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Commentaries > Rogier van den Brink and John Bruce
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Rogier van den Brink and John Bruce
Land Reform and Land Policy Coordinator, Africa Region
The World Bank
PO Box 12629, Hatfield 0028
South Africa
Tie line: 5369-3132
Phone: +27 12 431 3132
Fax: +27 12 431 3134
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General
The report contains a great deal of useful documentation, but we think that it would need some revisions before it would stimulate commitment to future donor support for land reform.
First, the lesson from Zimbabwe needs to be made more succinctly: land reform is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for political stability. If the donor community is going to engage on this issue, it will be primarily because of concerns about political instability. Once engaged, they will need to decide how much they care about stability as opposed to other objectives in land reform.
Second, there needs to be an acknowledgement that what is going on in southern Africa is as much about race as it is about more acceptable categories of discourse such as growth and poverty reduction. It is to a large extent about achieving fairness in land distribution among races. We fail to see how land reform can be "de-racialized" (para 59).
And yes, land reform should be in general about poverty reduction. But, no, excluding emerging commercial black farmers, or portraying support for them as basically backing land-grabbing elites, is neither politically savvy nor economically wise.
To alienate this group is politically counter-productive. There is enough land to avoid the confrontation (para 19), and to come up with an inclusive solution.
Targeting small and medium-scale commercial farmers may also make good economic sense, given the dynamics of accumulation associated with export crop production, and the "supermarket revolution" on the domestic front.
And if the labor intensity of production of these farmers is very high, they may even be good for poverty reduction.
Third, the critique is simply too sweeping and negative: there is too much anecdotal talk of failure, land-grabbing elites, and the demise of small-scale farming. In other words, the report undermines the economic case for land reform (without empirical evidence, however) and gives the distinct impression that the Governments in the region all lack the political will to do land reform, except the will to dole out land to political cronies. Unfortunately, in taking this line, the report essentially comes to the same conclusion as the white farmer lobbies against land reform. This will alienate the Governments, and put them in a defensive mode right away.
While progress has indeed been slow, "failure" is too sweeping. Land redistribution in South Africa accelerated significantly last fiscal year, and ran into a budget constraint which prevented the program from tripling its delivery rate. And Namibia's land reform program is been castigated in the report into a caricature.
Specific para 25. The discussion of economies of scale lacks support in the empirical literature. It seems to be based on flawed reasoning: as labor supervision costs went up, the report argues, owners mechanized even further, and, of course, thereby increased returns to management. But this has nothing to do with economies of scale. The report better present some real empirical evidence before challenging decades of empirical work and caricaturing this empirical work as "received wisdom" and "assumptions". However, the point made in para 28 is valid: export and supermarkets will put a premium on high-quality, high output.
para 30. Similarly empirically unfounded is the assertion that small-scale farming in Swaziland and Lesotho is declining rapidly. For instance, in Lesotho, agricultural GDP grew between 2 and 4 percent annually during the 1990s. And Botswana's trend, given very high economic and income growth rates, is hardly a demonstration of a "startling" move away from small-scale agriculture.
para 31. This is the (in)famous "do people want a job in town, or a farm in the rural areas?" question. All over the world, if people are given that choice, they will take the job in town. Unfortunately, if there are no jobs in town, what is the relevance of the question and the answer? And how many countries have produced a pattern of pro-poor growth while neglecting family farming in the rural areas?
para 34. Why so timid with regard to challenging the white commercial farmers unions to be more pro-active? "The extent to which they could be more actively and practically involved should be explored"....? Again, this is not a very enthusiastic call for action.
para 38. There is a discussion of the "willing-buyer, willing-seller" model, which the report says should be dropped, but no discussion of market-based land reform. We suggest that the report stresses that land and credit markets as they exist today are on their own very unlikely to move land to the poor.
It is precisely for that reason that the market-based land reform projects subsidize the process, to compensate for market imperfections. In addition, the report does not mention the land markets' current constraints: restrictions on sub-division and the absence of a land tax (except in Namibia).
Ultimately, we think that reinvigorating the debate will require stating a vision of the future, and substantiating that it is possible to achieve.
Keep us informed about further development.
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