At least in South Africa, democratisation was founded on elite deals about non-elites. Arguably, during the first fifteen years of democracy, South Africa enjoyed the advantage of both effective institutions and a shared willingness of varied stakeholders in the belief in the power of cooperation.

As a result, South Africa’s political settlement was built around distinct sub bargains: one which resulted in a deal that was struck between white capital and the new political leadership at the time of transition; this deal included a commitment to the rule of law and the protection of private property in particular, in exchange for economic transformation through the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program (Levy et al.,2021). It was ideally a quid pro quo arrangement in many respects or what one would call a political settlement.

A political settlement is defined in Levy et al as “an ongoing agreement (or acquiescence) among a society’s most powerful groups over a set of political and economic institutions accepted to generate for them a minimally acceptable level of benefits, and which thereby ends or prevents generalised civil war and/or political and economic disorder” (ibid).

Indeed, this was achieved through the concerted efforts of multinational companies with vested interest in South Africa’s endowment of critical minerals. As a result, the World Bank made recommendations to the new incoming ANC government advocating for a market-led land reform programme which emphasised voluntariness in the acquisition process of land for land reform purposes by the State and payment of full market-related prices up front and in cash including a reduced role for the state. Some argued that this was the genesis of our land reform challenges as early as the dawn of democracy.

The recommendation that the State must play a lesser role was disingenuous. The World Bank assumed that reforms would take place voluntarily and which never happened. It is not surprising to see the US displeasure with Pretoria over advances by government to move away from the political settlements. This pro-market approach adopted by government in 1994 on the advice of the World Bank created a default position in that too much discretion was given to landowner to decide whether they wanted to participate in land reform (Du Plessis,2014).

The balance of forces culminated towards what we have now since concerns raised about the land policy by various groupings were outweighed by global imperatives represented by the Bank and other international interests including the emerging national petit bourgeoisie. Many scholars believe that the Bank’s programme in any country was to “lend and to dictate policy as a precondition to that lending” (ibid).

Market-led Land Reforms were critically important for colonisers to disable new liberation governments from rapturing with colonial land holding. Zimbabwe was among the first in Africa to be pressured to adopt a market-led land reform program, it was imposed as part of the Lancaster House independence agreement which former liberation leader and President, Robert Mugabe agreed to, the imposition was championed by the World Bank and other international agencies’ neoliberal policies in a number of nations spanning Africa, Asia, and South America, who then later also advocated that model for reform in South Africa and Namibia (ibid).

This agency of influence from afar held by multinational companies and economically strong nations has caused unimaginable proportions of instability and tensions in countries concerned, particularly since indigenous off-registered rights bearers struggle to protect their rights to land. Even though South Africa is on a path to deracialize commercial agriculture, insofar as there is an agreement to uncouple the strong association between large-scale land ownership and racialized privilege in the countryside, commercial agriculture has been mainly export-oriented, notoriously conservative, resisting entry for emerging black farmers.

What we have come to see is that there is no serious attempt by the State to detach private landownership from capitalist accumulation and academics warn that even if there were such attempts, they would still be met with major resistance and disruption locally including the wrath of foreign and local investors who will strangle such modest attempts. Zimbabwe has already clearly shown the rest of the global South that extensive reforms of deracialising colonial land holdings cannot by themselves fundamentally alter the capitalist agrarian economy and lead to broader thoroughgoing social transformation without a different type of state.

Or as Madlingozi puts it, we ultimately need a “new state” one which will not only dismantle private ownership, but also seek to “break with the violent logic of capital, whether buttressed and dominated by West or East, and the tenacious, oppressive social property relations it engenders”.

* Maphoto is a land reform specialist with the national department of land reform & rural development.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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