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SLSA LAND THEMERESEARCH BRIEFING 1

November 2001

The Politics of LandReform in Southern

Africa

IntroductionA range of factors – from the global to the

local – have combined to put land firmly on thepolitical agenda in southern Africa. The transition topeace and democracy in Mozambique and SouthAfrica has unleashed pressure for the restoration ofland seized by white colonists and for thedevelopment of land still in the hands of indigenouscommunities. Despite considerable progress in landreform in Zimbabwe since independence, thecontinued domination of the agricultural sector by atiny white minority has created fertile ground for anincreasingly violent agrarian politics.

Cutting across the national specifics are a set offactors associated with processes of liberalisation andglobalisation, which, together, are putting severepressure on the livelihoods of the rural poor. Notableamong these are a fall in formal sector employment,privatisation of key resources, reduced levels of statesupport to agriculture and the continuingmarginalisation of the non-commercial or peasantsectors.

The forms of agricultural production beingpromoted in the region are invariably based on high-input, market oriented models of full-time farming,with little appreciation of more diversified forms oflivelihoods that combine agriculture for domesticconsumption with other activities. Against thisbackground, the

strategies for land reform and rural developmentpromoted by governments in southern Africa haveshown themselves to be inadequate.

Key Questions of the SLSA Land Theme Study• Will the current round of land reform in southern

Africa mark a decisive break with the colonial past orwill it entrench new forms of inequality?

• What is the impact of globalisation on thelivelihoods of the rural poor?

• Do the land invasions in Zimbabwe herald a newphase of agrarian struggle throughout the region?

Country experiencesIn Mozambique, the promulgation of the 1997

Reform Land Law marked a major symbolicbreakthrough in protecting the rights of the so-called'family sector' by granting legal recognition to informalor customary land rights and introducing mandatoryconsultation with rights-holders prior to changes in landallocation. Nevertheless, the social and economicdisruptions wrought by the civil war, coupled with achaotic system of land administration, has given rise tomultiple competing land claims and continuingdispossession of smallholders by national and foreignbusiness interests.

While much of FRELIMO’s traditionalantipathy to the smallholder sector has abated in recentyears - not least because of the support given bypeasants to the RENAMO opposition - governmentpolicy continues to promote the interests of bigbusiness, not only in agriculture but also in the wildlife,forestry and other natural resource-based sectors.

Under pressure from international donors andfinancial institutions, the Mozambican state is divestingitself of its remaining productive assets and embracinga privatised, free-market model of development. Theavailable evidence suggests that the impact onlivelihood opportunities of the rural poor is almostentirely negative. Wild resources, including wildlife andindigenous forests on which rural communities havetraditionally relied for much of their subsistence, arebeing privatised and access denied to local people.Large areas of cultivable land, not only the former statefarms and colonial estates, are being transferred toforeign investors over the heads of indigenouscultivators on whom new and often exploitativerelations, such as tenancy and sharecropping, are being

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imposed. Notable amongst these new settlers areAfrikaner farmers from South Africa who have beengranted vast concessions in Niassa and Zambeziaprovinces.

In Zimbabwe, the unrest leading up to andfollowing the 2000 general election highlighted theslow progress of land reform since independence andthe political tensions that surround the land question.To date, attempts at reform have failed to reach theambitious targets set by the government, but havebrought about some redistribution of former white-owned farms and stimulated an impressive rise inproduction amongst small-scale black farmers.

Reliance on market mechanisms to effectredistribution, coupled with a top-down andtechnocratic approach to planning, however, limitedthe pace of reform and left largely intact the dualisticstructure of the agricultural economy. Poor quality ofsupport services to resettled farmers, along withgovernment neglect of tenure reform in theCommunal Areas (CA’s), further limited the benefitsaccruing to smallholders.

The invasion of white- and corporate-ownedfarms by a combination of government supporters,war veterans and landless peasants, while bringingthe land issue to the top of the political agenda, hasdisrupted both the agricultural economy and relationsbetween Zimbabwe and foreign donors. As a result,the prospects for a successful reform may have beenset back, even as popular pressure reaches newheights.

In South Africa, where dispossession ofnative peoples was carried to a further extent thanany other country in the region, the fruits ofliberation have yet to be tasted by the majority of therural population. Two-thirds of the country, includingmost of the best quality land, remains in the hands ofless than 60,000 white owners, while fourteenmillion blacks eke out a precarious existence in theformer homelands. Falling employment in the formalsector, particularly in mining, agriculture andmanufacturing, have dealt a severe blow to thesystem of migrant labour, forcing hundreds ofthousands of workers and their dependants to fallback on the informal sector and subsistenceagriculture for survival.

None of the three main components of theSouth African land reform programme - restitution of

land rights, land redistribution and tenure reform - haveyet made a significant impact on either the highlyunequal distribution of land or the livelihoodopportunities of the rural population. Both restitutionand redistribution have suffered from over-reliance onmarket mechanisms to acquire land and cumbersomeand ineffective bureaucratic processes. Tenure reformhas so far failed to address the chaotic system of landadministration in the communal areas of the formerhomelands, prevent eviction of long-term tenants onwhite-owned farms or halt the encroachment of privatebusiness interests onto communal property resources.

Recent shifts in policy, away from the pro-poorapproach of the 1994-1999 period towards acommercial farming model, coupled with proposals toprivatise communal land, are likely to further diminishthe benefits of land reform to the rural poor.

Discourses on Land Policy debate in the region is characterised by

a range of discourses around land and land reform.While each country presents its own particular nationalcharacteristics, a set of common themes can beidentified. This convergence of policy in key areas canbe attributed to the growing exposure of the region tothe forces of globalisation, and with it the influence ofan internationalised neo-liberal orthodoxy. Of particularimportance in this regard is the privatisation ofresources, including both communal and state resources,the retreat by the state from key areas of the economy,including both productive activities and services, thepursuit of foreign direct investment and sweepingderegulation of markets of all kinds.

The pervasive discourse surrounding economicreform is being strenuously promoted by donorgovernments and international financial institutions andhas been embraced enthusiastically by the ruling partiesin Mozambique and South Africa. Discourses aroundland and agriculture are thus derived in large part fromwider debates around macro-economic policy andstructural adjustment. An important sub-theme of thisdebate is the argument that unequal land distribution isbad for growth. However the implications of thisconclusion have as yet to link liberalisation andeconomic reform policy debates with land policydiscussions in the region.

Within the emerging orthodoxy, a number of olderdiscourses, which do not directly challenge thedominant position, live on. These include:

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• A technocratic discourse, based on increasedoutput, efficient land use and themodernisation of the peasant sector, allgrounded in the farmer settlement discourse ofthe colonial era;.

• A political or nationalist discourse, currentlyprominent in Zimbabwe, and to a lesser extentin South Africa, that advocates theAfricanisation of landholding but does notaddress equally fundamental issues of class orgender.

The main challenge to the orthodox approachescomes from a range of populist discourses, mainlyassociated with NGOs and church groups withvarying degrees of support from peasant movements.The clearest example of an organised oppositionalmovement on land is in Mozambique, where theLand Campaign has brought together NGOs such asORAM with peasant movements such as UNAC, andhas succeed in influencing legislation andgovernment policy in favour of peasants.

In South Africa, NGOs organised in the NationalLand Committee and the NGO Coalition havecampaigned for a more radical land reform with afocus on improving rural livelihoods but have not yetsucceeded in their attempts to initiate a rural socialmovement. Limited opposition to the government'sprivatisation plans has also come from certain tribalchiefs, anxious to preserve their power base in thecommunal areas.

In Zimbabwe, strong populist and radicalcurrents are evident in the wave of land invasionsand in the rhetoric of the war veterans movement.But the ambiguous relationship between the veterans,the state and the ruling party raises doubts about howfar such positions can be pursued.

What is perhaps most remarkable is the absenceof any significant counter-orthodoxy in the region.Past discourses, such as collectivisation ofagriculture, nationalisation of land or Africansocialism, have almost entirely disappeared frompolicy debates in South Africa, Zimbabwe andMozambique. A key challenge for the future will beto elaborate the details of a livelihoods focussedperspective on land reform appropriate to thesouthern African region.

Issues for Further Research

This preliminary study has identified a number ofkey issues in the field of land and rural developmentthat will be explored at both national and regional levelsin further phases of the study. These include:

• the impact of neo-liberal macro economicpolicies on land-holding and on land reform;

• the current and future status of communalland, with particular emphasis on tenurearrangements;

• the impact of land reform policies onlandholding patterns, rural livelihoods andpoverty;

• inclusion of women, youth, the unemployedand the very poor in policy process:

• the evolving roles of institutions of localgovernance, including elected localgovernment, tribal authorities and popularstructures;

• the impact of formal sector retrenchments onrural livelihoods and the demand for land;

• processes of privatisation of land andcommodification of common propertyresources;

• bottom-up or unofficial initiatives to defendland rights, access land or improve rurallivelihoods.

SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS IN SOUTHERNAFRICA: GOVERNANCE, INSTITUTIONS AND

POLICY PROCESSES (SLSA)

SLSA is funded by the UK Department forInternational Development (DFID) and coordinated

by the Institute of Development Studies (UK), incooperation with researchers from the Overseas

Development Institute (UK), IUCN (Mozambique),Eduardo Mondlane University, the University of

Zimbabwe, and PLAAS (University of the WesternCape).

Research for this paper by Edward Lahiff and IanScoones

Further information can be obtained on the SLSAwebsite

http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/env/igpp.html