commission and further undermine its capacity to resolve

existing claims.

Cousins et al (2014)argue that to date land restitution “has done little to support the wider objective

of transforming racially-skewed patterns of land ownership. They express concerns that the

reopening of the claims process “is likely to pit claimants against one another in overlapping and

competing claims, and allow unscrupulous traditional leaders opportunities to manipulate land

claims for their own benefit”. Others like the LRC have expressed “cautious support” while Agri SA

have expressed strong opposition.

7.5 Redistribution

A number of new policy measures impact on Redistribution.


28

State Land Lease and Disposal Policy

The diagram below (Cousins, 2014) summarises current PLAS based land redistribution policies

catering for four categories of producers.

Figure 1: Current land redistribution policy (Cousins, 2014)

The current State Land Lease and Disposal Policy (2013) enables Category 1 households “which have

no or very limited access to land even for subsistence production” to enter into a lease with a

nominal rental. These households do not qualify for a later option to purchase. Contrary to the

diagram above the policy states there are cases in which small scale farmers producing for

subsistence and sale in Category 2 could qualify for an option to purchase. Medium scale

commercial farmers and large scale or well established commercial farmers in Categories 3 and 4

may exercise an option to purchase after successfully meeting the terms of initial lease agreements.

Lessees occupy the land, paying R1.00/year for the first five years which is regarded as a probation

period. If probation is successfully completed the lease can be extended for 30 years and may be

renewable for a further 20 years. Subsequent lease payments are supposed to be calculated on the

basis of 5% of projected annual net income “determined through a farm or business plan” (Ibid: 19).

The Agricultural Landholding Policy Framework

This framework seeks to set maximum and minimum land holding sizes in every district ostensibly to

ensure more efficient land use. The task of setting the ‘floor’ and the ‘ceiling’ for land holdings is

designated to District Land Reform Committees. The policy aims to reduce the extent of land

holdings above the designated ceiling and extend those which are below the floor although the

mechanisms for achieving this are not specified. This seems to be a measure which would be

extraordinarily difficult to implement and be associated with all sort of unintended consequences.


29

Despite the stated intent to proceed with these measures the document cites international reviews

of processes to regulate land holdings which have not been particularly successful.

Property Valuation Bill

This is linked to the policy framework for land acquisition and land valuation and for the

establishment of the Office of the Valuer-General. The Banking Association of South Africa has

raised concerns about the proposed processes of valuation and was primarily concerned about

valuations that could be less than market value. BASA stated that:

This was of great concern to financial institutions as the Banks Act Regulations (which were

derived from the global regulatory framework), required financial institutions to derive the

security value of a property from the market value of that property. The extension of credit

was a risk that had to be managed in terms of strict prudential rules imposed on financial

institutions, as consequences for not adequately managing the risk credit posed could lead to

systemic consequences for the economy as was evidenced by the current global financial

crisis.

(PMG, 2014)

Agri SA has also expressed concerns that the powers allocated to Valuer-General are too wide.

7.6 Tenure

The ESTA Amendment Bill makes provision for tenure grants to enable occupiers and former

occupiers to acquire suitable alternative accommodation and to compensate owner for the provision

of accommodation and services to occupiers and their families through agreement with a provincial

department or municipality who take responsibility for suitable alternative accommodation. It is

linked to the establishment of the Land Rights Management Board to advise the Minister and the DG

on tenure security in respect of commercial farming areas, rural freehold and communal areas,

guide and oversee land rights management committees (occupiers, labour tenants CPAs, DRDLR,

state institutions with vested in interests in land matters, NGOs and civil society, local farming and

business development agencies, local government). The board’s function is to maintain a database

of occupiers, land rights disputes, evictions. It should provide for mediation and arbitration of land

rights disputes, identify land for settlement and resettlement of occupiers including implementation

Section 4 tenure grants and facilitate provision of municipal services on the acquired land.

In communal areas

The resolutions of the 53rd

ANC conference in Mangaung indicate a move towards strengthening

institutions of traditional governance and proposed giving them responsibility for managing

communal land. This has been elaborated in the Communal Land Tenure Policy (CLTP) which is still in

draft form

In order to reconstitute the deteriorated accountability of traditional community structures

to the communities and households they service as found in original forms of African tenure,

the “Wagon Wheel model” for communal tenure reform, emphasizes that, these institutions

are responsible for land administration as outer boundary title holders.

(DRDLR, 2013: 19)


30

The CLTP follows on from the Communal Land Rights Act which was struck down by the

Constitutional Court. The measures that it proposes with respect to ownership and control over land

allocation and land rights management serves to buttress a conservative rendering of ‘tradition’ and

provides an opportunity space for past and present elites to maintain or reassert control over

resources.

According to the CLS:

The new Communal Land Tenure Policy (CLTP), like the Communal Land Rights Act (CLRA) of

2003 proposes to transfer the ‘outer boundaries’ of ‘tribal’ land in the former Bantustans to

‘traditional councils’ (the new name for the tribal authorities created during the Bantustan

era). The policy proposes that the units of land transferred with be defined according to the

tribal boundaries created in terms of the controversial Bantu Authorities Act of 1951.6 The

DRDLR proposes that ‘traditional councils’ will get title deeds (i.e. full ownership) of these

blocks of land, while individuals and families will get ‘institutional use rights’ to parts of the

land within them....

So-called ‘use rights’ are restricted to small areas such as house-hold plots, while the

traditional council owns and controls all development related to common property areas

such as grazing land and forests. The CLTP specifically states that the traditional council will

own, and be in charge of investment projects such as mining and tourism ventures.

(CLS, 2014: 1)

CLS notes that the CLTP is premised on a conception that all land in the communal areas falls under

the jurisdiction of chiefs or is subject to ‘tribal tenure’. CLS points out the many anomalies in this

position and its imposition of a “tribal construct of community”. It questions whether traditional

councils currently have the legal capacity to own land and highlights the lack of compliance of many

councils with key transformation measures including the election of 40% of TC members and the

requirement that one third of their membership must be women. This means that currently most

TCs are not validly and legally constituted and therefore unable to exercise the functions envisaged

by the CLTP.

Tenure issues in the communal areas is a complex arena where outmoded interpretations of

customary law and traditional authority encoded from a bygone era encounters living customary law

navigating the dynamics of the present. However there are also issues of realpolitik underpinning

current policy approaches and attitudes to traditional leadership, courts and councils:

One does not have to look much further than the wealth of resources buried under the soil of

many traditional communities to find a latter-day reason for the government's preoccupation

with keeping current and future traditional leaders on its side rather than accountable to

their communities.

(Wicomb and De Souza, 2013)

6 The 2003 Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act introduces the term ‘traditional community’ to replace the term ‘tribe’ of old, but section 28 sets in stone the tribal boundaries created in terms of the 1951 Act although they are much disputed in many areas.


31

8 Transformative scenario planning: Actors and issues

Vumelana seeks to initiate a process of transformative scenario planning. It will be clear from the

foregoing that there is no simple solution to the complex web of interconnected and overlapping

issues which shape the land reform agenda and the relations between large cast of state and non-

state actors, who have fundamentally different perspectives on the key foundational questions.

8.1 Who is involved?

It has not been possible to profile the full cast of actors who play central and supporting roles in the

land reform and rural development arena and project their varied perspectives on the land reform

programme as analysed above. A short indicative listing follows below.

State actors

State actors include

• DLA/DRDLR - various branches and directorates

• The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights

• The Land Claims Court

• Departments of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

o National

o Provincial

• Parastatals – Land Bank, ARC, NDA etc

• Department of Water Affairs

• Environmental Affairs

• Minerals and Energy

• Municipalities

Private sector

• Organised agriculture

• Commodity groups

• Banks

• Foundations

• Consultancies

• Research institutes

o PLAAS, BFAP, CLS, CLC, Food lab etc

NPOs and civil society

o Tshintsha aMakhaya affiliates

o Socio-economic rights NPOs

• Rural movements

• Traditional authorities

• Worker organisations

• Political actors

• Donors

• Other actors in the value chain


32

8.2 Issues

Many of the issues, both of the policy and practical nature have surfaced in the discussions above.

The issues span the entire landscape in South Africa, spanning the communal areas through to

commercial farms, small towns and Metropolitan areas. Many of them are deeply rooted in complex

and multi-layered histories which demand careful measures and time to resolve. These impact

fundamentally on social, political and economic relations in our country and are also reflected in the

mounting challenges associated with rural joblessness and rising youth unemployment.

They are expressed in the continued and unresolved tensions around race and privilege and the

persistence of inequality and structural poverty in South Africa. As noted in the section on the

history of dispossession, land is at the centre of multiple and contested meanings. These run much

deeper than instrumental processes of land reform that set targets for the transfer of hectares.

There are deep concerns about the extent of current policy incoherence and the capacity of DRDLR

to successfully fulfil its constitutional mandate. This extends beyond the Department itself and raises

issues about the failure of the so-called developmental state. In the current contested political

space, characterised by the emergence of new, contesting political and economic elites, there seems

to be a real risk that policy responds to critique and pressure in an increasingly ad hoc manner. In

this setting there may be perceived advantages in not making policy to avoid it becoming open to

critique and rigorous assessment.

With respect to land reform more specifically a whole range of issues must be addressed. These

include the general unreliability of data which makes an analysis difficult, and does not allow for

informed social dialogue. At the same time it does not allow for a realistic appraisal of the costs and

benefits of the land reform programme as a whole to date. Much knowledge remains inaccessible.

This includes many of the evaluations and studies commissioned by the Department over the years

which are not publicly available. Significant resources are being allocated to resuscitate properties in

distress, but it remains unclear as to who are the primary beneficiaries of this process. There is an

enormous reliance on strategic partnerships, even though there are mounting concerns about the

success and desirability of this approach, which is usually linked to the flawed whole farm transfer

model.

Land reform has been made immensely difficult as a consequence of institutional fragmentation and

the separation of land acquisition and development support. It seems clear that to date the

programme has done little to meet real land and livelihood needs and in doing so it will need to

address the issues of subdivision and measures which respond more closely to the articulated needs

of smallholder producers.

In the communal areas the current strategies of elevating the chiefs and traditional authorities run

the real risk of disenfranchising millions of rural South Africans, and facilitating elite capture of

scarce resources central to the livelihoods of poor rural households. People living in communal areas

remain poorly protected in the absence of agreed and implementable tenure reform policy and

legislation. This is particularly critical at a time when research indicates mounting food insecurity

and hunger among a substantial section of the rural and urban poor. Tenure insecurity and

displacement are visible across the rural landscape and impact upon the ability of municipalities to

address housing need in rural towns and service centres.


33

9 Conclusion

This think piece has attempted to examine where we have come from and review how our history

informs our present. It has tracked what we have tried to do in the land reform arena since 1994

within restitution, redistribution, tenure reform and rural development. It has examined some good

practices and possibilities for doing things differently. It has taken a hard look at what has gone

wrong. Finally the think piece has sketched the current conjuncture – where we are now and

provided a brief assessment of the current policy landscape highlighting the range of actors and

issues will shape the conversation which informs the resultant scenarios facilitated by Reos and

Vumelana.


34

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Dispossession and redress: The challenges of land reform

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