ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at land-holding and the contribution of small-scale agriculture to livelihoods within the homelands. It draws on a range of literature, including detailed local studies, from the fields of rural sociology, anthropology and agricultural economics to form a picture of the small-holder sector at the end of apartheid. Conventional approaches to land and agriculture in South Africa emphasise the contrast between ‘white’ and ‘black’ farming sectors, based on wide differences in land-holding patterns, output and ‘efficiency’. Of a total South African land area of 122 million hectares, approximately 16.7 million hectares, or 13.7 per cent, was allocated to the homelands in 1985. Conventional wisdom for many years held that the homelands, concentrated as they were in the wetter, eastern portion of South Africa, contained a favourable proportion of good quality arable land. In common with most other aspects of life in the homelands, information regarding the distribution of land tends to be incomplete and unreliable.
