In the Shadow of Policy. Robert Ross
laws and regulations, and immense poverty. Land and agrarian reforms were initiated in order to correct and transform the agrarian structure (DLA 1996, 1997; DOA 2001). Government budgets for its land and agrarian reform programmes have grown since the mid-1990s, and some budgets have even tripled in size, but critique of the quantity and quality of service delivery soon surfaced (Aliber and Hall 2012; see chapter 3 in this volume for more details).
The state has shifted its policies and the allocation of its budgets over time from a more populist approach, which emphasised human and citizenship rights and gender and racial equity principles (during the period in which Derek Hanekom was minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs), to a more neo-liberal and paternalistic one (under ministers Thoko Didiza, Lulu Xingwana and Gugile Nkwinti). During the first years of the Mbeki administration the RDP was succeeded by the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme reiterating the importance of employment, with redistribution to be achieved through a neo-liberal economic framework of state intervention (Habib and Padayachee 2000; see also chapter 3 in this volume). The change in focus is also apparent in the move away from the Settlement/Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG), which provided grants of R16 000 to people to access land if their monthly income was below R1 500 (Lahiff 2007: 1580; Williams 1996; see also chapter 3, this volume), and the introduction of the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme, which demands contributions from potential land reform beneficiaries themselves (DOA 2001; see chapter 3, this volume). LRAD has initiated ex post audits (replacing lengthy ex ante audits) and monitoring to make sure that its objectives are met (DLA 2008: 2). Land reform shifted from simple redistribution to market-led and assisted land reform, hinging on a policy of ‘willing buyer, willing seller’. The market-led reform is, according to many commentators (Hall 2004; Lahiff 2007; Naidoo 2011), little more than a programme of assisted purchase under which the main beneficiaries are likely to be white landowners and a small minority of better-off black entrepreneurs. GEAR in particular emphasised the productive use of redistributed land and public–private partnerships (Derman et al. 2010) to secure the continuation of a highly capitalised, globally well-connected, commercial agricultural sector in South Africa. However, in contrast to what was expected from GEAR in terms of efforts to increase employment and to restructure the commercial agrarian economy, the post-apartheid state also took steps to deregulate the economy and liberalise trade, generating opposite outcomes. The reforms led to a withdrawal of the subsidies white farmers had enjoyed for years but also instigated changes that were not foreseen: landholdings remained consolidated as large; farming became more capital-intensive; and agricultural employment decreased substantially (Hall 2009). These tendencies clearly shape the success of the objective of land reform to propel ‘emergent’ farmers beyond subsistence and encourage them to access markets, technology and capital. They reinforce, on the one hand, the views that small-scale (‘communal’) farming is incapable of supporting anything more than a life of poverty. On the other hand, particular, normative notions of viability emerged, denoting that good farming is embodied in technical recommendations around ‘minimum farm sizes’, ‘economic units’ and ‘carrying capacities’ (Cousins and Scoones 2010; see chapter 3, this volume).
The Zuma administration reaffirmed the commitment to land and agrarian reform objectives (redistributing 30 per cent of the land by 2013) but with a much stronger emphasis on rural development and simultaneously confirming the prominence of a productivist land reform discourse. The transformation of the old Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs into the new Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) was emblematic of this change of emphasis. DRLDR formulated a Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) ‘to create vibrant, equitable and sustainable rural communities. [This] will be achieved through a three-pronged strategy based on a coordinated and integrated broad-based agrarian transformation, rural development infrastructure, and an improved land reform programme’ (DRDLR 2009; Gwanya 2010: 11). The National Planning Commission (NPC) is responsible for developing a long-term vision for South Africa. It recently published its ‘Vision 2030’, which, together with The New Growth Path compiled by the Economic Development Department (EDD) in 2010, provides insight into how land and agrarian reform should proceed. Like the aborted Green Paper on Land Reform (DRDLR 2011), both documents target a transformation in the social relations of production to achieve social cohesion and development with a focus on supporting and expanding the smallholder sector – including communal farming – to 500 000 producers by 2020. The transfer of new technology to fuel productivity increases, tenure security and above all the creation of links into markets constitutes the rural insfrastructure to enable this transformation (NPC 2011: 145). These plans build on the expert discourse that poor farming practices, lack of markets and inefficient land tenure are the root of the problem. The NPC envisages vertical integration into existing markets but argues that preferential procurement strategies such as school feeding programmes and other institutional catering (food services to hospitals, correctional services and emergency food packages), in which the state is the main purchaser, should be put in place to serve as a market for small-scale producers. Such markets, however, are often situated in small- and medium-sized towns, away from where potential producers live. Such integration inevitably leads, as Li (2009) and Amanor (2009) argue, to the exclusion of the very people who are targeted by such development policies – smallholders and the poor – thus enforcing unequal development. A good example is the Agri-Park of the University of Fort Hare in Alice which facilitates the process whereby the added value of producing crops in the villages is realised elsewhere, in the towns. Farmer access to such markets is constrained by transport costs, quality standards, and lack of proper post-settlement support and adequate service delivery for smallholders (Aliber and Hall 2012). The NPC/EDD development discourse typically ignores that the markets that are formed, for instance, in the framework of the Massive Food Production Programme are beyond the control of small producers. Moreover, although supermarkets have become big players in rural food markets, they hardly procure from local small-scale producers. They prefer to buy from a limited number of producers, almost always large-scale farmers (D’Haese and Van Huylenbroeck 2005; Louw et al. 2007). Local, small-scale producers instead tend to ‘supply’ local, village-based ‘informal’ or nested (Van der Ploeg et al. 2012) markets which are largely absent from policy models.
State social policies: old age pensions and social grants
Old age pensions and a range of social grants constitute the core of the South African post-apartheid state’s social policy, which can be conceptualised as state transfers to rural people and regions. The central argument here is that these state transfers in combination with rural production, which includes both crops and livestock production as well as natural resource harvesting, form the backbone of the current rural and urban economy (see chapters 14, 17 and 18, this volume; Devereux 2007; Hebinck and Lent 2007; Neves and Du Toit 2013).
The establishment and institutionalisation of the old age pension goes back to white miners’ struggle for security in 1911 (Bhorat 1995). The grant scheme that was negotiated slowly evolved and was later broadened by the Verwoerd government to include Africans. From the mid-1940s onwards, various grants for blindness and invalidism were introduced. Child support and grants for HIV/AIDS affected people are a recent, but significant, addition to the social-grants system. Until 1993, however, the monetary value of old age pensions was determined by race. Black people received about half the amount that whites did. This was implemented by paying black people their pensions every second month. In 1993, the then government increased the value of welfare grants paid to African people by removing racial disparities. To qualify for an old age pension, South African males had to be 65 and females 60. This changed only in 2010, when the age of eligibility for males was lowered to 63.
The cash transfers have significant redistributive and welfare effects. They allow people to purchase food, clothes and other essentials of life but are also socially and