What happens on land reform farms in South Africa? A field-based reality check

Land reform in South Africa has not only been slow compared to official targets and popular expectations, but also, where land has been acquired for redistribution, people lack secure rights and have limited options for improving their livelihoods. In this paper we report on our field-based research on ten projects in the Eastern Cape, offering insights that can only become visible with detailed fieldwork. In our initial study, none of the beneficiaries had valid leases, and by the time of writing over a decade later, rights had been secured in only four of the projects. We show how the projects studied fit into three distinct types: the “stymied middle class” of aspiring emerging farmers; “agribusiness cashing in” where strategic partners have taken over; and “abandoned farm workers” who have lost their jobs but remain on farms where they struggle to eke out a living. All three are far from what is written in policy or imagined in the public discourse on land reform. Without redistribution of wealth or assets, and without secure tenure, much of what we have found is in fact not land reform at all but rather a state-driven programme of expanding insecure state tenancy.