As noted by the eminent land reform scholar, Professor Michael Lipton, “The path of land reform seldom runs smooth” and South Africa’s experience has been no exception to this. A paper written by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) South Africa, Country Team explored factors impacting on land reform and the success of small scale farmers. It was found that the implementation of South Africa’s land reform programme is unintentionally undermining tenure security and by extension the success of small scale farmers.
This research is primarily informed by the ‘Innovations in Smallholder Agriculture in South Africa for Climate Change Resilience (ISASAR) Project’; an IFAD supported action research initiative that sought to investigate key issues around South Africa’s small and emerging farming sector, its food security and the building of resilience to climate change. The findings produced under ISASAR subsequently informed a spinoff paper titled Factors Impacting on Land Reform and Sustainable Small Scale Farmers – A Case Study from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa[1], this paper builds on the earlier research conducted under ISASAR, but specifically aims to contribute to the debate around South Africa’s land reform programme, by focusing on the factors which impact on the success of small scale farmers who have been beneficiaries of the land reform programme.
Tenure security was highlighted as a notable factor impacting on the success of small scale farmers. It is also noteworthy that the relationship between tenure security and land reform carries with it, in the South African context, a circular tension. The research revealed that in some instances the land reform programme, which was designed to support a class of sustainable small-scale farmers, is actually hampering tenure security, negatively impacting the success of small-scale farmers.
Findings on tenure (in)security
In a series of fourteen in depth one-on-one interviews with purposively selected farmers that benefited from the land reform programme, it was revealed that the lack of tenure security proved to be a source of anxiety, a disincentive to engage in long-term investments and a significant contributor towards their stewardship of the land.
One of the farmers interviewed had been allocated a farm on a 5-year lease, with the understanding that this would be converted to a 30-year lease, provided their ability to farm was demonstrated. At the time of the interview, the farmer had not only demonstrated a commitment to farm, but had also expressed ambitions to transition to commercial farming. However, not only had the farmer not received any official documentation confirming the existing tenure arrangement, the lack of documentation proving ownership curtailed his ability to seek finance from a bank to further scale-up farming operations. Furthermore, the interview revealed that the farmer had to both improve the infrastructure on his farm as well as build up his livestock numbers, these investments were however being put off up until greater clarity on ownership arrangements was provided. This case highlights how the lack of tenure security undermines the ability of a farmer to graduate from a small scale farmer to a commercial farmer. An inhibiting factor to the success of this farmer is that the lack of tenure security leaves the farmer unable to scale-up operations and simultaneously anxious about whether any investments towards farming operations would be worth the risk.
In another instance, four farmers, three men and one woman had been allocated land on a portion of a single farm that had been divided into four portions. The farmers had been given official documentation confirming their five-year lease, however, at the time of the interview these leases had now lapsed and the farmers have found themselves in “no man’s land” – where the previous lease agreement has expired but the new lease agreement has yet to be issued. In essence, they had been found to have no formal tenure rights even though they proved their ability to farm and have farmed on the same land for over five years. The interview further revealed that in anticipation of the possibility of receiving land under an extended tenure arrangement, the farmers were building their herds and overstocking which naturally led to overgrazing of the pasture. Moreover, the lack of tenure security and uncertainty about the farmland they would end up with served to deter all the farmers from engaging in a capital renewal of their farming enterprise, thus once again, the lack of tenure security impeded on the long-term investments farmers need to make in order to scale up operations.
Reconciling Tenure Security and Land Reform
These cases highlight the complexity of tenure security, as it pertains to land reform beneficiaries. An immediate solution to this tension may centre around the scrapping of leasehold agreements, this however, misdiagnoses the actual problem. The leasehold agreements were introduced as a measure to: deter farmers from under-utilising the land allocated to them and simultaneously halting the resale of farms acquired under the land reform programme. Officials were using the leasehold arrangement to safeguard the land reform programme, as both of the aforementioned practices undermined agricultural productivity and the racial composition of land ownership[2].
In an attempt to solve one or a series of problems, an unintended consequence of the current tenure arrangement, is that it ironically provokes tenure insecurity. There is of course the case of being in “no man’s land”, but farmers equally expressed concerns about the prized 30-year lease. Would a 30-year lease be upgraded? Would it allow for the children of beneficiaries to inherit the land? What would happen to the investments made on the farm after the end of the 30-year lease? Moreover, some commercial banks in the Eastern Cape province do not recognise the farmland owned under leasehold as a form of collateral, therefore, limiting the ability of farmers to raise credit and invest in productive activities.
A Vision for Land Reform
In spite of the issues captured here, the rationale for a land reform programme that seeks to broaden South Africa’s agricultural sector while reducing rural poverty still holds. South Africa’s land reform programme and much of the debate has however, been hampered by a narrow focus on redistribution targets (the amount of land reallocated) and modalities of transferring ownership (willing seller-willing-buyer, expropriation without compensation), but very little focus has been on supporting the very beneficiaries of land reform.
Due to the number of factors impacting the success of land reform beneficiaries, a number of inter-governmental and policy shifts are required. However, a key conclusion emanating from the paper and the ISASAR project is the importance of aligning land reform with a broader agenda of agrarian reform. Agrarian reform involves changing access to land (redistribution) as well as terms of access (tenure security – the key issue highlighted here), but it is also much broader in that it tackles social relations and the range of interventions required to ensure the success of South Africa’s small-scale farmers.
As highlighted here, the relationship between tenure security and land reform underscores that the path is indeed not a smooth one. The failure however, in any land reform programme lies not in the decision to go down the path, but rather learning the necessary lessons and subsequently adjusting to the new terrain.
[1] The paper was submitted to the 21st annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, which was subsequently postponed following the COVID-19 outbreak.
[2] A public policy position that seeks to reverse centuries of land alienation and dispossession.