South Africa struggles with the reality of land reform

South Africa is much in the news these days - and much of it is positive. The country which suffered under apartheid less than 20 years ago is now a thriving emerging economy, looking forward with great pride and anticipation to hosting the World Cup, and President Zuma seems to be largely enjoying his State Visit to the UK - snide commentaries from much of the UK media about his polygamy aside.

But back at home, the challenges of land reform is raising its head - again. Hardly a surprise - land reform in developing countries is one of the most critical elements of sustainable development. Some say that is true in the developed world as well - but those voices are more marginal. And as it becomes increasingly clear that agriculture - long dismissed from dominant international development circles as unimportant - is a clear and strong pathway out of poverty, land ownership, land rights and land use is one of the most critical spaces for the triple-p (people-planet-profit) of sustainable development.

For South Africa, one of the major challenges is how to put land - farmland - into the hands of 'the people' (specifically black people) who do not necessarily have the capacity or experience of farming at the same level of production as the white people who owned the land prior to 1994. At that point, 90% of the land was owned by the white community who made up less than 10% of the population. The government had set a target of 2014 as a time when 1/3 of the land would be redistributed to the black majority. In 2009, that was at less than 6%. And now it is going back on that promise.

Their reason: of those farms which have been given back to the black majority, 90% are not profitable. As a result, the state is loosing revenue. The state is clearly not happy about this - and is now instituting a 'use it or loose it' policy. But one has to wonder what else is going on - are those farmers really getting the support they need to learn how to use the land? Keeping land in the hands of whites may make for greater production in the long term, but it is unlikely to lead to a landed populace - and risks future unrest. If black ownership does not lead to productive land, a hard question becomes, what would help the people the most - taking back the land (and thus, for many, their sense of identity, culture, ownership, and their livlihood and their immediate pathway out of poverty) and giving it to those who are familiar with what is needed to make it productive - or putting greater investments into building farmers capacity to use the land well?