ABSTRACT
In South Africa today, debates over agrarian reform and industrial restructuring are taking place in separate domains. This study calls for a broader understanding of the agrarian question as South Africa opens to the increasingly competitive global economy. Possibilities for broadly-based land redistribution in South Africa will depend both on the constitution of political forces, and on the conditions of access to non-agricultural resources. The study draws on comparative Asian evidence (a) to contest the World Bank's claims that a market-based small farmer model of agrarian reform will generate non-agricultural jobs in rural regions, and (b) to analyse new impulses of industrial dispersal in South Africa. Ironically, it is in regions that have borne the brunt of apartheid spatial engineering that the political and economic conditions for land redistribution may be greatest.
