ABSTRACT

Introduction Who should be the primary beneficiaries of redistributive land reform in South Africa, and how will land redistribution contribute to the reduction of rural poverty? Fifteen years after the transition to democracy, these remain controversial and contested questions. Despite its poor performance to date, and concern over low levels of production on redistributed or restored land, there is little sign of land reform being abandoned by the ruling party, the African National Congress. The powerful symbolic resonance of the ‘land question’ means that it remains high on the political agenda of post-apartheid South Africa. Recently, however, there has been renewed debate on the economic rationales for land redistribution, with a particular focus on poverty reduction, employment and economic restructuring. At least at the level of rhetoric, the primary beneficiaries of land reform are now, as in 1994/95, being identified as ‘the rural poor’ and ‘small-scale farmers’, or ‘smallholders’, rather than the ‘emerging commercial farmers’ that government policy was fixated on under the Mbeki presidency. But what is a smallholder? In this chapter, I argue that the term is problematic because it tends to obscure inequalities and significant class-based differences within the large population of households engaged in agricultural production on a relatively small scale. Much usage of the term suggests that smallholders form a relatively homogeneous group, and it fails to distinguish between producers for whom:

• farming constitutes only a partial contribution to their social reproduction; • farming meets most of their social reproduction requirements; • farming produces a significant surplus, allowing profits to be reinvested and,

for some, capital accumulation in agriculture to begin.