Poverty among land reform beneficiaries

Although the community of Clipstone in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province has benefited from South Africa's land reform programme, they have not escaped poverty.

Researchers from the University of KZN produced two reports on Clipstone, which was established by the beneficiaries of land reform grants. The latest, 'Possible Causes of Poverty Within a Group of Land Reform Beneficiaries in the Midlands of KZN', found that female-headed and larger households remained vulnerable to shocks and were least likely to escape chronic poverty.

In 1999 farm workers and their families living on Sherwood Farm in the KZN Midlands applied to the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) for land acquisition grants of R15,000 (US $2,483) per beneficiary household to purchase a 630 hectare subdivision of the farm.

A conditional agreement of sale was then negotiated on their behalf but, in the meantime, "38 beneficiary households relocated to the 'new' farm, while waiting for the DLA to award their grants and complete the land transaction. These moves were premature, in the sense that the farm was occupied without the benefit of a land-use plan or essential services," the researchers said.

The newly settled owners faced an immediate problem: the land they had bought and settled on could not sustain their collective herd of 300 cattle, according to the first report on Clipstone, 'Symptoms of Poverty within a Group of Land Reform Beneficiaries in the Midlands of KZN', published in 2003.

"Some livestock died during the winter of 2002 and many had to be sold, owing to their poor condition," the study noted.

The community also lacked the resources to invest in both cattle and adequate housing: some were living in inadequate housing but owned more cattle; others had adequate housing but few cattle.

State pensions were "keeping about one-third of Clipstone's households out of chronic poverty. Unfortunately, pension payments will become less and less effective at alleviating poverty over the next two decades, [as] at present only 12 percent of Clipstone's population is older than 45 years of age".

Households had "different poverty profiles": some had low incomes while others had low wealth (including assets such as cattle); others had both "low incomes and low wealth and were living in abject poverty," the researchers noted.

"Contrary to expectations, the poorest households at Clipstone have not benefited much from their land grants, as they do not own cattle. For them, investing their land grants as equity in a joint venture with a commercial farmer may have been a better option," the authors concluded.

In the new report, published last month, researchers found that "almost 25 percent of the sample households (mostly large, female-headed families) belong to ... [the lowest] income and asset-poor group".

The researchers suggest that key policy interventions would be: "education and vocational training, especially for women; better access to transport, jobs and banking facilities (to mobilise savings) in the long run; and improved and better targeting of social welfare grants for the chronically poor in the short run".

These interventions would also increase the demand for family planning and contraception "which, in turn, ought to reduce family sizes and the premature loss of breadwinners through HIV/AIDS".

For the full reports:
Possible Causes of Poverty within a Group of Land Reform Beneficiaries in
the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal
Symptoms of Poverty within a Group of Land Reform Beneficiaries in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal