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| Project Profile: South Africa |
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Beginning in 1991, the Land Tenure Center (LTC) has provided training and facilitated dialog among Government and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in South Africa. The first training program was held in Madison, Wisconsin in February of 1991. Three subsequent programs held in 1996 and 1997 were organized in cooperation with the Land and Agriculture Policy Centre (LAPC), at the Universdity of the Witwatersrand ( WITS) University and the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of the School of Government, University of the Western Cape. These were held at three different sites in South Africa.
Another seminar was held in Madison, Wisconsin in 1996 for land reform policy makers and activists. LAPC was also the main agent for a 1994 collaborative research project that did benefit-cost analysis for future land grants in South Africa. Broadening Access and Strengthening Input Market Systems (BASIS), a collaboration research program in which the Land Tenure Center participates, also held an organizational and planning workshop to chart regional strategy for program developments and fund raising in the region. The funding sources for all these activities have been the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and The Ford Foundation.
February 25- May 3, 1991
Southern Africa Land Policy Training Program
Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This ten- week long training program was held at the Land Tenure Center (LTC) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) in 1991. Twelve South Africans and one Namibian participated. The purpose of the program was to increase participants' knowledge about a wide range of issues that arise when designing land reform policies and implementing land reform programs. Participants were selected for their potential to participate in the debates on the shape of the South African and land reform and tenure system when black majority government came to South Africa.
Other participating organizations were the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies and Centro der Formação Agraria e de Desenvolvimento Rural in the Ministerio de Agricultura of the government of Mozambique. The training program steering committee consisted of John Bruce, LTC Director; Steven Lawry, LTC Africa Program Coordinator; Carol Dickerman, LTC Associate Director; Don Kanel, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics; and Essy Letsoalo, Visiting Fellow and Geographer, University of the Witwatersrand Rural Facility.
In South Africa before 1991, anti-apartheid organizations emphasized political action to redress grievances resulting from forced removals and attempts by the South African government after 1948 to eliminate so-called 'black spots' in white commercial farming areas. However, activists devoted less attention to the design of comprehensive, post-apartheid land policies, that could redress the historical legacy of African land dispossession, which vested 87 percent of South Africa's land area in the hands of the white minority. Many policy questions arose when considering the shape of post-apartheid land reform. The LTC program was designed to convey to participants some of the skills and experience need to grapple more effectively with questions relating to land tenure.
In February 1990, these questions took on practical urgency with the unbanning of the African National Congress f(ANC) and other anti-apartheid organizations. Political discourse in South Africa shifted from overt resistance to the South African state to debate on the nature of post-apartheid South African society. In September 1989, Zola Skweyiya, Director of the ANC, met with LTC staff during a Columbia University conference on constitutional issues in South Africa. At this time he expressed a wish to send ANC staff members to the LTC for training on land tenure and land reform policy analysis. As a result, the LTC designed a training program to serve the needs of disenfranchised persons and groups-- disenfranchised both by the sense of loss of land and by a lack of access to training opportunities.
In August 1990, LTC Africa Program Coordinator Steven Lawry traveled to South Africa, where he met with staff members of organizations active in land issues. These organizations included the Land Commission of the ANC; the National Land Committee (NLC); the Centre for Development Studies at the University of the Western Cape; Rhodes University; the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Natal; the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) at the University of the Witwatersrand; and the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in Johannesburg. Subsequently, the ANC, NLC, CALS and LRC nominated persons to attend the Course. The LTC also invited the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation in Namibia to nominate one person to attend. LTC selected thirteen participants on the basis of practical experience and commitment, organizational recommendation, and availability. The Ford Foundation agreed to fund the program.
The Ford Foundation grant covered all course expenses, including faculty and staff costs. The grant enabled a South African scholar, Essy Letsoalo, to spend nine months in Madison to assist with course development and teaching. The grant also covered travel, accommodation and stipends for ten course participants (seven South Africans, one Namibian, and two lecturer/participants from Zimbabwe and Mozambique). In addition, the ANC Land Commission secured funding from the US Agency for International Development in Pretoria to cover the costs of sending five additional South African participants, who were funded through the South African short-term training program administered by the Institute of International Education.
The program was organized into twelve subject areas, or modules. The modules are listed below, along with the LTC faculty or staff person who organized and led the module. Each module consisted of from two to eight separate lectures.
I. Review of Land Tenure in Southern Africa
Coordinator: Essy Letsoalo
II. Economic Analysis of Land Reform Strategies
Coordinators: Michael Roth and Bill Thiesenhusen
III. Tenure Policies in Land Reform Coordinator: Essy Letsoalo
IV. Legal and Constitutional Issues
Coordinator: Joe Thome
V. Cooperatives in Agrarian Reforms
Coordinator: Steven Lawry
VI. Land Administration
Coordinator: John Bruce
VII. Finance and Expropriation
Coordinator: John Strasma
VIII. Social and Political Policies
Coordinator: Susana Lastarria
IX. The Politics of Land Reform
Coordinator: David Stanfield
X. Environmental and Natural Resource Management Issues
Coordinator: Steven Lawry
XI. Evaluation and Monitoring of Land Reform
Coordinators: Peter Dorner and Don Kanel
XII. Summing Up: Land Reform Strategies for Southern Africa
Participants completed a written evaluation of the course at the end of the training program, and LTC also held a one-day feedback session, in which participants offered recommendations for improvements. Criticisms centered on the need for more participatory and interactive teaching methods, and greater use of South African case materials. Participant written evaluations identified areas of new knowledge and new ideas gained from the course. Participants cited as useful new knowledge of various economic, financial, and legal measures other than wholesale nationalization of land and creation of a state farm sector. They also indicated that their time in the United States afforded them a measure of personal and intellectual detachment from the day-to-day pressures of life and work in South Africa. This allowed them to consider the issues they were struggling with at home in new ways. Access to the intellectual and other resources of the university was something many participants found especially rewarding.
It is LTC's view that the training program met its objectives. The participants completed the course with a fuller understanding of the complexities of land reform policy formulation. They had a more complete understanding of the kinds of economic and social impacts and benefits likely to be associated with alternative land reform strategies. Since the end of the training program, LTC has received positive feedback from persons working with the returned participants, observing that they participate much more effectively in public meetings on land reform issues, and deal with issues at higher levels of sophistication and competency than prior to attending the course. Many have now moved into senior positions in the Department of Lands and the "Land NGOs".
The university community also benefited greatly from its contact with the course participants. LTC faculty and staff learned much about land issues in South Africa and Namibia that enabled them to better assist South Africans and Namibians in addressing these issues through subsequent research and training.
Southern African Printing College, Honeydew
January 6-19, 1996
and
Crawford's Cintsa Beach, East London
July 14-27, 1996
and
Hilton Hotel Conference Center, Kwazulu-Natal
August 17-19, 1997
These three training courses held in South Africa in 1996 and 1997 each had about 30 student participants representing a mix of Government and NGO affiliations. In each session, 10 to 15 speakers delivered formal presentations. Student participants also contributed to the teaching through panel discussions, group discussions, and in some cases formal presentations. Course content was organized jointly by the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) of Wits University, and the Land Tenure Center (LTC) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition, PLAAS undertook the major tasks of participant selection, printing and dissemination of course readers, venue arrangements, and other course logistics. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) subsidized course costs through a contract to the Land and Agriculture Policy Center (LAPC), which also assisted the participating institutions with ticketing and other logistics.
The course readings were sent out to participants a month in advance, along with an assignment asking students to link case study research with tenure terms and definitions. The three courses consisted of thirteen or fourteen modules covering selected aspects of land tenure and land reform. The following list of modules from the first course typifies the components of all the courses:
Each module presented two perspectives: (1) the South Africa experience based on case study research and current proposals for legislative and administrative reforms; and (2) the international comparative experience based on literature and studies presented in the readings from around the world, but with special emphasis on Africa. Gender was a crosscutting theme in all modules but a special module was included to help tie together previous discussions and for purposes of carrying out a more focused discussion on gender policy.
Finally, a two-day field visit was arranged to each of four sites. The sites for the first program were Moutse, Daggakraal, Braklaagte, and Mpumalanga (Iswepe and Saaihock). For the second program the sites included Mangati, Mgwali, Mooiplaas, and Zwelediga. The third program visited Amahlubi, Cornfields, Cramond, and Misgunds. Participants were asked to link their learning of theory and research methods in the course to information-gathering and analysis of findings in the field. Methods chosen varied from group to group, but discussions were generally held with chiefs, management and trust committees, landholders, farmworkers, tenants and other interest groups. In all three of the programs the groups completed triangulated interviews and prepared longitudinal tenure case histories. In the third program, there was enough time for participants to engage in tenure mapping as well. The field visits provided participants with a first-hand exposure to tenure problems, conflicts and issues. For many participants, this was the first opportunity to stay in households within villages and discuss in a personal way the felt concerns of villagers about their land related problems and government policy.
Reports on the three in-country short courses attempted to summarize concerns and insights of participants as they considered land policy and its implementation in South Africa.
Participants in the first course were concerned that the Department of Land Affairs program of tenure reform, tentatively embodied in the rights enquiry process, was not well thought-through in relation to land redistribution and land restitution programs. Land tenure reform is part of both those programs, but then also has a key role to play in the 13 percent of national land which remained with the black community.
The participants were also worried about problems in the relationship between the Department of Land Affairs and the Land NGO community. Many staff of the department had come from the NGO sector, which has been a tremendously important source of knowledge and skills, and the Department intended to rely heavily on NGOs for implementation of its programs.
But considerable tension existed. Human and other resources in both government and the NGO community are scarce, and land reform competes for those resources with demands of the urban populations, which are the ANC's core constituency. Department of Land Affairs officials and staff struggle with bureaucratic mechanisms, and progress in implementation is slow. They are frustrated, and feel that the Land NGO community does not understand the political and bureaucratic constraints under which they operate. People in the NGO community are torn between wanting to assist government in implementing the land reform, on one hand, and on the other, a fear of being co-opted and losing their historic role as a critical voice on behalf of local communities.
In the second short course, participants focused on issues of effective local government. There was a growing appreciation of the difficulties of proceeding with a fundamental reform of local government and land reform at the same time. There was a realization, due in part to the field visits, that in many areas there was no effective local government functioning. This problem was closely related to a need to be clearer about tenure models for the reform sector, and how they relate to local government. For example, the law allows Communal Property Associations to be land recipients under the reforms, but the scale of these associations is not clear, nor is their relationship to institutions of local government and land administration, whether modern or traditional. Indeed there seemed to be a lack of clarity in the minds of many involved in the process as to the relative roles of property, land administration and local government.
The federal nature of government and the new roles for provinces further complicate administration of the land reform program. This was of particular concern in terms of achieving an effective land delivery process. There was a strong sense that government needed to streamline the processes and prioritize and integrate programs, including the rights enquiry process.
The third short course explored development in many of the areas mentioned earlier, but focused primarily on the delivery of services to reform beneficiaries. The placing of both the Department of Land Affairs and the Department of Agriculture under one Minister did not appear to have facilitated collaboration in service provision. Department of Agriculture staff remain committed to agricultural development scenarios based on an expansion to the black community of older models of large-scale mechanized commercial farming. The Department of Land Affairs staff and the Land NGOs are more aware of the success in other African countries in modernizing smallholder agriculture, but are perhaps insufficiently concerned about productivity and how increases can be achieved in the reform sector. Joint training exercises for staff of the two departments, which would focus on reconciling the claims of equity and productivity, was recommended as a partial solution.
June 10-July 7, 1996
Seminar on Land Reform Policy and Implementation for South Africa
The seminar held in Madison 1996 was intended for senior and experienced land reform policy makers and activists who had specific policy and implementation issues that they wish to explore in depth. The Madison venue for the seminar was appropriate because it allowed participants access to a wealth of individual experiences of LTC staff and Library resources, and gave them the opportunity to consider the issues confronting land reform in a structured and comprehensive fashion.
The program began with a day and a half of orientation and discussion. Participants developed programs of self-study, working in a tutorial mode with LTC faculty and researchers to explore their topic of interest. Working through tutorials twice each week, each participant developed his or her individual project. Ms. Botshelo Mathuba (Deputy Permanent Secretary Lands, Ministry of Lands and Housing, Botswana) was in Madison as a resource person for the group, and interacted regularly with a group of the participants who had a particular interest in land administration issues.
The participants met in seminar twice a week with selected faculty members to discuss pertinent land reform issues, and to share the findings of their research and reading. Initially the participants used these seminars to discuss their emerging project. Rather they served as a venue in which two or more participants made presentations of work in progress. In this way issues were raised that they thought would be useful to hear discussed. Later in the program they presented tentative conclusions of their own. There were also follow-up discussions between seminar participants and participants in UW's Office of International Agricultural Programs' Summer Institute for African Agriculture Research. These explored relationships between land reform, agricultural technologies, and agricultural production.
Three field trips enriched the program. Two Saturday trips into the Wisconsin countryside were informative. One was a visit to the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers near Prairie du Chien, including a historical review of land use in the river valley, from the fur-trading era through the flooding of 1995 and the consequent changes in land use regulation. The second was a visit to a local dairy farm, which examined the way in which small capital-intensive farming operation handled intra-family and intra-generational property issues. A third field trip, treated as a seminar session, involved a visit to the Menominee Reservation in which participants had the opportunity to discuss comparative reservation experiences of the US and South Africa. This included the role of a protected land base for the cultural survival of minorities.
|
Participant |
Tutors |
|
Mr. Allen S. West |
Dr. David Moyer, Environmental Policy Studies;
Professor Michael Carter, Agricultural & Applied Economics |
|
Margot Piennar |
Dr. John Bruce, Forestry and LTC Researcher; Professor Joseph Thome, Law |
|
Ashley Westaway |
Dr. David Moyer, Professor Joseph Thome |
|
Henk Smith |
Professor John Strasma, Agricultural & Applied Economics Professor Harvey Jacobs, Urban & Regional Planning |
|
Sithembiso Gumbi |
Professor Daniel Bromley, Agricultural & Applied Economics; Dr. Michael Roth, Agricultural & Applied Economics and LTC Researcher |
|
Star Mottswege |
Professor John Strasma; Dr. Susana Lastarria, Sociologist and LTC researcher |
|
Mdu Shabane |
Dr. Susana Lastarria; Professor William Thiesenhusen, Agricultural & Applied Economics and LTC Director |
|
Tebogo Makgobola |
Dr. John Bruce Professor Michael Carter |
|
Phumelelo Booysen |
Dr. Michael Roth Professor William Thiesenhusen |
Overall, the seminar was a very positive experience for both the participants and faculty. The participants were positive about the tutorial approach. The assigning of each participant to both a primary and secondary tutor, who brought different specializations to the work with the participants proved to be very useful. This also allowed a shift toward the tutor with whom the participant ultimately felt most comfortable.
The participants were notably more relaxed than the earlier group in Madison. They were more spontaneous in their interaction faculty on the issues in the seminars, less concerned with figuring out faculty perspectives in ideological terms. The fact that we engaged each other better is an important dividend of the democratic process in South Africa over the last few years, and also reflects some learning on the part of LTC. The South Africans' conviction that they must learn to work together, and the resultant very purposeful and sensitive way in which they approached resolution of differences within the group, was a special pleasure of working with such a mixed group.
In anticipation of future seminars, the evaluations identified two ways in which the format for the seminar could be improved. First, the evaluations were unanimous that the seminar/tutorial approach met the participants needs very well. However, they suggested a little more structure to the seminar would be helpful. Second, the evaluations provided a clear sense that more instruction was needed in the initial days of the seminar. There was a considerable range of experiences in academic environments amoung group members. While some participants had experience in national policy debates, others had more background in field experience. Therefore, there was a need for a common language and conceptual groundwork about tenure issues that could be included in the orientation process.
LTC provided land policy research support to the Land and Agriculture Policy Centre (LAPC), South Africa, from August 15, 1994 to January 21, 1996. LTC staff collaborated on various research projects, and identified other joint research activities for LAPC and LTC. An example of one of the collaborative projects is a benefit-cost analysis focusing on the size and administration of land grants. The LTC librarian, Beverly Philips, traveled to South Africa in early 1995 to advise the LAPC library staff on library organizational resource sharing strategies.
BASIS is a Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP). LTC is a participating agency in BASIS, and home to its management entity. One regional focus of the BASIS CRSP is the Southern Africa regional program, which is under the direction of Pauline Peters, Harvard Institute for International Development. The research themes are: (1) to broaden access to water resources; (2) to broaden access to land, labor and financial capital; and (3) to restructure markets, improving food security, and securing sustainable livelihoods. The institutions collaborating on this program are the Institute of Natural Resources (University of Natal); University of Cape Town, and University of the Western Cape; the Land Agriculture Policy Center (LAPC); The Market Society; and Mboza Village Enterprises. Funding for this CRSP project has been provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison is the management entity of BASIS CRSP and represents the Consortium for Applied Research on Market Access (CARMA), a group of US and international researchers.
BASIS also provided support for a study running from January through July 1998 entitled "The Dynamics of Persistent Poverty and Sustainable livelihoods in South Africa." Michael Carter of LTC; Julian May of Center Social and Development Studies, University of Natal; and Lawrence Haddad of the International Food Policy Research Institute are re-surveying approximately 1400 households in the province of Kwazulu/Natal that were first surveyed in 1993 as part of a national living standards study. The primary goals of the study are to measure the severity of persistent versus transitory poverty, and to identify the constraints that limit people's ability to escape from poverty over time.
Further information about the 5-year project, which began in 1996, is available on the publications section of the BASIS Regional Program: Southern Africa.
The Land Claims Court of South Africa
This is a source for summaries of the land tenure laws, the latest judgments of the court, contact information, and a free subscription for a judgments notification service.
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