Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
• Employing financial grants in such a way as to motivate buyers to seek profitable
opportunities and provide the necessary incentives for sellers to relinquish their land in
exchange for commensurate cash reward.
• Gives flexibility to the beneficiaries in the choice of enterprise as well as level of
investment, etc.
• A decentralized institutional structure that incorporates mentorship after start-up.
Implicit in the theory behind the market-assisted land reform as seen by the World Bank, and
the design criteria for the South African programme (see Aliber, 1996; Van Zyl and Binswanger,
1996; Lund, 1996 and others) is a recognition of the centrality of efficient utilization of the
re-distributed land. The willing-buyer-willing-seller framework foresees a situation where
only people genuinely interested in retaining the land in its current use are attracted to buy
the land. The RDP was very emphatic on the need to use land productively for agricultural
and other productive pursuits. According to the RDP, the land reform programme was to
be a mechanism for building 'the economy by generating large-scale employment, increasing
rural incomes and eliminating overcrowding' (African National Congress, 1994). Again, this
question was so important that the RDP endorsed the instrument of a land tax which would
be used to 'free up underutilized land…and promote the productive use of land' (African
National Congress, 1994). But, interestingly, the RDP also asserts that 'land is the most basic
need for rural dwellers' (African National Congress, 1994).
In terms of actual programme content, the recent document released by the Department of
Land Affairs in preparation for the 2005 Land Summit provides a comprehensive account of
what is being done on the land reform programme in the country (DLA/DoA, 2005). This
account is all the more authentic for the fact that it is being presented more than a decade
after the scheme has been operational and therefore includes also the lessons learnt from the
implementation and some of the remedial actions taken to correct mistakes. A number of
official documents and academic publications have also been produced in recent times to
provide insights into the background and implementation of the land reform programme
in South Africa. As has been indicated elsewhere, the land reform programme is being
implemented through three main elements, namely the land redistribution programme,
restitution, and tenure reform. These three components of the land reform programme are
briefly reviewed in the next few sections.
Land redistribution
This component of the land reform programme is considered the 'flagship' of the
programme (DoA/DLA, 2005). At first, the scheme defined the rather ambitious goal of
transferring 30% of the nation's land (about 24 million hectares of agricultural land) to
black ownership by 1999. The expectation was that about 3 million people would benefit
from this programme. The bulk of this land is held under commercial large-scale agriculture
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