How to understand, evaluate and influence efficient progress in South Africa’s land reform process: A typology

With reports of widespread failures in South Africa’s land reform programmes there have been growing levels of uncertainty in the political rhetoric that influences policy. Since 1994 policy targets to transfer land to Black farmers have not been met. Of the 2005 target to transfer about 25 million hectares of commercial farmland to black farmers by 2014, less than five million hectares were successfully transferred for commercial use in the redistribution programme. Looking at annually published national data on land price registers, and previous studies using a game theoretic framework (e.g. Mbatha and Antrobus, 2012), from our previous research studies we report failure rates in land resettlement projects of between 50 and 90 percent. To account for these failures, revisions of policies and amendments to legislation have been proposed within a political environment that is becoming increasingly intolerant to slow progress in farm land transfers and to resettlement challenges and failures. Using institutional and historical analytical lenses (Ostrom, 1990 and 1992) in exploring the different historical narratives, this paper reviews reported failures and successes in land reform cases from selected countries in Sub Saharan Africa. From an institutional framework, prevalent social institutions and key lessons from countries like Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa, a typology for evaluating important elements of the land reform processes in South Africa is presented. In addition a review of global data collected on average sizes of farms in different regions of the world is provided as evidence to support propositions of what would make for an efficient farmland size range for small to medium commercial farms in South Africa. We discuss how to use the typology to guide interventions for more successful results in different areas of the reform process in South Africa and other similar countries.