The Land Question in South
Africa
An Historical and Policy
Perspective from Kwazulu-Natal
Giuliano Martiniello
PhD Student, School of Politics
and International Studies, University of Leeds
Introduction:
“It delves into the past only beacause otherwise would be
impossible understanding how the present came into being
and what the trends are for the near future”
(Rodney, 1972)
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Section 1: Longue Dureé of Rural Historical
Transformations; Political Economy of Resources
and Development; Indirect Rule.
Section 2: Case study of a rural community KwaNgcolosi
Section 3: Understanding the limits, challenges
and the way forward of Land Reform
The Colonial Context
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Land dispossession, privatization and primitive
accumulation (Boers occupation of Natalia 1839
- free grant 2500ha - and then British alienation
of land 1843 and the imperial land grant system
- quitrent)
Uneven Racial distribution of Land: the locations
system and the roots of segregation (The Natal
Native Commission 1846-47 under Shepstone)
Origins of Indirect Rule: governing Africans
through the Tradtional Authorities (Mamdani,
1996)
The Invention of Tradition (Ranger,1982) and
the Creation of Tribalism (Vail, 1989)
Locations and Mission Reserves
Table of Land alienation in the British
colony of Natal
Farms granted to Voortrekkers and
Native Locations
Uneven distribution of land between
Treekers and “Newcomers”
Settlers, Peasants, Preachers
and Sugar Production
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White economic power: freehold property, capitalist
production for the export market and wage labour
(sugar plantation and coal mines)
Colonial state assistance (not only the “forces” of the
market) and African taxation (hut tux and isibalo, 18481849, - one men every 11 huts -)
First black capitalist attempts in Natal: the Kolwa and
missionaries (Etherington, 1977)
Limits and constraints of sugar cane production: African
indebtedness and Indian agricultural success.
Merchant, rentier and finance capital: the speculation of
Natal Land Colonization Company
Selected “Tribes” and Chiefs in Inanda
The undermining effect of privatization
of Land in Inanda: “the county garden”
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Mqawe, The Qadi chief, considered private property as a corrosive
element of the bonds of the chiefdoms
By 1860 intensive sugar production boomed, between 1864 and
1874 the number of acres under cultivation rose from 5000 to over
12.000.
Rising up the (inflated) prices of land from £1 or £2 per acre
All the land outside the location and mission reserve had been
privatized (Natal Land Colonization Company)
Merchant brookers and financiers became to take control of sugar
production itself
Centralization of the aspects of industrial production
1860 and 1911 some 152.000 indentured immigrants were brought
to Natal
Up until the 1890 there were 4000-5000 African tenants (who paid
monetary rent on farms, then squeezed by a sugar expansion and
Indian competition - 14.000 in the 1870, 6000 were indentured, the
other 8.000 were agriculturalists (Hughes, 1980)
Draconian Colonial Laws and
Ecological events 1893-1910
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The Police Force was expanded in 1894
Master and Servant law 1886
Indian discrimination legislation in the 1890s
The Native Code 1891
Rising of rent on Crown Lands and new rents on Mission
Reserves 1903
The Agricultural Development Act of 1904 and Land and
Agricultural Fund Act of 1907
The Poll Tax 1905
1913 The Native Land Act
From 1888 severe droughts
A severe infestation of locusts 1894-1896
The rinderpest 1897-1898 and the east coast fever in
the early 1900
1920-1930 ICU Resistance in town and countryside
The Fall of a Peasantry?
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From rent tenants, sharecroppers and
labour tenants to farm workers?: the
compexity and variety of social relations in
the countryside
Migrant labour
The semiproletarianization thesis: uneven
and combined development
The evolution of the Bantustan system
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1951 the Bantu Authorities Act was passed: this act
changed the status of the reserves into “homelands”.
1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act was
passed
1960-1970 3 million rural African people were removed
from the so-called black spots. Thus the forcible removal
of Africans from their ancestral lands that begun during
the wars of conquest and extended by the 1913 Land
act is being continued today on an even larger scale, see
the “betterment scheme”.
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SPP
Group areas Act and the use of migrant labour
Zulu Territorial Authority, Homeland Citizenship Act: the
creation of an unified geo-political entity.
A rural community within the “ex-locations”in the
21st Century: The case of Kwangcolosi
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The majority of the household are women headed or males are absent for large
period of the week or of the month.
The average size of the household is 7.3 people, with a majority of people under 18
and women over 40 years old.
High degree of dependence of non rural income, including pensions or other state
grants and migrant wage remittances
High population densities, some landnessness and a large portion of households
without livestock.
Weak or absent support systems for agriculture and other land based livelihoods,
together with constrained access to input or output markets; consequences include
under-cultivation and lack of interest in farming by youth
Food insecurity at household level, resulting in malnutrition.
Rising levels of unemployment in the formal sector mean that migration to urban
areas is not the sole answer to rural poverty.
Circular movement between rural and urban areas, commuter and weekly or monthly
returns of male as well as female labourers. Every family has a least one person
involved in circular migration.
The majority perform unskilled works, mainly domestic workers (“garden boys and
kitchen girls”)
Although poverty is widespread, the rural population is socially differentiated and
pockets of (relative) wealth and privilege exist
Despite the highly adverse conditions, land based livelihoods (including the use of
natural resources held in common – wood for cooking and to build huts, water
streams, medicinal and other curative plants, pasture for cattle –
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De-peasantization and de-agrarianization, expressed in the fact that on 43
households surveyed, the average of ha per plot is 0.7 ha, with more than 50% with
plots between 0 and 0.2 ha and just 20% with 2 ha or more. Land not used
extensively. Less then half had their field fenced. Less then 10% produces regularly
to sell produce on the market. People have no assistance for tools, fertilizers, small
irrigation schemes and access to market.
Rural dwellers, especially women deeply value the pursuit of farming activities.
Food self-provisioning is gaining in importance against a backdrop of food price
inflation (bread and vegetables above all but also cooking oil) and proliferating cash
needs.
That a market in non registered land is in continuous transformation changing the
composition of the communities even though strong controls of new entrants are
demanded.
Families spend the greatest part of their income in buying food, then other recurrent
expenses are water and electricity, transport and funerals.
Medium-Low levels of education
Low level of sanitary services (very few families use municipal toilets).
All have had a rural past where their families were involved in farming and cattle
rearing
Low levels of participation to the decision making at local level (people are informed
of what happens or will occur)
Research reveals that rural people see tenure as secure de facto as it is linked to
being members of the community but that a secure access to land and resources
underpins multiple livelihoods strategies.
Market-Based Land Reform:
success or failure after 14 years?
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At the end of the Apartheid government virtually all commercial
farmland (86% of all farmlands and 68% of the total surface area)
was in the hands of white minority and concentrated in the hands
of 60.000 owners (Bernstein, 1996).
Target to redistribute 30 of land% in five years.
In 2006 3.4 million of hectares have been transferred through the
various branches of Land reform, benefiting an estimate of 1,2
million of peole.
In 2007, 43% has been transferred trough the redistribution
programme, with lesser amount being transferred through land
resitituion, state land disposal and land tenure.
The total transferred is equivalent to 4.7% of the agricultural land
in white ownership in 1994
Redistribution 43.8%, Restitution 29.9,% State land disposal 22.6%,
Tenure Reform 3.7.
MBLR in South Africa has managed to transfer relatively small
amounts of land, an average of around 0.36% of the targeted
agricultural land per annum, and only about 6% of the total land
transacted through the deeds registry every year.
Limits and Constraints
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Landowner veto on participation in land
reform
Payment of ‘market prices’ for land
Self-selection of beneficiaries
Focus on ‘commercial’ forms of production
Prominent role for the private sector in
provision of credit, extension and other
services
Monopolization and Speculation of Land
Conclusions
South Africa’s government has focused attention on land
reform in the narrowest sense (transfer of land) and
and has left the structures of land ownership and the
agricultural economy not only intact but largely
unchallenged. Framed within a neo-liberal architecture of
macroeconomic policies and the ideological demise of
the role of the state, it has refused to intervene
decisively on the part of the landless (either via the
market or otherwise) or to challenge the interests of
established landowners and agricultural capital in any
way, policy based on MBLR has shown itself to be
incapable of fundamentally changing the conditions
which recreate poverty, landlessness and inequality.
Unthinking Marked Based Land Reform: towards
Encompassing Agrarian Reform.