The land question in smallholder development in South Africa - Institutional Constraints to Small Farmer Development in Southern Africa - page 181

thing, along with the subsidies, the farmers faced state-established producer prices that
far exceeded world prices for the commodities such as maize (Van Schalkwyk, 1995). The
farmers were also being provided technical support and information about latest research
findings on mechanical and biological technology which meant that they could continue
to make profits as they expanded hectarage.
And this they did as a rational economic behaviour. Brand et al. (1992) noted that large
stretches of land came under maize as farmers strove for more and more profits. The
upshot naturally was the South African agricultural sector, while generating some of the
highest surpluses on the continent, became increasingly environmentally and economically
unsustainable. Van Zyl (1989) concluded that for that period, the substantial surpluses
being generated did not benefit the country in any meaningful way but rather resulted in a
welfare loss for the country as a whole.
Given this realization, it was inevitable that some rationalization would be put in place. Van
Schalkwyk (1995) shows that the deregulation of the agricultural sector was actually part
of an economy-wide financial sector liberalization that began in the early 1980s to mitigate
the macroeconomic effects of the past agricultural support policies. It must be borne in
mind that this era also witnessed the intensification of the global condemnation of the
repressive regime in South Africa which was being expressed in stifling economic sanctions
and almost complete curtailment of contacts with the regime. Without a doubt, therefore,
the forces that led to the South African government to consider agricultural restructuring
were multiple, coming from both their own policy actions and the impact of the global
fight against apartheid.
Along with the financial and economic reforms, the government obviously saw that the
apartheid system was unsustainable and that sooner rather than later, there would be
accounting to do. From the mid-1980s, a number of locations within the former homelands
were identified for agricultural development. The aim was to establish a core of black farmers
who would 'emerge' into commercial agriculture. Qwaqwa was one of the former homeland
areas identified for agricultural development by the previous government ( Jordaan
and Jooste, 2004). The idea was to select a set of former employees of the government
agricultural support parastatal known as Agriqwa and settle them on land expropriated
from white commercial farmers. According to Jordaan and Jooste (2004), approximately
55,000 ha of land were expropriated between 1979 and 1986, divided up and equipped
with the necessary infrastructure for modern and sustainable farming. Farm sizes vary from
250 ha to 1000 ha depending on the potential and type of farm.
Another systematic study of the changing policy environment at this time was conducted by
Claasen (2000) to analyze the situation of the group of 114 black farmers who participated
in the land settlement scheme in the former black 'homeland' of Qwaqwa in 1989. These