A critical appraisal of South Africa's market-based land reform policy

Chapter 4: Background to Limpopo
1995–99 were often of very poor quality
with questionable viability. A study of land
reform in the then Northern Province at the
end of 1998 identified serious problems
with the nature of project identification,
ineffective land acquisition, and inappropriate
project planning (Lahiff 1998). 2
By mid-1998, four years into the
democratic dispensation, only three land
redistribution projects had been implemented
in the province, a number which
rose to seven by the end of 1998 (Lahiff
1998). These redistribution projects were
all on private land and appeared to be
largely initiated by the landowners. This
contributed to inappropriate project design
and poor group dynamics as groups of
people were put together to ‘fit’ the land
rather than land being found to fit the
needs of an existing group. The tailoring
of groups to the land was done in order to
combine the grants of R15 000 (later
increased to R16 000) per family into a
total grant amount sufficient for the purchase
of the land. Unfortunately this
process of combining grants was done
with little consideration of other investments
required for the farms to become
productive.
The state proved to be a very poor
buyer of land with the long delays and
uncertainties leading current owners who
had been willing to sell to withdraw from
deals. Lahiff recommended that either
improvements be made to make the state a
more effective agent for purchasing land
on the open market, or a policy shift be
undertaken away from the willing sellerwilling
buyer approach (Lahiff 1998). The
project planning was found to be largely
inappropriate, involving little consultation
with beneficiaries and no consideration of
the current skills and experience of beneficiaries.
There was also a strong emphasis
on commercial farming, regardless of the
interests and abilities of the beneficiaries,
and no programme for building capacity
amongst beneficiaries and their structures
(Lahiff 1998).
By the time the LRAD policy had
been completed in 2001 there had been a
considerable increase in SLAG delivery in
terms of the numbers of hectares transferred
and beneficiaries. At the beginning
of this study early in 2003, DLA reported
that 77 SLAG projects had been implemented
for 6 753 households which gained
access to a total land area of 45 110ha.
However according to DLA officials, the
organisational and production problems
with the projects created remained as
severe as before (interview 3).
Endnotes
1. For more details refer to page 25 of Part 1,
Livelihoods of farm workers in South African
agriculture (Department of Labour 2001).
2. The name of the province changed in 2002.
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