"The Land Belongs To Those Who Work It": A Critical Evaluation of Land Redistribution Policy in South Africa, 1994-2012

Mackenzie, Graeme Richard

"The Land Belongs To Those Who Work It": A Critical Evaluation of Land Redistribution Policy in South Africa, 1994-2012

dc.contributor.advisor	Barrett, Patrick
dc.contributor.advisor	Kurian, Priya A.
dc.contributor.author	Mackenzie, Graeme Richard
dc.date.accessioned	2016-02-06T01:40:26Z
dc.date.available	2016-02-06T01:40:26Z
dc.date.issued	2015
dc.date.updated	2016-01-14T20:08:50Z
dc.description.abstract	Land ownership in post-apartheid South Africa carries a powerful symbolic charge for both black and white citizens. Under apartheid, state legislation denied black South Africans access to landownership rights, and confined them to 13 per cent of the available agricultural land. The election of the ANC government in 1994 marked the formal end of this process. Policies to provide access to land ownership to black South Africans were developed, raising widespread expectations for radical agrarian reform. The land reform policies of successive post-apartheid governments have, however, been unsuccessful in achieving any significant change to the overall proportions of land owned by black and white farmers, and the small amounts of land that have been transferred have failed to improve the lives of beneficiaries. In fact, the land ownership regime created under apartheid continues unchallenged in the post-apartheid era. This thesis seeks to investigate why successive democratically-elected governments with a mandate for reform have done so little to redress the entrenched inequality in land ownership. Informed by an anti-foundationalist ontology and an interpretive epistemology, this study focuses on processes of institutionalisation as they relate to both patterns of land ownership and the wider institutions of government inherited from the apartheid era that have continued to frame the policy process in South Africa. More specifically, the study adopts a ‘constructivist institutionalist’ approach to capture the way these institutions have been driven by a dominant discourse informed by apartheid-era values. It undertakes a multi-level institutional analysis, seeking to clarify the ideas underpinning the institutions and the discourses influencing the actors at the constitutional, national policy and provincial levels. The research involved examining key constitutional and policy documents and analysing interviews with key policy actors in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. The analysis identifies the international discourses on development and land reform that constructed what South African policymakers understood as ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ after 1994, and it traces how these discourses went on to inform the development of the property clause in the post-apartheid Constitution. The analysis also reveals how the shifting assumptions, silences and focuses of policymakers implicitly constructed the beneficiaries of such policies – the black landless – as incapable and undeserving. Finally, this study reveals a tacit agreement among the majority of the most powerful stakeholders that land redistribution policy cannot be allowed to fundamentally disturb the agrarian system created by apartheid policies. The research extends understanding of the South African land reform programme by identifying the discourses that inform contemporary policy and practice, with specific focus on the Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG) policy, the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) policy, and the recently adopted Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS). There has been little scholarly analysis of PLAS, which seeks to provide leasehold access to approved beneficiaries who have the potential to purchase land at some point in the future. This research deepens scholarly understanding of PLAS, and the way the dominant land reform discourses continue to support the position of white large-scale commercial farmers and the emerging black bourgeoisie, at the expense of the interests and aspirations of the rural landless. It demonstrates why land reform has thus far failed to make meaningful changes to the agrarian system created by apartheid policies, and therefore failed to improve the lives of the rural landless.
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.citation	Mackenzie, G. R. (2015). ‘The Land Belongs To Those Who Work It’: A Critical Evaluation of Land Redistribution Policy in South Africa, 1994-2012 (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/9895	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10289/9895
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	University of Waikato
dc.rights	All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
dc.subject	South Africa
dc.subject	land reform
dc.subject	land redistribution
dc.subject	public policy
dc.subject	policy analysis
dc.subject	apartheid
dc.subject	constructivist institutionalism
dc.subject	discourse analysis
dc.subject	institutions
dc.title	"The Land Belongs To Those Who Work It": A Critical Evaluation of Land Redistribution Policy in South Africa, 1994-2012
dc.type	Thesis
pubs.place-of-publication	Hamilton, New Zealand	en_NZ
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Waikato
thesis.degree.level	Doctoral
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)