How white farmers still dominate land ownership in South Africa in spite of land reform

Even after South Africa gained democracy, the nation remains among the world's most unequal. The transition to democracy didn't yield the anticipated wealth and ownership shift from white minority to Black majority population. Land ownership is a key issue in these discussions. Under apartheid, Black South Africans could only own around 13% of the country's territory, despite constituting 80% of the population.

In 1995, the government initiated a target to redistribute approximately 30% of white-owned land to Black farmers, ensuring fair market value sales. However, only 12% to 20% of land has been redistributed so far. Over the past seven years, I've studied the land reform program as a political scientist. I aimed to understand both the motivations behind land transfers and the demand for land reform.

By interviewing white commercial farmers and Black land reform farmers, I explored why some landowners sold their farms and why some did not. When it comes to Black farmers, their experiences as new farmers in South Africa were a focal point. My findings revealed that landowners' decisions were influenced by the country's history of racial segregation.

Some white farmers used land redistribution to establish a barrier between their farms and neighboring Black communities. Others, in regions with a significant Black population, sought to integrate Black farmers into their farming operations. These findings are crucial because the United States government recently criticized South Africa's land reform program, accusing it of persecuting white farmers, expropriating their property, and inciting violence.

President Donald Trump withdrew all aid from South Africa and initiated an asylum process for South African white farmers to seek refuge in America. However, my research demonstrates that land reform is not unfairly targeting white farmers. Instead, white farmers view it as a beneficial and lucrative tool for addressing long-standing issues they face.

Therefore, to fully comprehend land reform, one must rely on evidence rather than political rhetoric. In the Free State province, a region with a history of racial segregation that led to limited Black agriculture and high urbanization, I interviewed 10 white farmers living near buffer zones between Black towns and white rural areas.

These farmers expressed fear of livestock theft, and land reform allowed them to sell their farms at a fair price and relocate to the rural heartland. This also meant that livestock theft became the concern of the newly acquired Black land reform farmers, as national statistics show that Black individuals are primarily affected by rural crime.

In KwaZulu-Natal, I interviewed a dozen farmers to understand why they sold their land. Historically, white farmers in this province employed Black workers through a type of semi-feudal labor known as labor tenancy. Under this system, labor tenants were granted access to small plots of land in exchange for their work on the white-owned farm.

Consequently, many more Black rural residents had small livestock farms interspersed among the province's white commercial farms compared to Free State. Some white farmers sold portions of their land through the land reform program to separate the labor tenants' small cattle herds from their larger commercial herds. This arrangement aimed to confine former labor tenants and their livestock to one part of the farm, distinct from the commercial herd.

However, my research indicates that this left Black land reform beneficiaries on small plots with limited prospects for expanding into profitable commercial farming. This situation preserves the economic divide between the white commercial and Black cattle sectors. To address these challenges effectively, we need to rethink land reform instead of abandoning it.

In South Africa, most land has been redistributed through willing sellers and buyers, with government support. While this approach may keep farms profitable, it fails to tackle the deep-rooted inequalities stemming from centuries of colonialism and apartheid. Although the US government has strongly condemned South Africa's state-driven land reform framework, my research suggests that the opposite issue exists: the state has relied excessively on market forces rather than proactively deciding how land is transferred and supporting the redistribution process.