By Felicity Duncan
As we roll toward the election, there is a lot of talk in South Africa about the land reform debate. It’s high time to debunk some of (what I think are) the myths that surround this issue.
- It’s a “debate”
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The first myth is that there is a debate with two equal sides. In fact, around 70% of South Africans support land reform, agreeing that the government should redistribute land to black South Africans. Only about 20% of South Africans disagree (everyone else doesn’t know what to think). And before anyone suggests that this is a legacy issue, it’s worth noting that the Born Free generation favours land reform by a wider margin at 80% than the Grand Apartheid generation (born between 1945 and 1959) at 61%.
In other words, the debate is an unbalanced one, with the vast majority of South Africans enthusiastic about land reform. In a democracy, this gives land reform serious moral force.
With such widespread support, especially among the young, an accelerating land reform programme is basically inevitable, despite vocal opposition by a moneyed elite. This is particularly true given that the EFF is attacking the ANC on this issue from the left. Any practical debate, therefore, should focus on the scale and nature of land reform, rather than whether it should happen – because that debate is already over.
- It’s about farms – and it should be
The second myth is that this is, fundamentally, about farmland. A lot of the press attention around the issue has focused on farmland. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the transfer of quality farmland to black hands has been horribly slow. The proportion of top-quality farmland in white hands has hardly changed since the apartheid era. Some blame the corruption of the initial ANC-led land reform process, others the lack of qualified new farmers, others the intransigence of white farmers. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that not much has changed for farm ownership since the late 1980s.
The second reason is that South Africa, like all other nations, has a romantic idea about farming. I’ve lived in the US and Europe, and it’s the same everywhere – politicians talk about family farms and “the land” as an almost-religious matter. Farms and farming are the spiritual home of national pride. Thus, in ANC rhetoric, there is a lot of talk about land and cattle and growing food. This is not unique to SA or to the ANC.
However, this focus on farmland obscures the reality that most economically disadvantaged South Africans are not interested in farming. They, like most of the peers around the world, want to live in or near cities. South Africa has experienced dramatic urbanisation over the last 25 years and few of the newly-urbanised want to go back to the farm.
This harping on farmland has meant that far too little attention has been paid to the most pressing area of land unhappiness – access to decent urban housing. When young people say they want land reform, there’s little reason to think that they want a smallholding so they can raise chickens. What they want is some hope of having a home that is not three hours away from the city centre with no decent transit links.
Apartheid-era urban development meant that SA’s cities are not designed for ease of access. And most of the land that poorer South Africans do have is far away from the places that have jobs and is under-serviced by roads, electric networks, sewer lines, and basic services. This is the land in need of reform.
- It’s about the commanding heights of the economy
The third myth is that land reform is about big-E Economics. It’s not. It’s about little-e economics. While land issues related to commercial farming and large-scale mining attract the most attention – and are important, of course – the land issues that matter most to families are of a much smaller scale. Consider this tale from the Irish Times.
On the face of it, it’s a story about control of farmland. But scratch the surface and you’ll see that it’s actually not that at all. The people squatting on Farmer Smit’s land are not looking to start a vineyard or to seize the means of production. They want somewhere to live that is not hours away from town and they’re tired of being told they can’t have that.
All people generally have the same aspirations. They want a nice home, a job that pays enough to meet their needs, a safe environment, decent public services, a reasonable commute, and the promise of a good future for their children. That is what land reform needs to be about – making that dream a reality for more people.
SA clearly has a serious lack of affordable housing that is properly connected to urban centres. Its cities are not thoughtfully designed to make commuting straightforward. And too many South Africans occupy land that they have lived on for years but do not have a title to, giving them no way to develop the land or improve their circumstances.
Land reform needs to deal with these micro-level problems. This is not to say that the macro problems aren’t important, they are. But for most South Africans, for most voters who support land reform, a micro-focus would yield the biggest payoffs.
