South Africa's land reform programme: Undermining livelihoods of farm workers?

In a recent article researchers Ruth Hall (PLAAS) and Thembela Kepe (University of Toronto) highlights how the current model of land reform involving state purchase of land  through the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy has had detrimental consequences for farm workers. In fact it appears that farm workers have largely been ignored by the land reform programme since its inception. Hall and Kepe (2017: 6-7) write that:

The proactive purchase model means that, from the moment of transfer, when farms become state property, all commercial operations cease, with profound impacts on farm workers – who are usually also resident on farm. When government buys farms, farm workers lose their jobs and often their only sources of cash income. In contrast, the (usually white) farm owners who sell to the state are paid out in full and can create alternative livelihoods elsewhere. Farm workers – without their own capital to invest, and without leases or any recognised rights to the land – are therefore isolated from development opportunities. Some former farm workers who continue to live on the farms expressed feelings of deep insecurity, now that they are not employees of private farmers, but undocumented occupiers of state-owned land.

They argue that:

Special consideration may be needed to treat farm dwellers differently from other beneficiaries, especially to avoid the pattern of farm workers losing their jobs as a result of state acquisition.

Their research in the Eastern Cape also highlights cases where government has leased the land directly to the strategic partner rather than the "beneficiaries" themselves.

In the two cases we came across, the agribusiness company itself started the project and, having acquired farms from the state, signed up the farm workers as ‘beneficiaries’ to be registered in the official database... Strategic partners and mentors garner tangible benefits: mentors receive monthly cash payments from the state for playing this role, while strategic partners hold shares in joint ventures while benefiting from state subsidies and access to state land ... In one case, the ‘strategic partner’ was an agribusiness which ran the PLAS farm as its own operation, directly siphoning the produce to its processing facility, without payment to the ‘beneficiaries’, whom it treated as employees (and paid below minimum wage) on the farm the state claimed to have bought for them. 

Evidence presented by Hall and Kepe (2017: 5) suggests that the DRDLR has become involved informal and illegal evictions on properties acquired for land reform and that there is a widespread failure to secure the tenire rights of people accessing land through the land redistribution programme.

In one case, a family was granted permission to occupy a state farm (without a lease), and asked by the DRDLR to deliver an informal eviction notice to those already occupying it. This is possibly the opposite of the vision of secure long-term rights for black South Africans which was at the core of land reform as envisaged in the 1990s; it was to end the situation of precarious tenure that colonial and apartheid governments entrenched. Situations in which people either have no documented rights, or have caretakerships or expired leases produce high degrees of uncertainty, leading people to avoid investment in land use, production or maintenance of infrastructure. This means that ‘beneficiaries’ have little or no tenure security. 

The Finance and Fiscal Commission conducted a study (2016) to investigate the macroeconomic impacts of the land reform programme. This found that “to date, overall, land reform has had a net negative effect on job creation and productivity of farms, primarily as a result of land no longer being used for crop production. The study illustrates “a drastic decrease in production since land was transferred ... most farms show little or no agricultural activity, with on-farm beneficiaries earning little or no income, and the bulk of working beneficiaries being employed on surrounding commercial farms”.

These trends highlight the need for an in-depth research project on the impacts of land reform on farm workers and fresh thinking about farm worker rights and entitlements within the land reform programme.

References

Financial and Fiscal Commission, Submission for the Division of Revenue 2017/18, Ch. 4, ‘National Land Reform Program­me and Rural Development’, p68.

Finance and Fiscal Commission 2016 National Land Reform Programme and Rural Development. Policy brief No 3.

Hall, R., & Kepe, T. (2017). Elite capture and state neglect: new evidence on South Africa’s land reform. Review of African Political Economy, 44(151)