State Corruption not the Only Cause of Dysfunctional Land Reform
South Africa’s land-owning minority class is divided on many issues, but on one point it seems to agree: corrupt government officials are to blame for the country’s dysfunctional land reform programme, not the market. If property prices are too high for land purchases to be affordable for instance, it is not the fault of landowners. Dodgy senior officials hike the prices for personal gain, they argue.
Andile Sokomani, Researcher, Corruption & Governance Programme, ISS Cape Town
South Africa’s land-owning minority class is divided on many
issues, but on one point it seems to agree: corrupt government
officials are to blame for the country’s dysfunctional land reform
programme, not the market. If property prices are too high for land
purchases to be affordable for instance, it is not the fault of
landowners. Dodgy senior officials hike the prices for personal gain,
they argue.
Not that there aren’t any good reasons to point the finger at
government officials. A few of them have either been convicted or are
being investigated for shady dealings. What’s worrying is the
opportunistic use of government corruption as a platform for exalting
the virtues of the market. Government corruption has become a
convenient way of invalidating any attempt at questioning purely
market-based land reform, including the controversial
willing-buyer-willing seller approach. This insistence on the purity of
the market, vis-à-vis the corruption of the state, rests among other
things on a keen awareness of the market’s proven ability to guarantee
the security of private property, which works perfectly in protecting
the wealth and the privilege of the land-owning minority class. Except
for one thing. Markets may not be particularly efficient at pacifying a
discontented landless majority. This is a fault of the market, not of
government. Insisting otherwise in fact jeopardises the very interests
the market approach seeks to protect.
It is almost trite to point out that the inevitable political
instability bound to ensue from a lack of equitable distribution of
land is not one of the desirable conditions for the market to thrive.
Market-led land reform enthusiasts are themselves acutely aware of
this, but conveniently choose to harp on the well-founded but selective
motif of state mal-governance.
If there is anything to learn from the Zimbabwean experience, it is
the following: the collapse of the country’s agricultural sector is
less remarkable for cronyism and widespread land grabbing, than for the
market asymmetries in access to land that bred these. Conventional
market wisdom would have us believe otherwise, downplaying for instance
the impact of the free market mode of land redistribution preceding
the assault on white commercial farmers. Lamenting the corruption of the
country’s regime is compelling, but not enough. Simply attributing the
possibility of a similar chain of events in South Africa, however far
or near, to a decline in pro-market sentiment is an easy way out.
More helpful is an honest inquiry into the real causes of the
disillusion with the market. Rather than just decry government
corruption, South Africa’s market champions also need to come clean
from perpetrating the illusion that exclusive protection of existing
property relations is somehow compatible with aspirations of equitable
distribution of agricultural land. Sixteen years after the advent of
democracy this myth is increasingly becoming hard to sustain. Fewer and
fewer influential people in politics and the civil service are buying
into it, especially after Mbeki’s minimalist administration fell out of
favour. After much dithering, there are renewed but sluggish efforts
at reviving inevitable discussions around legal expropriation.
Government is more vocal about its dissatisfaction with market-led land
reform and the need to review its principle of willing seller, willing
buyer. In short, market forces are increasingly being challenged.
These developments are very worrying indeed if seen as a malicious
move to short-change white farmers and facilitate looting and
self-enrichment by corrupt state officials. Not that there is anything
wrong with being suspicious of government’s motives or questioning the
assumption that it is acting in the interests of the landless. However,
in insisting that efforts at equitable access to land should come at no
cost, other than profit, to existing landowners, the market approach
has no credible basis for claiming to be a superior alternative.
Bureaucratic corruption in land administration - along with problems
of insufficient post-settlement to beneficiaries and weak state
capacity in relation to land valuation and management of land
transactions – is not conducive to equitable redistribution of land.
However it is no justification for pursuing a purely market-driven
answer to the land question, particularly in the context of existing
imbalances in property relations. A critical inquiry into the advocacy
for broadly market-related land policies and its role in facilitating
the adverse consequences of land reform is both sensitive and
controversial, but crucial.
