South Africa

Expropriation and class bias — the great unmentionable

21 Feb 2025

Evidence from both international experience and South African research suggests that a smallholder-focused land redistribution policy could generate as many as a million new jobs.

In all the fuss and bother about land expropriation and compensation, a central issue has barely been mentioned. This is that our government is unwilling to implement the kind of land reform that South Africa needs, and also lacks the capacity to do so.

Most critically, the existing middle-class bias of land policy needs to be replaced by a focus on the land needs of the poor and unemployed.

Arguments that the new Expropriation Act is in line with the Constitution and can help to expedite land reform are correct, and the views of its critics are misleading.

But using expropriation to help break a deadlock in a land restitution claim, or to acquire land for redistribution, will be far from sufficient.

Much more is required, including finding the political will to rethink basic paradigms and to implement the programme at scale. These are the key issues we should be talking about, rather than how to respond to the bullying tactics of Donald Trump and his local acolytes.

Lack of political will

Structural reforms aimed at social transformation, such as altering the distribution of property rights, requires political will and determination underpinned by popular demand.

Most countries embarking on land and/or agrarian reform have done so in the context of political crisis, turmoil or revolution. Measures to address extreme inequities in land holdings have often been key political demands in agrarian societies with large rural populations.

Land was a key issue in South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994. The creation of a grossly exploitative form of racial capitalism over centuries was underpinned by massive dispossession of indigenous populations, and the need for redress was widely agreed upon. It was no accident that one of the first laws passed by the new government was the Restitution of Land Rights Act.

Land reform remains a popular cause with black South Africans. Many are deeply disappointed that so little has been achieved over the past 30 years.

This is true, I think, both for people who want to use land for productive or residential purposes, and for those who see the land question as a key symbol of social and economic transformation more generally.

Misfiring land reform

Post-apartheid land reform has misfired badly. It is not surprising that this year’s State of the Nation Address did not say a single word about land.

Land restitution is proceeding very slowly indeed, with a few hundred claims resolved every year and even fewer claims being finalised expeditiously. Many are settled through cash compensation, rather than the return of land. Thousands of rural claims from the 1994/98 window have yet to be addressed and those lodged after a 2014 amendment to the Act are in limbo.

Tenure reform has been neglected and delivered little in the way of tenure security to farm workers and dwellers, as well as those living in communal areas. The latter live under traditional leaders, who sometimes abuse their powers because they are not subject to sufficient institutional oversight.

Land redistribution should be the key thrust of transformative reform. It now aims to support a small number of aspirant black (large-scale) commercial farmers, ignoring around 200,000 productive smallholders who are market-oriented.

It is crippled by a dominant stereotype which equates “farming” with one type of farming system – large-scale commercial agriculture. When it dominates redistribution policy, as at present, this model necessarily constrains the number of potential beneficiaries.

Private acquisition of farms by black purchasers is not land reform, it should be noted. Market processes on their own are unlikely to ever change the racially skewed character of the agricultural sector – state interventions are required.

Explaining failure

A variety of explanations have been offered for the poor performance of land reform since 1994. Conservative commentators often blame its failings on a corrupt and ineffective post-apartheid state. While corruption has indeed occurred on occasion, this is not a primary cause of failure.

Incapacity is more important: small budgets, inexperienced staff, cumbersome procedures, lack of in-service training and weak management by ministers and directors-general. Many analysts agree that land reform has been completely underfunded to date, and that officials often lack relevant skills.

Policy choices are a central issue. In 2017, the High-Level Panel of Parliament chaired by former President Kgalema Motlanthe analysed these weaknesses in depth, as did a panel of experts appointed in 2018 by President Cyril Ramaphosa. But their many detailed recommendations on how to fix the mess have been almost entirely ignored.

Two key and contentious policy issues stand out: property rights and models of agriculture.

Property rights

Many conservatives, as well as most of the business community, are private-property fundamentalists. They have come out strongly against the Expropriation Act, and some argue that a land reform focused on extending individual title deeds to black South Africans in both urban and rural areas is what is needed.

Title deeds, they argue, are vital for real security of tenure and enable the “magic of markets” to promote productive investment via access to bank loans.

Private ownership is certainly important for would-be black commercial farmers who are offered large tracts of land through the redistribution programme. At present, this relatively small group of beneficiaries is offered only leasehold rights.

However, title deeds are largely irrelevant for the one-third of South Africans who hold rural land under systems derived from customary law and for urban dwellers living in backyard shacks, informal settlements or abandoned buildings.

Banks rarely lend money to the owners of small plots of land because the transaction costs are often higher than the market value of the property. This has been the experience in Kenya, the site of Africa’s longest-running programme of land titling.

Research suggests that around 60% of South Africans occupy land outside of the formal property regimes. This includes people issued with title deeds to RDP houses, who have often sold them without undertaking the costly and time-consuming process of transferring their deeds to a new owner.

Rather than title deeds, full recognition by the law of rights derived from community membership, as well as their support though appropriate and effective systems of land administration, is required. This is a more practical and effective way to secure the land rights of the poor in Africa.

But government policies on property rights are inconsistent. They continue to prioritise title deeds in urban contexts despite the fact that they do not work for most of the poor. In communal areas, on the other hand, policies support the control of land by traditional leaders rather than bodies selected by rights holders.

Neither of these approaches is appropriate or effective in securing rights. After 30 years in office, the ANC has been unable to promulgate a law on land rights in communal areas that would give effect to section 25(6) of the Constitution. More than 20 million people have been left in the lurch.

How, then, can these policy stances be explained? In my view, it is because the ANC has become a party which prioritises the interests of the black middle and business classes, as well as traditional leaders (whom they hope will influence rural voters). Class bias also explains the ANC’s preference for the large-farm paradigm.

Large or small farms?

The dominant understanding by many in South Africa is that “modern” farming is necessarily a highly-capitalised and large-scale business enterprise. Small-scale farming is seen as an unwelcome and backward residue of the oppressive past.

This paradigm informs views across the political spectrum. No surprise, then, that to date, not one single large farm acquired for land reform has been formally subdivided into small farms – although informal subdivisions are common.

Yet evidence from both international experience and South African research suggests that a smallholder-focused redistribution policy could generate as many as a million new jobs.

A narrow policy focus on deracialising large-scale farming ignores the need for and potential of agrarian reform in South Africa. The ANC’s class bias was starkly evident at its land policy conference in 2018, where the session on agrarian reform was dominated by would-be agricultural entrepreneurs. This group wants private ownership of their farms, of course.

However, opening opportunities to only the black middle class is highly problematic in South Africa today. Creating decently paid work opportunities at scale is the key challenge facing our society, without which all our aspirations to reduce poverty and inequality are likely to remain mere pipe dreams.

The problem of the state’s class bias is compounded by the weakness of social and political movements representing the working and unemployed poor, including potential beneficiaries of land reform. Without significant pressure from below, the government is unlikely to put in place the pro-poor land policies that South Africa needs.

But the rural and urban poor spend their days trying to survive, in precarious and poorly paid jobs or self-employment, if they are lucky. The zama zama informal miners are the tip of a very large iceberg. Political organisation at scale is extremely difficult in these circumstances.

Class and the politics of land

Inappropriate policies, in conjunction with poor state capacity, inevitably result in ineffective land reform. Election period rhetoric notwithstanding, the ANC has had little to offer landless or land-poor South Africans since the early 2000s.

Parties to the right of the ANC, such as the DA, ActionSA and FF+, share some of the same misconceptions as the ruling party on property rights and farm size, and will be of little help in getting land reform back on track. The new minister for land reform, Mwzanele Nyahontso, is struggling to find his feet, and his views on the issues raised here are unclear as yet.

What of the EFF and MK, the so-called “left”? As is clear from the extravagant lifestyles of their leaders, as well as their entirely unconvincing election manifestos, these parties are paper tigers. Jacob Zuma, after all, presided over a process of elite capture from which Elon Musk has no doubt learnt a few lessons.

Already, large areas of state land are occupied by the shacks of the poor. If land occupations increase in scale and are met with repression, expect the profile of MK and EFF to rise. If the politics of land turns even nastier over time, white South Africans should beware of the potential for a racial backlash. It is in their interests to support attempts to resolve the simmering land question.

The need, more than ever, is for a progressive coalition on land reform to emerge from civil society and to link up with sympathetic politicians and policymakers. Alliances beyond the land sector, for example with trade unions and environmental activists, will be critically important.

In these desperate times, can class bias on the part of the state be overcome through progressive forms of popular politics? Perhaps.

Politics, it is said, is the “art of the possible” – but perhaps of the apparently impossible as well. DM

Ben Cousins is an Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape.

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