Land reform's middle ground

When President Jacob Zuma announced his new Cabinet on May 10, he ushered in a new era for the state's apparatus charged with responding to rural poverty: political and bureaucratic responsibilities for land reform, fisheries, forestry and agricultural development have been reshuffled, and are now clustered into an array of new and renamed ministries and departments. Zuma presented this reshuffling as a sign that his administration will embark on a re-energised initiative for rural development, in line with the ANC's manifesto for the 2009 national elections which featured "Rural development, food security and land reform" as one of its top five priorities.

This signals a new commitment from a party which has historically relied on an urban support base of the working class and unemployed and has de-emphasised, if not quite ignored, the spatial legacy of apartheid and the concentration of poverty in the rural areas. For the future of the rural areas, the most significant changes in the new Cabinet are the separation of land and agriculture, and the introduction of rural development as a ministerial mandate. The new-look cabinet places these responsibilities in separate ministries: a Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform (MRDLR) on the one hand, and a Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) on the other. Both are to be headed by former MECs for Agriculture: Gugile Nkwinti from the Eastern Cape, and the Northern Cape's Tina Joemat-Petterson, respectively. But key decisions about government's plans for the rural areas are likely to be taken elsewhere. At the heart of the new administration's thinking on the future of the economy is a heavyweight triumvirate made up of the National Treasury headed by Pravin Gordhan, a Ministry of Economic Development under former unionist Ebrahim Patel, and a National Planning Commission in the Presidency led by Trevor Manuel.

The core challenge is to enable large numbers of the rural poor to participate in economic activities -- to produce, process and market -- on beneficial terms in order to enable employment (including self-employment) for the rural poor, not only welfare. This would reduce rural poverty and create new livelihoods and jobs, but also set South Africa on a different and more appropriate growth path.The central position that rural development now occupies in the thinking of government draws attention to the multidimensional nature of rural people's livelihoods -- a recognition that land reform cannot be entirely about agriculture, that people want and need land for a variety of purposes, and that rural people participate in a variety of economic activities for their survival.

The new political priority placed on rural development is a great opportunity and new approaches are urgently needed. Rural development must not be limited to ad hoc and localised "projects". A new policy framework must set out an ambitious agenda for structural change in the key rural economic sectors. It must change the ways in which the poor participate in, own, control, use, and produce in the rural economy and enable new pathways of production and accumulation.

Source: Mail & Guardian