Focus on new thinking on land reform

An informal group of land experts met in South Africa recently at the invitation of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) to analyse contraints to sustainable land reform in Southern Africa. Several countries in the region face chronic land problems which have roots in the dispossession of Africans under colonialism and apartheid, or an "unbalanced" approach to land allocation in post-independence policies. "In all cases, there is a general failure by governments to integrate land policy into either a rural development strategy or a wider social and economic development vision," said a report on the 'think-tank' meeting. "Governments have also failed to allocate the financial and human resources needed to address land problems. At the same time, donors have found it increasingly difficult to justify the allocation of aid resources to land reform in the region. This reluctance is due to the lack of viable policies and programmes and is also a response to policy trends - in practice if not in rhetorical terms - away from the pro-poor agenda that donors feel should be the focus of land reform policies," the 14-member think-tank noted. WILLING-BUYER, WILLING-SELLER "We are concerned over the lack of real progress with redistributive land reform in South Africa and Namibia, and faltering or uneven processes in other countries," the experts said. Part of the reason has been the principle of "willing-buyer, willing-seller" which was insisted upon by the British during Zimbabwe's independence negotiations. The willing-seller side of the equation is an obstacle to "any form of systematic designation of land for redistribution", the think-tank observed. This condition was not imposed by donors funding South Africa's land reform process during 1994 to 1999. "There are unreconstructed power relationships in South Africa, in Zimbabwe until recently, and Namibia. These formal and informal power structures [the banks, for example] are rigged against emergent black farmers. When you are supposed to have willing-buyer, willing-seller what you often get is an unequal relationship," Oxfam land policy adviser, Robin Palmer, told IRIN. As a result of economic disempowerment under structural adjustment programmes, land reform has become all the more important. "Land is often all that people have as a bottom line for livelihood security," Palmer said. South African land expert Scott Drimie explained that, for Southern Africa, there is also a context of restitution. "The primary reason is about history. There are vast inequalities that have to be addressed for historical and economic reasons ... A comprehensive rural development strategy will help those marginalised on the periphery." However, the think-tank cautioned: "The misfit between land policy and rural development is most evident where land reform is being pursued by a government primarily as a 'quasi-constitutional right' or a means of redressing past injustices, rather than as a basis for sustainable rural livelihoods ... Redressing gross racial imbalances in land ownership and access is one thing; recreating sustainable livelihoods on the land is infinitely more difficult." "All the southern African countries face a huge crisis in land access and use as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Their agricultural sectors are in a moribund state due to unfavourable international terms of trade and the structural constraints facing especially small-scale farmers in the wider context of the global economy." SMALL-SCALE VERSUS LARGE-SCALE However, there are ideological differences at the heart of the issue of land reform. "Debates about land reform everywhere have seen a confrontation between those who believe that land reform must be centred on the redistribution of ownership (or land rights over) productive agricultural land in favour of the rural poor, and those opposed to extensive redistribution who wish the reform to focus on measures to raise agricultural productivity and/or create a new class of (black) African commercial farmers," the two-day meeting noted. But Drimie believes that the small-scale versus large-scale debate "may in many ways be a false dichotomy in terms of policy choices". Rather than a blanket model, a more nuanced blend based on location (climate, land suitability) and resources within a context of rural development would better achieve poverty alleviation. The meeting, organised by FAO-Zimbabwe and the Southern African Regional Poverty Network, was also critical of donor responses to land reform. "Donors in Southern Africa increasingly see assistance to land reform as politically sensitive and complex, likely to result in negative consequences, whatever the moral foundation, and therefore best avoided. In addition, recipient governments have become suspicious that donors, by insisting on a range of conditions - a 'pro-poor' focus, the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle, maintaining economic stability - are using support to land reform as a neo-colonialist 'Trojan Horse', which in some cases is also perpetuating racial imbalances in land ownership." The report commented: "What is clear is that donors should not walk away when things turn sour, but rather tread carefully and maintain a base flow of support. Nor should they give up on promoting a redistribution agenda, notwithstanding the disaster unfolding in Zimbabwe, which seems to have become the reference point in spite of it really being the 'very worst case scenario'." View the report at: www.sarpn.org.za