With more than 80% of the South African land surface still legally in the hands of whites, it is a puzzle that the land question does not feature prominently in current political and economic debates.
However one looks at things, land inequality remains one of the main indicators of social differentiation — and, indeed, it is at the heart of the struggle for citizenship and against poverty. My contribution attempts to unravel this puzzle and pose questions that go deeper than a mere assessment of land reform — a topic that, despite its importance, is exhausted by now.
The colonial context is vital to understanding the land question in South Africa. In a nutshell, colonialism divided the South African landscape between white-claimed territories that made up the bulk of the land (over 90% in 1913), and the rest of the country, which was designated as reserves for African occupation.
There was a further division between urban and rural areas. In the white-claimed portions, the rural areas were converted into modern commercial farms that benefited from substantial state subsidies and, most importantly, cheap black labour. After the Natives Land Act of 1913, blacks were not legally permitted to buy and own land in these areas. They were destined to be poorly paid workers on these farms.
Initial efforts by black producers to compete with their white counterparts were stifled by the colonial demand for labour. This led to the large-scale proletarianisation of Africans, a growing majority of whom now reside permanently in the urban areas, while a minority retain tenuous links with the reserves as migrant workers.
This is what the ANC-led government inherited in 1994.
No one — not even President Thabo Mbeki — disputes that land reform in South Africa in its current form is a dismal failure. In the past 13 years, only about 4% of white-claimed agricultural land has been transferred. The debate is really about the reasons for this failure.
There are two broad positions in this regard. There are those who argue that existing policies are coherent and that the problem lies with implementation. Others, including myself, agree that there are problems with implementation, but argue that the problem is much deeper than that.
The reality is that structural constraints in the current land reform programme make it impossible to embark on a radical land redistribution programme. The very Constitution that guarantees formal equality before the law also entrenches material inequality, especially in the distribution of land ownership. The entrenchment of the property clause in the Constitution is a major obstacle to the achievement of even the limited objectives of the land reform programme.
In South Africa, it is impossible to satisfy equally both the need to protect property rights and to ensure a policy of equitable distribution of land.
The compromise reached at the negotiating table in the early 1990s clearly favoured the existing property holders, and it is this which is responsible for the dismal failure of land reform.
The fact that the Constitution allows for the expropriation of land does not alter this position. The recognition of property rights creates favourable conditions for property holders and their allies to contest expropriation in court. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the state is reluctant to use expropriation as a tool. It therefore makes sense to call for a fundamental revision of both the policy and the mechanisms for its implementation.
It is intriguing that a judge in apartheid South Africa had far better insights into the need for equity than the post-1994 regime. Addressing the issue of a Bill of Rights on the eve of the collapse of apartheid in the late 1980s, Judge Didcott warned: “What a Bill of Rights cannot afford to do here … is to protect private property with such zeal that it entrenches privilege. A major problem which any future South African government is bound to face will be the problem of poverty, of its alleviation and of the need for the country’s wealth to be shared more equitably …
“Should a Bill of Rights obstruct the government of the day when that direction is taken, should it make the urgent task of social or economic reform impossible or difficult to undertake, we shall have on our hands a crisis of the first order, endangering the Bill of Rights as a whole and the survival of constitutional government itself.”
These insights are as pertinent today as they were in the late 1980s.
This takes us to the question of why, despite its importance, the land question appears to be marginalised. Indeed, some have prematurely contended that there is no land question in this country in the form of demand for land. According to this view, we are faced with a labour problem and a demand for jobs.
I contest the notion that there is no land question. Part of the problem is that those who hold this view have a parochial and restrictive view: for them, the land question is about agriculture and rural areas. To restrict the land question only to agriculture, however, amounts to falling into the colonial mentality of separating the rural and the urban, on the one hand, and creates a false impression that there is no land question in urban areas, on the other.
If there is no land question in urban areas, how do we explain the rise and spread of informal settlements, which often arise out of illegal occupation of vacant — in most cases, municipal –land? There is a clear need for a more nuanced conception that incorporates the quest for land in both urban and rural areas.
Unfortunately, this narrow definition of the land question has shaped the form of organisation of land and agrarian movements in South Africa. They do not seem to see the relationship between the demand for land for agriculture in the countryside and the struggles of those in urban areas around housing, for example. The same isolation can be seen among those struggling for land in the mining industry. In many ways, this explains the weakness of these movements. They marginalise themselves.
That there is demand for land in South Africa is beyond doubt. The persistent evictions and violence on farms, the unabated spread of informal settlements in urban areas, land invasions in rural areas, struggles in the mining industry and so on, are all manifestations of the demand.
Most of these, especially in the rural areas and mining industry, take the form of “hidden struggles”, hidden particularly from the media. Since no one reports them, there is often an assumption that they do not exist. It is for this reason that an alliance between rural and urban social movements becomes a necessity for those who are committed to equity in the form of fundamental land redistribution.
There is indeed a degree of urgency to resolve the land question in South Africa. The fact that the current division of land is safeguarded by the Constitution is no guarantee of its legitimacy. The unequal division of land, premised on conquest, is a constant reminder to the majority that they remain excluded from the ownership of their country. Seen in this way, the claims about land are directly linked to the meaning of citizenship after 1994.
Finally, it is time for South Africans to learn from the Zimbabwean experience. In that country, about 50% of the land was taken by white settlers. This is nothing compared to South Africa. Further, for nearly two decades after independence, it appeared as though there was no land question in Zimbabwe.
One important lesson to draw from Zimbabwe’s experience is that land inequality that is rooted in colonial conquest and violent dispossession does not easily melt away. A closely related lesson is the need to address the land question proactively and democratically to avert, in the memorable words of Judge Didcott, “a crisis of the first order”.
Lungisile Ntsebeza is associate professor in the department of sociology, University of Cape Town, and a chief research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council