Search

The current debate on land reform cannot take place meaningfully without taking into account the historical course of land distribution in South Africa. After having studied the history of land tenure in South Africa, one arrives at the conclusion that land tenure and the segregation of the two main population groups were to a large extent unavoidable. The unequal distribution of land between black and white can be traced back to the earliest years of contact and the different, irreconcilable views of land tenure of that time. Judgement of the events of a hundred years or more ago cannot take place from a modern point of view. Yet, over the years, the authorities made mistakes in the application of the policy of segregation which resulted in friction and conflicts and action by the authorities which the black nations perceived as humiliating. The authorities failed in their efforts to effect peaceful segregation. We need to find a solution to this problem. There are lessons to be learned from what happened in the past and there are lessons to be learned from what happened in other countries where land reform policies were applied. Ever since the current government came into power various suggestions have been made to try to solve the land issue. From the inception of the land reform process, there were those who called for the government first to transfer to prospective black farmers the land already available before taking away land from successful white farmers. In 2008 the cabinet in principle passed a draft bill to enable land expropriation. Consequently, the opposition parties in parliament reacted strongly when the legislation was tabled. By the end of August, it became known that the government had decided to withdraw the bill for the time being. However, everybody realised that this only meant that the bill would not be tabled in the current session of parliament and would possibly be raised again after the next election. After the threat of the proposed expropriation law, the next shock was the announcement that the government was considering to declare all productive agricultural land a national asset. The possibility of 40% sharecropping was also raised. In July 2011 the long-awaited green paper on land reform was made public. In studying this document, one realises that, inter alia, it implies that the state will retain ownership of land transferred to black farmers. These farmers will then hire the land from the state on a land-lease basis. Further, a limit will be imposed on the amount of land a white commercial farmer or company may own. These farmers will, however, keep their ownership and strict limitations will be applied on foreigners' tenure of agricultural land. Apart from negative reaction to this document, there are also those who believe that with certain adjustments this proposal should be seriously considered as a possible solution to the land issue. The problem offair land distribution has actually become more complex than what it ever was because the population has increased drastically and the land has not. Just as the land policy of the successive white governments was a race driven policy, so is the current policy on land reform. The principal motive in the policies of the white governments of the past was to secure the white man's position. The principal objective of the current government is to benefit black people. Land reform in South Africa can only succeed if it is implemented objectively, fairly and honestly, if the provisions of the constitution are complied with, and if there is no deviation from the regulations for the enforcement of the law. Everybody should realise that land reform has to take place, but also that all the citizens of the country, irrespective of race, are entitled to own land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since their emancipation Black farmers have fought to become economically independent and for the right to self-determine the paths of their lives. Land acquisition has been central to this struggle. Impressively, by 1920 Black farmers neared the one million mark and owned roughly 15 million acres of farmland. Yet, in subsequent years their numbers declined at an alarming rate, approaching 50 percent nearly every 10 years during the second half of the Century. Arguably the most united attempt to rectify the racially motivated decline of Black farmers and the loss of Black-owned farmland across America has been the collective support of the classaction lawsuit Timothy Pigford et al., v. Dan Glickman, Secretary, United States Department of Agriculture in 1996. Based on firsthand accounts, primary documents and existing literature, this essay situates an historical recounting of the Pigford case from its historical and grassroots beginnings to the recent signing of Pigford II and the racially and politically motivated accusations against Shirley Sherrod within a theoretical framework of institutional racism. Furthermore, it illustrates that the problems faced by Black farmers are deeply racial, particularly given the unfortunate racist legacy of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). In our conclusion, we acknowledge factors to deter the growth of young Black farmers in America and highlight those innovative urban and rural farm initiatives that are actively working to redress the decline of the Black agriculture and the agrarian knowledge it holds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent political transformation in South Africa has laid the basis for significant socioeconomic change. This change has included the enzergence of black commercial farmers. Through a case study of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa (Elliot commercial farming areas), the obstacles and opportunities facing emerging Black commercial farmers were examined. The objective of the paper is to examine the prospects and challenges faced by emerging black commercial farmers in the municipality of Sakhisizwe. To this end, the paper considers the circunzstances of the emerging Black-commercial farmers who benefitted from the local government supportfacility rolled out under the land reform programme. The land reform programme for agricultural development sought to build a class of Black commercial farmers in an attempt to deracialise the agricultural sector and also achieve more comprehensive agrarian reform in rural South Africa. The study established that emerging black commercial farmers in Elliot were engaged in both crop farming and livestock farming. As the paper illustrates, considerable problems confront the agricultural sector. Measures need to be put in place to enhance the existing base and, more importantly, to encourage the participation of this group of farmers given that they had hitherto long been denied access to this primary means of production. The challenges faced by the emerging Black commercialfarmers include lack of marketing opportunities, limited government support and poor networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scope and meaning of terms like African American Studies, Black Studies, and Africana Studies have evolved continually since the field was established in schools, colleges, and universities in the late 1960s. Discourse about the economic conditions of people of African descent has always constituted an important dimension of the Black intellectual tradition that Africana Studies seeks to preserve and extend. Significant barriers exist, however, to collaboration between economists and Africana Studies specialists. Opportunities to collaborate across the disciplines arise in addressing issues such as hyper- unemployment, pervasive poverty, environmental racism, Black land loss, and the plight of Black farmers. The author suggests that efforts by Africana Studies specialists to understand many of the current dynamics could be enhanced through collaboration with those economists attempting to develop the subfield of stratification economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1982 report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, special emphasis has been focused on Black farmers in the United States. Of particular importance has been the crisis surrounding Black-owned land loss. Historically, this decline has been due to take-away strategies such as tax sales, partition sales, and accelerated foreclosures by larger land owners and members of the political establishment. At the same time, these schemes were aided by the fact that the traditional mode of land transfer among Black owners was without a legal document or will. Using survey results from Black farmers from the Black Belt region of South-Central Alabama, this paper: (1) briefly examines the positive influence of land ownership on farmers; (2) discusses land loss and the factors behind this phenomenon; (3) considers the overall risk environments surrounding the issue of land loss and how these environments might affect current and future generations of farmers; and (4) proposes avenues for action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effectiveness of the model used by the South African government to finance emerging black farmers for agricultural development and empowerment. It is widely acknowledged that the South African government spends a vast amount of money attempting to help black community members become commercial farmers. In this article, I argue that those who currently qualify for the funding are mostly farmers with little experience, expertise or interest in agricultural farming. The huge investment spent on such farmers ends up being lost in failed agricultural projects, and the government has not succeeded in finding better alternatives to empower emerging black farmers. Such activities benefit neither the government nor the black farmers intended to be assisted in various areas of the country. The black South African farmers remain agriculturally underdeveloped, while the government on the other hand loses a huge amount of money financing unsuccessful agricultural projects, which potentially threatens future food security. This article is conceptual in nature and uses literature to argue that the financing of emerging black farmers can only succeed if emerging black farmers are financed on basis of experience or ability and interest in farming and that such funding does not exclude potential public and private sector motivated employees who want to access such funding to pursue agricultural farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]