IRIN Web Special on land reform in Southern Africa

The colonial histories of Southern African countries have influenced the land reform debate. But whether land is in the hands of a white minority or a black elite, redistribution in favour of the poor remains an emotive issue.

Countries that were "settled" under colonialism - Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe - share a similar profile of racially skewed land distribution, dual tenure systems based on received law and customary law, and a dispossessed black rural population confined to degraded and overcrowded communal lands.

Land issues in "non-settled" countries tend to be more strongly associated with landlessness, environmental degradation, loss of land to peri-urban settlement, high population growth, unsustainable land use and weak systems of land administration, according to a synthesis of land issues in Southern Africa presented at a World Bank regional workshop last year.

"The main justification for land reform in post-colonial Southern Africa has been the repossession and redistribution of freehold land to achieve a more equitable balance in land ownership, as well as to raise the economic and social well being of the African population, in order to redress past wrongs and to address the consequences of colonial land practices," John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group (ICG) told IRIN.

"In addition to land redistribution, land tenure reform is a crucial aspect of land reform," he added. "The aims of tenure reform are to enhance the land rights of the poor, to secure their control over the land they use and occupy, and to devolve power over land administration and management to local democratic institutions."

The ICG is preparing a study on land reform in the subregion.

Land is a highly charged issue. South African land expert Scott Drimie explained that, for Southern Africa, reform must be seen in the context of restitution. "The primary reason is about history. There are vast inequalities that have to be addressed for historical and economic reasons."

POVERTY REDUCTION

According to Oxfam's land policy adviser, Robin Palmer, because of economic disempowerment as a result of 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."

Land reform is not merely about asset redistribution. Ideally it should form part of a policy of poverty reduction within a framework of rural development. Land resettlement should, therefore, be buttressed by the provision of clinics, roads, schools, access to agricultural inputs and markets.

The reality has been that governments have failed to allocate the financial and human resources needed to address the land issue, said a think-tank of land experts who met earlier this year in South Africa to analyse constraints on sustainable land reform in Southern Africa.

"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.

"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."

The think-tank meeting was organised by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation Zimbabwe and the Southern African Regional Poverty Network.

A common view is that governments in the region have been complicit in the preservation of land alienated by a powerful elite. Even liberation movements, once in power, are often accused of dropping their radicalism, preferring to join the privileged.

An initially strong political commitment to land redistribution has been followed by a switch of emphasis to so-called economic goals, rather than the eradication of landlessness and/or poverty.

"Indeed, 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 think-tank noted.

Often mentioned as part of the reason for the lack of real progress in redistributive land reform 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.

"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," Palmer told IRIN.

The principle was not imposed by donors funding South Africa's land reform process during 1994 to 1999. The South African constitution provides for land expropriation, with "just and equitable" (as opposed to market-related) compensation, for a public purpose or in the public interest - which specifically includes land reform.

"If 'willing seller, willing buyer' has been a constraint in the past, and it is now judged to be irrelevant, it should be dropped from the agenda altogether," the think-tank concluded. "We felt that there are several issues around this subject that need more investigation, such as the real nature of the constraint it imposes, and whether it is the supply of land or the other conditions (price, who gets land once it is 'redistributed', etc.) that are the real problem."

Continued?