The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) was adopted by the United Nations in 1966 and entered into force in 1976. Amongst other things, the ICESCR’s intentions are to ensure the protection of economic, social and cultural rights to citizens of member states. This includes the rights to an adequate standard of living and health, as well as an adequate supply of safe food and nutrition.⁽²⁾ Zimbabwe ratified the Covenant in 1991 while South Africa signed it in 1994, and in October 2012, the South African Cabinet approved the ratification of the covenant.⁽³⁾ The South African Constitution has gone further to entrench a wide range of justiciable socio-economic rights in the Bill of Rights.⁽⁴⁾ This shows, at least on paper, the importance these countries attach to the realisation of socio-economic rights.

Since attaining majority rule, both these countries have embarked on redistributive land reform processes. Should this be viewed as part of the progressive realisation of the socio-economic rights for the poor? This paper briefly examines the land reform processes of South Africa and Zimbabwe in order to determine if the land reform processes embarked on are indeed aimed at helping poor citizens to enjoy socio-economic rights. The paper comes to the conclusion that land reform processes in these countries are indeed aimed at the progressive realisation of socio-economic rights. However, the paper also acknowledges that the process of land redistribution in both these countries has moved very slowly, shadowing the desired effect of socio-economic empowerment. It concludes by suggesting policy measures that should be adopted to ensure that land reform leads to realisation of socio-economic rights.

What are socio-economic rights?

Socio-economic rights are recognised as human rights by a number of international human rights documents. They are part of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 ICESCR, and many constitutions of different countries, including South Africa and Zimbabwe.⁽⁵⁾ Socio-economic rights are those rights that afford people access to certain basic needs that are necessary for people to lead a dignified life; such as proper food, healthy facilities, education, housing and water. Sibonile Khoza further elaborates:

Socio-economic rights are especially relevant for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society. They are important tools for these groups, who are often most affected by poverty and who experience a number of barriers that block their access to resources, opportunities and services in society. Vulnerable groups often experience social exclusion and unfair discrimination because of a number of overlapping grounds and reasons.⁽⁶⁾

This proposition by Khoza buttresses the indispensability of socio-economic rights in the fight against poverty. Currently, both South Africa and Zimbabwe are in the midst of land reform programmes. These programmes were started when both countries attained majority rule.⁽⁷⁾ Land in both these countries is considered an important asset or resource because it is the source of food and water, and it is where people can build their shelter. To this end, it should be accepted that access to land is one way, and probably the best way, to ensure the fulfilment of socio-economic rights for the poor.

Both current landowners and the landless people in South Africa and Zimbabwe agree on the importance of land redistribution, and the transformation of current land ownership patterns.⁽⁸⁾ Sam Moyo, commenting on the Zimbabwean land reform process, opines that a wide range of blacks, especially the poor landless and farm-workers, sought land reform in order to redress racial and class inequalities, foreign domination and historical loss of land.⁽⁹⁾ These reasons are also applicable to the South African context. The above, in part, explains why everyone agrees on the need to transform current land ownership patterns. The disagreements that exist between governments and landowners basically lie in the procedures followed and not in the substance of the action of land reform, which everyone considers noble.

A synopsis of the land question in Zimbabwe: Pre- and post-independence

The land question in Zimbabwe has been a problem since before independence in 1980. One of the reasons why people participated in the liberation war was because of the skewed land ownership patterns that favoured the minority white population.⁽¹⁰⁾ From 1890 to 1965, Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, was under the rule of the British. Through a process of systematic and ‘legal’ evictions, about 5,000 large commercial farms had come to occupy 15.5 million hectares of the 33 million hectares of farm land by independence.⁽¹¹⁾ This process expropriated fertile land from blacks and ensured that most of it was in the hands of white commercial farmers.

In 1980, the new Zimbabwean Government set out to acquire 8.3 million hectares of land on which to settle 162,000 families under phase one of its Land Reform and Resettlement Programme (LRRP). However, between 1980 and 1989, the government managed to acquire only 2.6 million hectares and resettled only 52,000 families. 70% of these families were resettled by 1983, the period by which most of the land was released by the white farmers. Without any doubt, the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ principle ensured that whites withheld their best land, thereby denying new settlers an opportunity to fully participate in the agricultural economy.⁽¹²⁾ By the late-1980s, it was clear that plans for mass resettlement were not going to materialise. Hence the approaching expiration of the Lancaster House Agreement (1990) once again brought the land question to the political agenda. It provided an opportunity to reform policy to facilitate a more aggressive transformation to neutralise the looming crisis of expectation on part of the landless masses.

After the expiration of the Lancaster House Agreement in 1990, the government amended the country’s Constitution to allow for the compulsory acquisition of land with little compensation and limited rights of appeal to the courts. There followed in 1992 a Land Acquisition Act which gave government the right to compulsorily acquire land with minimal compensation. In 1997, the government decided to act radically. It launched the second phase of the LRRP (LRRP2), based on compulsory acquisition, but with compensation. It identified a number of farms for acquisition based on criteria spelt out in the 1990 land policy statement: where farmers owned more than one farm; the farmer is absent; the farm is derelict or under-utilised; or the farm borders a communal area.⁽¹³⁾ This increasing radicalism in acquiring land can be understood as a response to farmers that were resisting letting go their massive productive farms.

The Zimbabwean Government’s land reform programme can be seen as comprising three phases: the first from 1980 to 1990, where the Lancaster House Agreement dictated the pace; the second from 1990 to 1996, where several acts were passed after the realisation that the first decade had achieved very little land reform; and the third phase, radical in nature, commenced with the identification of 1,471 farms for compulsory acquisition in 1997. The purpose of land reform in post-independence Zimbabwe was to redress past land alienation by creating equal access to land for the majority of the population. The LRRP’s goals were to create political stability and an acceptable property rights regime; to promote economic growth through wider equity and efficiency gains from land redistribution; and to foster national food security, self sufficiency, and agricultural development through labour intensive small farm production, optimal land productivity, and returns to invested capital targeting the landless, war veterans and poor farm workers.⁽¹⁴⁾

Today, Zimbabwe has a radically altered agrarian and land ownership structure. In 1980, over 15 million hectares were devoted to large scale commercial farming, comprising around 6,000 farmers, nearly all of them white. This fell to around 12 million hectares by 1999, in part through the modest LRRP. By 2010, there were less than 5 million hectares under large scale farming, representing just over 2,000 white-owned commercial farms. Most land today is under small scale farming, either as communal or resettlement areas. Estimates vary but around 7 million hectares have been taken over through the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP)⁽¹⁵⁾, exceeding the original FTLRP target of expropriating 5 million hectares.⁽¹⁶⁾ There have been some major shifts in production, with certain commodities such as tobacco, beef, horticulture, tea and coffee, seen by some as Zimbabwe’s mainstay in agricultural economy, being badly affected by land reform, while others such as cotton, traditionally a small holder crop, have been less affected. Food production, particularly maize, has gone down in most years compared to 1990s averages; a result of the dislocations of land reform and the establishment of new farms, as well as poor input supply and repeated drought. Food imports and emergency relief have occurred each year since 2000, although the 2009 maize harvest was estimated at 1.24 million tonnes, reducing the need for emergency measures.⁽¹⁷⁾ However, it has not been established if the general drop in production can be attributed to poor land utilisation by new land owners, or to the transitional process from seasoned farmers to inexperienced ones.

South Africa’s current land reform process

Currently, the South African Government is obliged by the country’s Constitution to implement land reform processes. In order to operationalise this constitutional requirement, the Department of Land Affairs developed a White Paper on Land Reform in 1997. The White Paper begins by acknowledging that land ownership in South Africa has long been a source of conflict and that the history of conquest and dispossession, of forced removals and a racially imbalanced distribution of land resources left the country with a complex legacy.⁽¹⁸⁾

The White Paper envisages a four-fold purpose for the land reform programme: first, to redress the injustices of apartheid; second, to foster national reconciliation and stability; third, to underpin economic growth; and fourth, to improve household welfare and alleviate poverty.⁽¹⁹⁾ Based on constitutional requirements, and in order to achieve access to socio-economic and cultural rights, land reform and the transformation of current land ownership patterns follows three major pillars: restitution, land redistribution, and land tenure reform.

Restitution of ancestral land

This pillar concentrates on restoring cultural land back to the people that are the original owners. By 2000, 63,455 claims had been lodged since 1994, and only 4,925 had been settled with the majority of the settlements being cash payments, with only 162 involving restoration of land.⁽²⁰⁾ By 2006, according to the Centre for Development Enterprise (CDE), validated land claims for restitution numbered nearly 80,000, with most of it being urban land (81% urban while 19% was rural).⁽²¹⁾ This process is meant to restore or return land, or provide comparable compensation to people whose land was dispossessed by discriminatory laws since 1913 when the racially biased Land Act was passed.

The process of land re-distribution in South Africa

The process of land redistribution in South Africa has been very slow. By 2007, only 4.7% of commercial agricultural land had been redistributed through all government programmes, a far cry from the 30% that the government hopes to have redistributed by 2014. White owned commercial farmland in South Africa comprises 82 million hectares, meaning that the transfer target is 24,6 million hectares. The redistribution of 4.7% of commercial agricultural land means that only 4.2 million hectares had been redistributed by 2007. The reasons given for this slow pace are high land prices and the lack of willing sellers.⁽²²⁾

The White Paper on Land Policy commits government to approaching the issue of land redistribution using the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ principle. It also states that government will not be an active buyer per se, but will avail grants and services to assist the needy with the purchase of land from whoever is selling. In ensuring equitable land redistribution, the government has to navigate very difficult terrain because it has to fulfil the expectations of the landless but also respect the dictates of the law to protect and respect private property.⁽²³⁾

Tenure reform and associated legislation

Land tenure reform is a constitutional obligation that should be aimed for. The Constitution states that “a person or community whose tenure is legally insecure as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices is entitled, to the extent provided by an Act of Parliament, either to tenure which is legally secure or to comparable redress.”⁽²⁴⁾

In trying to operationalise this constitutional requirement, government has passed laws that seek to redress the weakness of the previous tenure system. These new laws are the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act of 1996 and the Extension of the Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) (Act 62 of 1997). The Labour Tenants Act seeks to grant security to labour tenants on privately owned farms, and also creates a redress process that labour tenants can use to gain full ownership of the land they occupy. The ESTA seeks to protect dwellers on privately owned land against arbitrary eviction and allows farm workers to upgrade the rights from tenancy to freehold.

Land reform in South Africa and Zimbabwe: The fulfilment of socio-economic rights

Land in South Africa and Zimbabwe is regarded as a source of economic sustenance. Based on the legal provisions that these countries have adopted, the redistribution phases these countries have gone through, and resources that have been employed in the acquisition and redistribution of land, it is not unreasonable to draw a conclusion that the driving desire behind all this is to ensure that the poor, vulnerable and previously disadvantaged in society are given access to land. Therefore, the process of land reform should be considered a start towards the progressive realisation of socio-economic rights. However, land reform should result in agrarian transformation which must promote economic participation by the vulnerable, but still ensure food security for the whole country as well as environmental sustainability. Consensus at present is that this process has not moved as fast as expected.⁽²⁵⁾ A progressive transformation process should benefit small farmers and emerging black commercial farmers, who should be capacitated by being equipped with the requisite skills to assist them not only to own land, but to also contribute to food security within the country. Small farmers should also be assisted to move up the farming ladder. This can be achieved through deliberate and radical empowerment processes where loans and grants are availed to new entrants into the farming economy.

Land reform must also empower rural and peri-urban poor communities. Mostly, these areas are occupied by subsistence farmers. These communal farmers should be given adequate land (including grazing land) to practice subsistence farming. If there is anything South Africa can copy from the Zimbabwean land reform experience, it should be the model where new land owners are given small plots of between two and five hectares to practice subsistence farming and petty commodity production. This can be achieved in South Africa by sub-dividing large farms into smaller units to act as multi-function farms that will benefit more people. This will ensure that more people have access to land, which should be considered the basis of socio-economic development. New land owners must be enabled to access markets, preferably local ones, to sell their produce. Off-farm initiatives such as marketing and transportation services can also provide the multiplier effect to provide more employment in rural areas.

Youths and women should be the main target groups for the land reform process. This is mainly because young people and women make up the majority of the unemployed people in both countries. The farming industry is a highly labour intensive sector and it therefore makes sense to equip the youth, who still have the energy to work the land. Furthermore, returns in farming are realised after a long input period, hence the importance of building and sustaining experience. Inexperienced land reform beneficiaries can gain experience by being attached to successful neighbouring farms and mentors.

Governments must also allocate more resources to the process of land reform in order to attract good land. The failure to define and enforce post-transfer support that Hall (2007)⁽²⁶⁾ identifies, presents an overwhelming obstacle to people’s livelihoods. Post-settlement support in the form of loans and farming skills development should be prioritised and facilitated in order to ensure that distributed land is utilised productively. To ensure a more radical movement towards resolving the land question, governments must devise a clear instrument that can be used for identifying land that should be purchased for redistribution. Such an instrument must ensure the exclusion of highly productive farms to ensure continued food security and export earnings. Once a clear criterion has been set, a people-driven participatory process should be adopted.  Such a model will be helpful because resettled people would have owned the process and would thus likely use the gained land purposefully and with commitment.

Concluding remarks

Even though it is accepted that land reform in South Africa and Zimbabwe is meant to achieve access to socio-economic resources, it must be borne in mind that simply giving the poor land without assistance will not result in the realisation of socio-economic rights. Pragmatic policies as suggested earlier should be adopted to carry the process forward.

It is common knowledge that the large commercial sector has shed many workers due to shrinking markets, the casualisation of labour and mechanisation, which further impacts on socio-economic rights. Such a state of affairs impacts more painfully on many farm labour tenants who would have lived on the farms for all their lives. Individual entitlement to plots of land is the most secure source for improved livelihoods. Direct access to land, followed by government support, will allow poor beneficiaries to cultivate individual fields for the production of their own household food. As Hall ⁽²⁷⁾ and Cliffe ⁽²⁸⁾ argue, this can still be practised alongside large commercial production. This augurs well with the earlier suggestion that government needs to be the purchaser of land that will then be distributed to different beneficiaries, accomplishing redistribution and transformation, but also ensuring food security.

Written by Zenzo Moyo ⁽¹⁾

NOTES:

(1) Zenzo Moyo is a South-African based development practitioner and teacher, currently working toward an MA in Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg. Contact Zenzo through Consultancy Africa Intelligence’s Rights in Focus Unit ( rights.focus@consultancyafrica.com). Edited by Kate Morgan.
(2) ‘International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, 1976, New York: United Nations, http://www.ohchr.org.
(3) ‘South Africa to ratify International Socio-Economic Rights Covenant’, Sangonet Pulse, October 2012, http://www.ngopulse.org.
(4) Liebenberg, S., ‘South Africa’s evolving jurisprudence on socio-economic rights: An effective tool in challenging poverty’, Community Law Centre, 2002, http://www.saflii.org.
(5) Khoza, S., ‘Socio-economic rights in South Africa: A resource book’, Community Law Centre, 2007, http://repository.uwc.ac.za.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Zimbabwe attained majority rule in 1980 while South Africa attained it in 1994.
(8) ‘Land reform in South Africa: Getting back on track’, Centre for Development Enterprise, 2008, http://www.cde.org.za.
(9) Moyo, S., 2011. Three decades of agrarian reform in Zimbabwe. Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(3), pp. 493-531.
(10) Shoko, T., ‘My bones shall rise again: War veterans, spirits and land reform in Zimbabwe’, African Studies Centre, 2004, http://www.ascleiden.nl.
(11) Thomas, N.H., 2003. Land reform in Zimbabwe. Third World Quarterly, 24(2), pp. 671-712.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Scoones, I., et al., 2010. Zimbabwe’s land reform: Myths and realities. Weaver Press: Harare.
(14) Ibid.
(15) Ibid.
(16) Moyo, S., 2011. Three decades of agrarian reform in Zimbabwe. Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(3), pp. 493-531.
(17) Cross, E., ‘The cost of Zimbabwe’s continuing farm invasions’, Cato Institute, 18 May 2009, http://www.cato.org.
(18) ‘White Paper on South Africa Land Policy’, 1997, Department of Land Affairs: South Africa, http://ww2.ruraldevelopment.gov.za.
(19) Weideman, M., 2004. Why land reform? Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Wits University, South Africa, http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za.
(20) Mngxitama, A., ‘South Africa: Land reform blocked’, Green Left Weekly, 24 May 2000, http://www.greenleft.org.au.
(21) ‘Land reform in South Africa: Getting back on track’, Centre for Development Enterprise, 2008, http://www.cde.org.za.
(22) Ibid.
(23) ‘White Paper on South Africa Land Policy’, 1997, Department of Land Affairs: South Africa, http://ww2.ruraldevelopment.gov.za.
(24) The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 (c.2), 1996, South Africa: Government of South Africa, http://www.info.gov.za.
(25) ‘Land reform in South Africa: Getting back on track’, Centre for Development Enterprise, 2008, http://www.cde.org.za.
(26) Hall, R., ‘The impact of land restitution and land reform on livelihoods’, Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, 2007, http://repository.uwc.ac.za.
(27) Ibid.
(28) Cliffe, L., ‘Policy options for the land reform in South Africa: New institutional mechanisms?’, Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, 2007, http://repository.uwc.ac.za.