State, Land and Democracy in Southern Africa

Arrigo Pallotti, Corrado Tornimbeni

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472452405
• eBook ISBN: 9781317050315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Each country in southern Africa has a unique history but in all of them socio-economic inequalities and high poverty levels weaken the governments' legitimacy and represent a challenge to models of economic development. One key issue appears to be the solution of the land question. This vital concern affects both citizenship and democracy in the political systems of the region, yet no government has shown the capacity or commitment to solve it. In this volume leading European, American and African scholars explore in detail the relationship between state, land and democracy. They examine the historical background of asset allocation and its impact on questions of nationality, the definition of citizenship, human rights and the current political and economic processes in southern Africa.

Chapter 1
State, Land and Democracy: Reflecting on Agrarian Change in Southern Africa

Mario Zamponi

Agrarian Question(s)

In the last two decades there has been a stimulating debate on the role that the practices of development may have in the South of the world, with particular attention to rural development and the role of the peasantry in today’s global economy (van der Ploeg 2010). There have also been extensive debates within development studies, with a particular interest in developing countries, which have significant implications for our understanding of the agrarian question(s) and agrarian transition (see e.g. Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010a, 2010b).

This is linked to the discussion within development studies about the role that primitive accumulation can play in development (Moore 2004): it is a complex debate, since in most developing countries – and in particular sub-Saharan Africa – no overall economic transformation through processes of primitive accumulation has ever been completed (Helliker and Murisa 2011). Indeed, the periphery has remained locked within disarticulated models of accumulation (Moyo and Yeros 2005), which have impacted on the characteristics of agrarian transformation.

Moreover, we have to consider the role played by agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. NEPAD declared 2014 the ‘Year of Agriculture’: ‘The Year of Agriculture intends to: consolidate active commitments towards new priorities, strategies and targets for achieving results and impacts, with special focus on sustained, all Africa agriculture-led growth, propelled by stronger, private sector investment and public–private partnerships’ (NEPAD 2014). In addition, according to some recent data produced by NEPAD itself,¹ the role of agriculture is still important in most sub-Saharan African countries: the same document states that the agricultural sector remains a major sector in most African economies – though it accounts for less than 15 per cent of GDP in South Africa and Namibia; it is the main creator of jobs, while industry is very weak and extractive industries have little impact on employment and revenue (NEPAD 2013: 15). Despite rapid urbanization, the rural population is growing and land pressure is mounting (ibid.: 17). As mentioned by Borras (2009), although the rural population is diminishing, the percentage of poor people in rural areas continues to be higher than in urban areas: world poverty still represents a largely rural phenomenon. Borras reminds us how important the relationship is between agriculture and access to livelihoods, poverty and inequality in the rural areas of developing countries (and Africa in particular).

Thus, to debate and reflect on the agrarian question in Africa – and in Southern Africa more specifically – is of primary importance because the agrarian question is strictly intertwined with the anti-colonial struggle, state formation and the ‘unsolved national question’ (Moyo and Yeros 2005). In this regard, land reform needs economic and agrarian transformations in order to achieve the goal of sustainable rural development (Helliker and Murisa 2011).

The creation of new capitalist classes, the transformation of property rights, and patterns of primitive accumulation are in progress in the global economy. This is also the case with most of rural Africa (see e.g. Peters 2004; Cotula 2007). As recently mentioned by Lund and Boone (2013: 1), ‘land issues are often not about land only. Rather, they invoke issues of property more broadly, implicating social and political relationships in the widest sense’.

As Bernstein (2012: 16) suggests: ‘It is useful to begin with a familiar “founding” moment: Marx’s enclosure model of primitive accumulation in the original transition to agrarian capitalism.’ This starting point is pertinent because – he continues – it is useful to remember that

(i) the English transition, as the first, had features unlikely to be repeated subsequently and (ii) Marx’s historical materialism provides some of the essential means for investigating transformations of land and labour in different times and places of the diverse histories of capitalism. Central to these processes is the dynamic of ‘the commodification of subsistence’ that is, commodification of the conditions of reproduction of labour. (Bernstein 2012: 16–17)²

The classical agrarian question, that is the evolution from the feudal to the industrial capitalist model, has not been completed in many third world regions – a fact which happened in Europe, as we have already mentioned. As Byres (2012: 13) reminds us: ‘The agrarian question may be defined as the continuing existence in the countryside of a poor country of substantive obstacles to an unleashing of the forces capable of generating economic development, both inside and outside agriculture.’ Following the discussion raised by Byres’ wide-ranging research,³ Lerche (2012) raises the issue of the failure of accumulation in the countryside and the failure of the state to mediate the agrarian transition successfully.

Bernstein (2003) suggests that it would be useful, in describing Byres’ agrarian transition, to consider the role of agrarian classes, the transformation of the social relations of production in the transition to capitalism, and how such transformations may, or may not, contribute to the accumulation process. He also suggests that the processes of transformation include: intensified exploitation of land incorporated within colonial rule, and commoditization of peasant agriculture, frequently linked to export-orientated forms of agriculture. This is certainly the case in Southern Africa, as we will see, where the role of settler agriculture transformed the agrarian landscape. In addition ‘what is specific about the forms of domination in Southern Africa is not just the importance of its legacies of settler colonialism, but also the enduring legacy of politically organized regional systems of migrant labour’ (O’Laughlin et al. 2013: 3).

In this regard, Bernstein (2004; 2010) maintains that there is an agrarian question of capital and an agrarian question of labour. The agrarian question of capital is related to the processes of transition to capitalism, which is the question at the core of Byres’ analysis. However, due to the processes of globalization, the classical agrarian question seems no longer to be central to the processes of capitalist development. Thus, in his opinion there does exist an agrarian question of labour, that is the relationship between access to employment and social policy, the definition of the working classes and the dynamics of transformation related to access to land.

This theme is developed by other authors. Lerche (2012) points out that Bernstein’s analysis represents one of the challenges to the classical agrarian question and to agricultural transformation, while a second challenge finds its main reference in movements such as Via Campesina, GRAIN and the Movement for Food Sovereignty. These last believe that because of the dominant neoliberal globalization, it is today necessary to revise the agrarian question (and land reform proposals) to give more power to the producers in the South. Nor, indeed, can we ignore the present-day agrarian question of food, linked to tensions between the interests of large transnational companies and claims to food sovereignty by many social sectors in the South (McMichael 2008). Other authors (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2009; Lipton 2009) argue that traditional agrarian and land reforms, in particular, express the potential for contemporary transformation of agriculture, especially in relation to issues such as property and land redistribution.

In Africa the agrarian question is related to many other issues. Some authors have tried to grasp the complexity of agrarian problems in Africa by examining issues such as: insecurity of tenure, the role of the market in agricultural transformation, patterns of land alienation and concentration, undemocratic structures of local government, the construction of customary tenure, and conflicts and competition over the land (see among others: Toulmin and Quan 2000; Wily 2011; Lund and Boone 2013; Peters 2013a and 2013b). According to Manji (2006: 41 ff.), the land question in Africa also depends on the diverse regional contexts, and in the case of the former colonies of Southern Africa the main problems are concentration and inequality (with ownership of land being concentrated in the white minorities), and the role of the regional labour systems, thus emphasizing the issue of land redistribution.

The release of rural dwellers from pre-capitalist social relations has meant that a modern, fragmented reserve of labour forces has formed. Bernstein refers to the so-called ‘classes of labour’: a highly differentiated social group including proletarian or semi-proletarian rural groups, small farmers, and also highly market-orientated entrepreneurial farmers (Bernstein 2010: 110 and ff.). They all have to attain their reproduction in conditions of growing income insecurity (and in many cases pauperization) as well as employment insecurity.

Nowadays, neoliberal globalization and land deals in Africa, based on a vision of the world as a globally organized ‘free trade’ economy managed by a largely unaccountable political and economic elite, only intensify the issues of access to the land and of the economic role of the peasantry (White et al. 2012). In this regard, Wily (2012) argues that land rushes are based on and legitimized by legal manipulation which usually fails to recognize customary rights to the land; land grabbing is being legalized, to the detriment of the poor and marginalized. Woodhouse (2012), specifically focuses on the supply side of land deals in Africa, placing the current ‘enclosures’ in a longer historical context. He outlines the ways in which the two dominant institutional models – large-scale mechanized farms and contract farming – are seen capable to respond to productivity challenges.

On this issue Oya (2013) has recently suggested that the return of capital to agriculture and the renewal of the agrarian question of capital do not bring any resolution to the agrarian question of labour, since displacement is experienced as more significant than the creation of new livelihood opportunities. We should hence pay more attention to the twin agrarian questions of capital and labour, to use Bernstein’s terms.

Agrarian Change, Land and the State

‘The historical puzzles’ (Byres 1996: 15) and the lack of any clear explanation of the agrarian question(s) have led to a broad re-examination of the characteristics of both the agrarian question and the agrarian transition since the 1990s, in the light of a changing global context (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010b). Since the 1980s, structural adjustment programmes have reinforced processes of economic integration at a global level, and reduced the role of the state, while increasing commoditization of agriculture, and – in many cases – worsening the crisis of the agriculture sector (Helliker and Murisa 2011).

In many African countries during the last 30 years, emphasis on promotion of an agricultural export-led strategy as the principal means of enhancing rural accumulation has brought renewed interest by both the state and investors in closer agricultural integration with the global economy and agro-food commodity chains:

The policy conditionalities of the international development institutions did this as a means of boosting access to foreign exchange, facilitating debt repayments, increasing funds for investment, promoting technological change and boosting rural productivity and profits. In other words, increasing and intensifying integration into the global economy – globalization – has been argued by neoliberals to be the most effective means of enhancing rates of accumulation, in the rural economy and more generally. (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010b: 263)

In the face of this, Patnaik (2011) argues that stronger integration into export markets through free trade has contributed to the present agrarian crisis. In Africa, more specifically, Moyo (2012) explains the ‘failed agrarian transition’ in the light of colonial and neoliberal accumulation by dispossession and exploitation of labour. He argues that neoliberal policies have accelerated the process of undermining and dispossessing small peasants and encouraging large-scale investments, thus creating the basis for contemporary land grabbing, a ‘new scramble over African lands’ which expresses ‘the escalation of capital’s speculative tendency to accumulate by dispossession … ’ (Moyo 2011: 73 and 78).

Meanwhile, we should not forget that, since the 1990s, the debate has been strongly orientated towards marked-led agrarian reforms, and rural development aiming to support smallholder agriculture. The main sponsors of this approach have been international institutions such as the World Bank (WB) and bilateral donors as well, with the emphasis on the central role of agriculture for development, particularly in order to alleviate poverty (WB 2003 and 2008. For a critical analysis and the debate, see Akram-Lodhi 2008, Oya 2009). One recent WB document states that: ‘The dominant focus of support is on smallholder agriculture’ (WB 2013: xvi). In particular the WB programme in 93 countries has supported longer-term investments such as agricultural research and extension, improved water management, agricultural management practices, adoption of new technologies, and gender mainstreaming.

More recently international thinking on development has connected the issue of security of tenure and land reform with development, and more specifically, with poverty reduction. Some authors have argued that the solution to rural poverty is redistribution of land to small farmers. The argument in favour of redistribution hinges on the idea of the inverse relationship. Thus, land should be redistributed to small producers who are able to use it in a more efficient and productive way (Griffin, Khan and Ickowitz 2002). On this point, a recent study by Otsuka and Place finds that inverse relationship had historically seldom been reported in sub-Saharan Africa, ‘at least because the farming system was relatively extensive, requiring little hired labour. If an extensive farming system, such as slash and burn farming, is practiced, we can hardly expect to observe any correlation between cultivated farm size and productivity’ (Otsuka and Place 2014: 4). However, they have accepted that the inverse relationship has been recently found by numerous studies about sub-Saharan Africa.

Byres (2004) disputed the view supporting contemporary redistributive land reform since it calls for major investments that states are not able to sustain. He also criticized the position for encouraging a populist utopia, given that contemporary neoliberal discourse dismisses the historical path of capitalist relations in the countryside – which include peasant agriculture.

However, nowadays this issue is still part of the thinking of international development agencies which claim the economic and political importance of rural development and land reform: according to Lipton (2009) land reform is an unresolved and hence topical issue, keenly debated throughout the world.

Understanding the political economy that underpins smallholder agriculture is of critical importance, as more than 90 per cent of the world’s 1.1 billion poor live on small family farms (Lipton 2005). While the future of smallholders hangs in the balance, there is substantial evidence that the contribution of agriculture to growth and poverty reduction will continue to depend on broad participation by smallholder farmers. Birner and Resnik took their cue from Karl Kautsky’s ‘The Agrarian Question’: ‘peasant producers persisted due to self-exploitation and under consumption, which were not deemed to be socially desirable situations. He was convinced of the technical superiority of large farms and saw no justification for agricultural policies designed to support small farmers’ (Birner and Resnik 2010: 1442). By contrast, Birner and Resnik claim that ‘the experience of the 20th century seems to tell a different story; implementing policies to support the economic development of small farmers has proven to be a particularly successful strategy to reduce rural poverty and to use agriculture as an engine of growth on the road to industrialization’ (ibid.).

However, for all the rhetoric of market-led land reforms and s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Contributors
• Series Editor’s Preface
• 1 State, Land and Democracy: Reflecting on Agrarian Change in Southern Africa
• Part I Land and Rural Development in Southern Africa: Historical and Political Perspectives
• Part II Land Reform in Zimbabwe: National and International Dimensions
• Index of Names