Changing livelihoods and land reform: Evidence from the Northern Cape province of South Africa

WorldDevelopmentVol. 33,No. 11, pp. 1979–1992, 2005� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

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Changing Livelihoods and Land Reform:

Evidence from the Northern Cape Province

of South Africa

ALASTAIR BRADSTOCK *

FARM-Africa, London, UK

Summary. — This paper examines the changing livelihoods of eight beneficiary groups situated inthe Northern Cape province of South Africa who have accessed land through the government’sland reform program. It assesses how successfully households with different levels of wealth haveintegrated agriculture into their livelihoods as well as exploring what other factors have changedlivelihoods. The research shows that the low levels of technical support and the high levels of riskassociated with agriculture in the province limit the ability of land reform to act as an effective pov-erty reduction policy and that without considerable restructuring the program is unlikely to meet itsobjectives.
� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Key words — Africa, South Africa, livelihoods, land reform, poverty reduction

* The author gratefully acknowledges comments on ear-

lier drafts of this paper from Professor Frank Ellis and

two reviewers. He also thanks the land reform groups

for their cooperation and patience during the data coll-

ection process, and for support received from the prov-

incial Departments of Agriculture and Land Affairs.Final revision accepted: July 2, 2005.

1. INTRODUCTION

On coming to power in 1994, the AfricanNational Congress (ANC) inherited a slowgrowing economy, widespread poverty, andhigh and rising unemployment. It was facedwiththe challenge of fostering a new socioeconomicenvironment that would enable those indivi-duals in the former labor reserve economy toparticipate in the modern industrial economy.Initially, the government’s efforts to restructurethe economy were guided by its Reconstructionand Development Program (RDP).The RDP base document (ANC, 1994) out-

lined an ambitious land reform program thatwould serve as the driving force of a programof rural restructuring and development. It wenton to say that inter alia, the RDP would redressthe injustices caused by past land policies, itwould supply both residential and productiveland for the poorest section of the rural popula-tion, it would help to raise incomes and produc-tivity through the provision of support servicesto build the economy by generating broad-basedemployment and increases in rural incomes.Research has shown that the majority of

South Africa’s poor live in rural areas, andthe poverty rate (the percentage of individuals

197

being classified as poor) is about 72%, com-pared with 28% in urban areas (Woolard &Leibbrandt, 2001). For many years, the whitecommercial farming areas of the country con-taining the majority of the rural populationhave been in economic decline, and are increas-ingly characterized by their high levels ofunemployment, a vulnerable farm workerpopulation, and rural dormitory towns lackingeconomic opportunities (Anderson, 1996; May,2000; Torres, Bhorat, Leibbrandt, & Cassim,2000). The situation has worsened since 1994with the withdrawal of state funding from theagricultural sector (Lincoln, 1998; Mather,2000).Seekings (2000), drawing on the data set 1

generated by the Project for Statistics on LivingStandards and Development (PSLSD), arguesthat there is sufficient evidence to show that

9

1980 WORLD DEVELOPMENT

the South African society comprises neitherpeasants nor an industrial proletariat, andalthough the majority of the poor live in ruralareas, they cannot be defined as peasants asup until 1994 their ability to access land washeavily circumscribed. This rural proletariatcomprises a large number of poorly educatedpeople many of whom are unemployed, andmany of those that are employed often workin low skilled and poorly remunerated manualoccupations such as domestic or farm work.Notwithstanding the above and considering

the lack of economic opportunities that existin many of the sparsely populated rural areasof the country, transferring land to the ruralpoor may provide them with an asset that theycan utilize to develop pathways out of poverty.To date, however this is an area that has at-tracted little attention from researchers. Thispaper considers the ability of land reform toact as a policy instrument for poverty reduc-tion, utilizing eight case studies of beneficiarygroups from among the previously disadvan-taged population of the Northern Cape prov-ince, all of which gained access to land in thelate 1990s or in early 2000 through the govern-ment’s land reform program.The structure of the paper is as follows. Sec-

tion 2 provides an overview of South Africa’sland and agrarian policies over the last 100years with particular emphasis on the workingsof the ANC’s land reform program. This is fol-lowed by a description of the research approachused, and an overview of the qualitative find-ings with particular reference to the asset hold-ings and activities of households. In addition,this section seeks to understand the differentfactors that have shaped the livelihood activi-ties of households over the two-year period,and to identify what factors have causedchanges to the wealth status of households.Finally, links are made from the case studyresearch findings to the land reform programwith the intention of identifying areas in whichpolicy can be improved.

2. LAND AND AGRARIAN POLICIESIN SOUTH AFRICA

In the late 19th century, two main factorscaused the gradual deterioration of black agri-culture. 2 Firstly, the desire for cheap unskilledlabor to work on the gold mines of the Witwa-tersrand, and secondly white commercial agri-culture’s concern that the economic viability

of their enterprises was being undermined bya more efficient black agriculture (Bundy,1985).An array of discriminatory land legislation

was introduced in the early 20th century thatalienated black people from their traditionallands. Arguably, the most unpopular was theNative Lands Act of 1913 that restricted thearea where Africans could establish new farm-ing operations to the reserves, which totaled8% of the country’s area. The Act also barredblack people from buying land from whitesand prohibited them from sharecropping, thusrestricting them to sell their labor either towhite commercial agriculture or to the miningsector (Bundy, 1985). 3

The effect that these policies had on the pro-ductivity of African agriculture was striking.By 1918, agricultural production in the reserveshad fallen so dramatically that householdscould only meet 45% of their subsistence foodrequirements, whereas 40 years previouslyblack agriculture was producing enough tomeet its subsistence needs as well as a market-able surplus (Bundy, 1985; Keegan, 1996).However, as further restrictive legislation onblack agriculture reached the statute book,African households were eventually only ableto meet 20% of their domestic food require-ments (Keegan, 1996). From 1948 onwards,the National Party added to the discriminatorylegislation outlined above, and it was not untilthe early 1990s that the majority of these lawswere finally repealed (Bundy, 1985; Keegan,1996).The discriminatory land policies created a

highly skewed land ownership pattern in thecountry where, in the late 1980s, 50,000 whitecommercial farmers owned approximately90% of the agricultural land (Mbongwa, Vanden Brink, & Van Zyl, 1996). With such an un-equal pattern of land distribution coupled withthe capital intensive nature of the sector,South African agriculture’s contribution toGDP (7%), and employment (14%) failed to re-flect its middle income status where typicallyagriculture generates 15% of GDP, and employsapproximately 25% of the work force (Chris-tiansen, 1993; Lipton, Ellis, & Lipton, 1996).The Northern Cape is one of the three prov-

inces in the country that did not have a home-land, although the apartheid regime did createreserves for the so-called coloreds in the westof the province. White commercial farmersdominated the agricultural sector for decadesand still do. While the province comprises

CHANGING LIVELIHOODS AND LAND REFORM 1981

one-third of South Africa’s landmass, it ac-counts for only 2% of the nation’s population,the majority of whom live in Kimberley andUpington (see Figure 1).Annual rainfall in the province ranges from

200 to 500 mm and only in exceptionally wetyears is it possible to grow rain-fed crops. How-ever, with access to irrigation water, pre-dominately from the Orange and Vaal rivers,a wide variety of crops can be grown. In the last10 years, white commercial farmers situated inthe vicinity of Upington have diversified theirfarming operations and now produce highvalue table grapes for export. The dominantfarming activity, however, is the extensive graz-ing of domestic livestock and, in recent years,farmers have diversified into farming gamespecies, mainly antelope.

Figure 1. Map of the Northern Cape Province showing the st

either Kimberley or Upington, the former is the provincial ca

province.) Source: Department of Environment

While agriculture is the main source ofemployment in the province, it has been onthe decline for a number of years, and there isno indication that this will be reversed in theshort term. Indeed, the national trend inagriculture is for the industry to become morecapital intensive, which is expected to result infurther job losses.Before the ANC came into power in 1994, the

World Bank played an influential role in thedevelopment of a land reform program, andfrom its experience elsewhere, it recommendedthat the South African government adopt a‘‘market assisted’’ or ‘‘negotiated land reform’’using the ‘‘willing buyer willing seller’’ model(Adams, 2000; Deininger, 1999). While the gov-ernment chose this model, the program’s pro-gress, from its inception, has been hampered

udy locations. (While none of the case studies is located in

pital and the latter is the second largest town in the

al Affairs and Tourism, South Africa, 2004.


by a lack of technical and administrative capac-ity within the government, the NGO sector,and community land reform groups (Adams,2000).The government’s ‘‘White Paper on South

African Land Policy’’ articulates the program’sfive broad objectives: to deal with the injusticesof racially based land dispossessions of thepast; to establish a more equitable distributionof land ownership; to reduce poverty and con-tribute to economic growth; to achieve securityof tenure for all; and to develop a system ofland management that will support sustainableland use patterns and rapid land release fordevelopment (DLA, 1997). The program hasthree elements: land-tenure reform, land resti-tution, and land redistribution.The main aim of the land-tenure reform pro-

gram is to address the insecurity of tenure inthe former homelands that arose during theapartheid era when the administration of landwas often confused and chaotic. 4 This compo-nent has made little progress and the main rea-son for this is because of problems experiencedin drafting and enacting the Communal LandRights Bill (CLRB).The land restitution program aims to restore

land to those people who were displaced as aconsequence of such acts as the Natives LandAct of 1913 and the Native Trust and LandAct of 1936. Those black households whoowned land outside the reserves were initiallyexempted from the provisions under the 1913Act; however, from the 1950s up until the1980s, these households or ‘‘black spots,’’ asthe government called them, were subjected toforced removals (DLA, 1997). The programconsiders only those communities that canprove that they were forcibly removedafter June 19th, 1913. A Land Claims Courtand a Commission for the Restitution ofLand Rights were established under the Resti-tution of Land Rights Act, 22 of 1994, andthe former is responsible for adjudicating theseclaims.The purpose of the land redistribution pro-

gram, as outlined in the White Paper on SouthAfrican Land Policy (DLA, 1997), is to redis-tribute land to the landless poor, labor tenants,farm workers, and emerging farmers for resi-dential and productive uses, to improve theirlivelihoods and quality of life. As describedabove, land transactions are voluntary, andare based on a ‘‘willing seller’’ and a ‘‘willingbuyer’’. However, the White Paper (1997) statesthat expropriation will be used as an instrument

of last resort where urgent land needs cannot bemet through voluntary market transactions.The main grant utilized by this program until

the early 2000s was the Settlement/Land Acqui-sition Grant (SLAG). Households could applyfor this grant (Rand 16,000) if their monthly in-come was less than Rand 1,500. One of its mainshortcomings was that land beneficiaries wereoften forced to form large, often dysfunctional,groups to raise sufficient monies to purchaseland (Deininger, 1999). In 2001, the gov-ernment launched its Land Redistribution forAgricultural Development (LRAD) subpro-gram that was expected to help it to achieve anumber of key objectives in the land redistribu-tion program, for example, making a significantcontribution to achieve the target of redistrib-uting of 30% of the country’s agricultural landby 2015; enabling the rural poor (men andwomen) to incorporate agriculture into theirlivelihoods; and allowing black people to farmoutside the former homelands, thereby reduc-ing pressure on these often degraded lands(Ministry for Agriculture & Land Affairs,2001). LRAD is also expected to play a keypart in the establishment of a black commercialfarming class.The redistribution program, like the restitu-

tion program, has been criticized for makingslow progress. During 1994–2001, the govern-ment only managed to redistribute just overone million hectares or 1.2% of the country’sagricultural land (Kepe & Cousins, 2002). Kepeand Cousins (2002) estimate that if the govern-ment is to reach its 30% target by 2015, it willhave to improve its transfer rate sevenfold.Considering the current budget and capacityconstraints within the Department of LandAffairs this target is unlikely to be achieved.

3. RESEARCH APPROACHAND METHODS

The research was conducted utilizing the so-called livelihoods framework (Carney, 1998;Scoones, 1998) as a methodological approachto understand the circumstances, options, andconstraints of the land reform beneficiarygroups. The research methods used were de-signed to discover the current livelihood cir-cumstances of the distinct case study groupsthat had received land, and to permit inferencesto be made about the capability of group mem-bers to take advantage of this new asset inorder to improve livelihood outcomes.


The case study groups were selected on thebasis of examining the livelihoods of communi-ties that had accessed land either from the landrestitution or from the land redistributioncomponents of the land reform program inthe Northern Cape province. 5 Of the eight casestudy groups, two are restitution and six areredistribution cases. One of the six redistribu-tion cases (Warrenton) has a membership of384 households, and their land (5,500 ha) waspurchased from a white commercial farmer inthe late 1990s. The remaining five (Pofadder,Marydale, Niekerkshoop, Prieska, and Stry-denburg) are groups that have gained accessto so-called municipal commonage or commonland. 6 Of the restitution cases, the #KhomaniSan group has approximately 400 households,and its land is located near Rietfontein in theisolated north of the province, and the other,Witbank, comprises approximately 70 house-holds and is situated on the banks of theOrange River about 160 km north-east ofthe town of Springbok. 7 The location of thegroups is shown in Figure 1.The research process comprised three ele-

ments: wealth ranking, focus group workshops,and a household questionnaire. The wealthranking exercises drew on the work of Grandin(1988) and were undertaken at each of the eightcase study groups and involved approximatelyfour group members (both men and womenwere included). The output of this processwas a stratified sample frame that was used toselect 15 households at random from each ofthe eight case studies. The second step in theprocess was to hold focus group workshops atdifferent sites to examine their historical andinstitutional contexts, and the changing natureof livelihoods at community level. The work-shops comprised approximately 15 group mem-bers differentiated by wealth, age, and gender.The final step in the research process was theimplementation of the household question-naire. In early 2002, households were inter-viewed about their asset holdings and theirlivelihood activities for the calendar year2001. In early 2004, the same exercise wasundertaken for the calendar year 2003. 8 Inaddition, the 2004 household survey askedinformants to explain any changes that had oc-curred in their asset holdings and activities overthe two-year period with a view to identifyingthe causal factors that had brought about thesechanges to their livelihoods. 9 For the purposesof statistical analysis, the sample was dividedinto three per capita income groups or terciles

(tercile I comprised the poorest householdsand tercile III the richest). Income data wereadjusted for inflation, and due to the disintegra-tion of two households, the final number ofhouseholds sampled was 118.

4. THE RESEARCH FINDINGS

(a) Asset holdings of the case study groups

The discussion that follows focuses on abrief overview of the main characteristicsthat distinguish restitution projects, redistribu-tion (private land) projects, and redistribution(commonage) projects henceforth referred toas commonage; land ownership and its use be-fore households received land from the land re-form program; the size of farms that beneficiarygroups received from the government; the dis-tance that the members have to travel fromtheir homes to access their land; the changesthat have occurred not only in the number ofhouseholds owning livestock but also in the sizeof their holdings during the period 2001–03;and the different factors affecting the changingwealth status of households over the two-yearperiod.While the eight land reform projects in this

study share many similar features, there arecertain factors that differentiate restitution,redistribution, and commonage projects. Forexample, restitution and redistribution groups,in particular #Khomani San and Warrenton,have many more members than commonageprojects have. While the majority of householdsaccessing commonage land are trying to makeagriculture a more important element of theirown livelihoods, a large portion of restitutionand redistribution group members are notactively involved in their projects. Of the fivecommonage projects investigated, all usersowned their animals individually, but in the res-titution and redistribution projects livestockwas owned collectively as well as individually.The management and administrative challengesexperienced by commonage groups are muchless complex than the ones faced by restitutionand redistribution projects, and this is partlyexplained by the large size of restitution andredistribution groups and the difficulties theyexperience in defining and implementing rulesgoverning resource use.Excluding the land that the eight groups

gained access to through the government’s landreform program, the average amount that


households own, in connection with theirdomestic abode, is 475 m2 or just greater than1/20 of a hectare. In this context, ‘‘land’’ refersto a household’s home plot. The very smallsize of the plot is explained by the fact thatthe apartheid regime deliberately restricted alltypes of economic opportunities for blackpeople living in urban townships in ‘‘white’’South Africa. Thus, in townships, the provisionof complementary assets including land thatmight have enabled black people to diversifytheir livelihoods was severely limited as policyspecified that black people were to work forwhites (Terreblanche, 2002).The research findings also showed that few

households were using these small land hold-ings productively, for example, in 2001, only22 households or 19% of the sample were grow-ing fruit and vegetables on their home plots,but in 2003, this had increased to 30%. Thequalitative research findings emphasizedthe high cost of irrigation water and theft asthe two main causes limiting the expansion ofthis activity. Due to the large differences inthe scale of farming operations between homeplots and land received from the government,the relatively simple agricultural techniques uti-lized by households in their gardens are ill sui-ted to the needs of their new moretechnologically exacting farms.The size of the farms that the different groups

have received from the land reform programdiffers enormously. Table 1 presents some basicstatistical information about the eight casestudy groups. The #Khomani San group’s res-titution claim yielded a total of 62,000 ha ofland of which 37,000 ha can be used for exten-sive grazing. The remaining 25,000 ha is situ-ated in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park andcan only be used for eco-tourism initiatives.

Table 1. Basic statistics reg

Town Number ofhouseholds

Size ofland (ha)

Witbank 70 18,000Pofadder 51 17,650#Khomani San 400 62,000Marydale 26 7,580Niekerkshoop 22 6,800Prieska 27 18,150Warrenton 384 5,500Strydenburg 79 5,760

Source: Sample survey conducted in January 2004.

In contrast, the Strydenburg group has accessto 5,760 ha of common land. However, a con-straint shared by all but one of the groups isthe relatively large distances that householdshave to travel to access their land. The worstcase is the #Khomani San group where mem-bers living in Rietfontein (where the majorityreside) have to travel 100 km to reach theirfarms and those members living in Upingtonhave to travel 200 km. In Pofadder, the newcommon land is located 70 km from the town;in Prieska, the distance is 30 km, and the groupliving in Warrenton has to travel 60 km. Suchdistances are a considerable constraint for poorhouseholds, many of whom do not have suffi-cient resources to cover the cost of transport.This shortcoming of the land reform programwas frequently articulated at focus group dis-cussions.Average annual precipitation rates of be-

tween 200 and 400 mm in the study area makeit best suited to the extensive grazing of domes-tic livestock species, for example, goats andsheep and to a lesser extent cattle (Low &Rebelo, 1998). In 2001, 67 households or 57%of all households owned livestock, and duringthe two-year period this increased to 85 house-holds or 72% of the sample. The results showedthat, over the two-year period, householdsfrom all eight areas had benefited from this in-crease, and that the mean number of cattleequivalent units (CEUs) in the sample hadincreased from 5.1 to 8.0. 10

The most notable features of the distributionof livestock by wealth categories in 2001 is thatthe size of holdings in terciles I and II is muchsmaller than tercile III, and livestock makes amuch greater contribution to the incomes ofricher households than poorer ones albeit atquite low levels. In 2003, while all households

arding case study groups

Hectares perhousehold

Distance (in km) from the townto the new land purchased by the

Department of Land Affairs

257 0346 70155 100–200292 25309 12672 3014 6073 15

Table 2. Movement of livestock holdings, livestock income as a percentage of total household income and livestockownership for the three per capita income groups in 2001 and 2003

Tercile I (n = 39) Tercile II (n = 40) Tercile III (n = 39)

2001

Livestock holdings (CEUs)Mean 1.9 2.7 11.1Std. dev. 3.1 3.9 16.6Median 0.3 0.0 4.1

Livestock income as a percentageof total household income

8.3 7.5 16.0

Percentage of households owning livestock 38.0 42.0 74.0

2003

Livestock holdings (CEUs)Mean 3.4 5.9 14.9Std. dev. 7.5 8.1 15.7Median 0.9 1.6 11.0

Livestock income as a percentageof total household income

4.1 8.1 8.9

Percentage of households owning livestock 62.0 62.0 90.0

Source: Sample survey conducted in January 2002 and January 2004.


have increased their holdings, tercile III house-holds still own larger herds than poorer house-holds, the number of households owninglivestock has increased, and income from live-stock has dropped quite significantly for themajority of households in the sample.These changes are illustrated in Table 2

which shows that in 2001 households in tercilesI and II had a mean holding of 1.86 and 2.36CEUs, respectively. In terms of goats, tercile Ihouseholds would have had a herd of approxi-mately 14 animals, and tercile II households18 animals. In contrast, tercile III households,who have approximately five times as manyCEUs, would have had an average herd sizeof 85 goats. Livestock income comprises 16%of the total income for tercile III householdsand only 8.3% and 7.5% for terciles I and IIhouseholds, respectively.In 2003, while households from the two

poorest terciles had more than doubled the sizeof their herds, richer households had achievedmore modest increases, although their holdingswere still approximately twice as big as poorerhouseholds. Tercile I demonstrates the largestincreases in the number of households owninglivestock: in 2001, 38% of households ownedlivestock, and by 2003, this had increased to62%. Over the same period, livestock owner-ship went from 42% to 62% of households intercile II and from 74% to 90% of tercile IIIhouseholds.

It is important to note that in spite of theincreasing number of households owning live-stock, the average holding sizes for terciles Iand II in 2003 are still small, and the contri-bution that livestock makes to total householdincome is low.The above results raise another issue regard-

ing equitable access to land. Table 1 showsthe number of hectares that are theoreticallyavailable to each member. For example, eachmember of the Warrenton group has access to14 ha. Their farm requires approximately12 ha per large stock unit (Munro, 2001).Therefore, each member can keep one maturebull or approximately six goats or sheep. Whereall members decide to graze their animals onthe farm, the size of livestock holdings will belimited. However, this study showed that notall group members were accessing grazing land.Therefore, if the trading of members’ grazingrights were to occur, then theoretically, thisshould lead to an economically efficient andequitable outcome. However, evidence fromBradstock (forthcoming) showed that no morethan 15–20% of members from restitution andredistribution groups (excluding commonageprojects) in the Northern Cape province wereaccessing grazing land. In the case studiesinvestigated by this research, a majority ofusers were not paying grazing fees and userswere not compensating nonusers mainly be-cause grazing rights and tariffs had not been

Table 3. Changes in household per capita incomes over the period 2001–03 with tercile membership held constant for2001

Tercile I (n = 39) Tercile II (n = 40) Tercile III (n = 39) Total

Number of households with risingper capita income

32 24 16 72

Average percentage increase in income 98 57 30 47Number of households with falling

per capita income7 16 23 46

Average percentage decrease in income 22 30 31 30

Source: Sample survey conducted in January 2002 and January 2004.


agreed. Where groups fail to assign grazingrights, there is a real danger that an elite maycapture the benefits arising from land reform.Likewise, if agreements are not reached and en-forced regarding the size of livestock holdingsboth for individual members and for farms,there is a danger that richer households withlarger holdings may dominate the resource,thereby excluding smaller farmers. In addition,where open access regimes develop, there is therisk that grazing resources will be overexploited.Table 3 shows changes to households’ per

capita incomes over the two-year period. Thetable retains households in their 2001 per capitaincome groups. It shows that of the 118 house-holds in the sample, 72 of them, or 61% of thesample, experienced increases in their incomes.The degree of change varied between the threeterciles, for example, in tercile I, those house-holds that increased their incomes did so onaverage by 98%. However, in terciles II andIII, the rate of increase was more modest at57% and 30%, respectively. The results alsoshowed that where households suffered a reduc-tion to their per capita incomes, declines weregreater in terciles II and III than in tercile I.An important finding is that the two main

Table 4. Movement of households between per capita in

2001—Terchouseholds (n

Percentage of households that remainedin/moved to tercile I—2003

59

Percentage of households that remainedin/moved to tercile II—2003

33

Percentage of households that remainedin/moved to tercile III—2003

8

Total 100

Source: Sample survey conducted in January 2002 and Jan

causes of the large increases in per capita in-come for the poorest group of households werenot the result of agricultural activities but be-cause of being able to access more child grantsand secure higher wage income.Table 4 shows the percentage of households

that had either moved into a higher or loweranalogous per capita income tercile or re-mained in a similar group by the end of thetwo-year period. For example, in 2001, 59%of the households in per capita income tercileI remained in tercile I in 2003. What this tableshows is that approximately 57% of householdshave remained in analogous per capita incometerciles over the period under investigation.This part of the paper examines a range of

factors that informants provided as reasonsfor their income status being changed as wellas exploring to what extent gaining access toland had contributed toward raising householdper capita incomes. 11

Table 5 lists seven factors that led to a fall inhousehold income levels. It also demonstrateshow different factors did not affect all house-holds in the sample equally. For example, themajority of households experiencing a fall inlivestock income was concentrated in tercileIII. The most common reason given by infor-

come terciles over the two-year period 2001 and 2003

ile I= 39)

2001—Tercile IIhouseholds (n = 40)

2001—Tercile IIIhouseholds (n = 39)

31 10

45 22

25 67

100 100

uary 2004.

Table 5. Factors affecting household’s deteriorating livelihood status

Factors Tercile I Tercile II Tercile III Total

Fall in income from casual work 2 5 5 12Loss of public transfersa 1 4 0 5Loss of employment 0 5 4 9Decrease in remittances 0 2 1 3Livestock income decreases 0 1 9 10Increase in household numbers 2 7 4 13Reduction in business income 0 1 0 1

Source: Sample survey conducted in January 2002 and January 2004.a Includes: child grant terminated or downgraded, old age pension lost, and disability grant withdrawn.


mants for this decline was an unwillingness tosell their animals at prices that had beendepressed by drought conditions.The cause of declining per capita income can

most easily be divided into three broad catego-ries: various factors that combined, in differentdegrees of intensity, to pull household percapita incomes to lower levels; the loss of onekey income source; and households that encoun-tered multiple factors some of which reduced in-come while others increased it but resulted in anet deterioration of well-being. What the resultsillustrated was that it is difficult to assess the ex-tent to which a factor or set of factors will im-pact upon a household’s livelihood.The increase in the number of household

members as a factor leading to lower per capitaincomes impacted more heavily upon house-holds in terciles II and III, and the most fre-quently cited reason for increasing householdsize was migrant members losing their jobsand returning home. 12 However, the mostcommon cause of falling per capita incomeswas loss of jobs or a drop in wage rates foreither casual or seasonal work. While house-holds from tercile II experienced this more fre-quently than those from tercile I, tercile IIIhouseholds experienced this most severely,

Table 6. Factors affecting househo

Factors Tercile I

Rise in income from casual work 6New public transfera 13Secured employment 8Increase in remittances 5Livestock income increases 5Decrease in household numbers 5

Source: Sample survey conducted in January 2002 and Jana Includes: additional child grant, child grant upgraded, ne

reflecting their greater dependence upon wageincome.The majority of households in the sample

experienced an increase in their per capita in-comes over the period under investigation,and Table 6 shows the factors that gave riseto these improvements.While Table 6 demonstrates that increases in

livestock income contributed to rising incomesin households across the sample, its contribu-tion was comparatively small. What the re-search findings showed was that 44% of tercileI households received income from livestock,but only two households derived more that20% of their total income from this source.And in tercile II, only three households ob-tained more than 20% of their total incomefrom livestock. These results emphasize theinsignificant contribution that livestock incomemakes to aggregate income for the majority ofhouseholds in the sample during the study per-iod.It was noted above that some households

from tercile III decided to limit the sale of theiranimals due to falling prices caused by droughtconditions in the province. However, there werealso households from the same tercile that con-tinued to sell their animals. The main reasons

ld’s improving livelihood status

Tercile II Tercile III Total

3 1 1013 2 2810 3 215 1 114 5 145 2 12

uary 2004.w old age pension, and new disability grant.


given by informants for disposing of their ani-mals included the need to generate money tosupplement household income, to stem the de-cline in the quality of their animals that wasoccurring due to the deteriorating range condi-tions, and the ability of some households to ex-ploit higher than average prices by selling theiranimals to black entrepreneurs rather than tomarkets dominated by white commercial farm-ers.Additional factors causing household in-

comes to rise included accessing new socialsecurity payments such as disability and childgrants; increasing remittance payments frommigrants; securing new employment or benefit-ing from improved wage rates or longer con-tracts for casual or seasonal work; and areduction in the number of household mem-bers. With regard to the latter, and with theexception of one household, there was no evi-dence to suggest that falling household num-bers were caused by infection or deaths fromthe HIV/AIDS virus. The majority of individu-als left home to seek or to take up employmentopportunities. Those individuals who accessedgovernment grants were able to do so becausethey fulfilled the government’s eligibility crite-ria and, for households in terciles I and II, thisled to the most significant increases in theirhousehold per capita incomes. For tercile Ihouseholds, public transfers comprised 55%and 60% of total household income in 2001and 2003, respectively, and for tercile II house-holds, it accounted for 42% and 48% in 2001and 2003, respectively.While increasing remittance incomes contrib-

uted, albeit at a low level, to improving house-hold incomes, the ability of individuals toaccess the labor market or to secure higherremuneration rates for casual work was keyto supplementing household per capita in-comes. The research results demonstrate quiteclearly the importance of wage income forricher households: in both years, it comprised68% of total household income. The researchfindings also showed that while securingemployment does reduce poverty, a findingsupported by other similar studies undertakenelsewhere in South Africa (Leibbrandt, Vander Berg, & Bhorat, 2001), the effect on house-hold per capita income was different across theterciles.While Tables 5 and 6 list the different factors

affecting households per capita income levels,they do not illustrate what livestock strategieshouseholds were employing. While the number

of strategies articulated by informants was lim-ited, they were mostly aimed at addressing fail-ures in both the credit and the insurancemarkets. The most common use for livestockwas that it enabled households to meet contin-gencies, for example, medical bills, funeralcosts, and repairing or replacing householdappliances thereby avoiding having to borrowmoney on the informal credit market. A limitednumber of households were disposing of theiranimals to provide money to establish nonfarmbusinesses because of their inability to accessthe formal credit market. Younger people,many of whom had no interest in agriculture,rarely shared these views, but the few whodid, saw agriculture as a means of providinginvestment capital to start developing liveli-hoods that were not based on agriculture.Finally, there was a small minority, comprisedalmost entirely of elderly men, who believedthat livestock was the most effective way inwhich to establish a robust livelihood, and theyactively invested their resources in expandingtheir herds.Examining the assets of the three per capita

income groups, the research findings reveal thatthe holdings of tercile III households are moreextensive than the other two terciles. For exam-ple, heads of tercile III households have been atschool for twice as long as other poorer headsof households; tercile III households have lessthan half the number of old age pensionersand disabled people; and tercile III householdshave significantly fewer unemployed economi-cally active adults than households in tercilesI and II.The findings also show how the asset hold-

ings of households from commonage groupsare more robust than households from restitu-tion and redistribution projects. Householdsaccessing commonage have a mean per capitaincome that is double that of households fromrestitution and redistribution groups. Com-monage heads of households are six yearsyounger and have spent twice as long at schoolas heads of households from redistribution andrestitution projects. Commonage householdshave significantly fewer members that areeconomically inactive (children attendingschool, old age pensioners, and individuals withdisabilities) and have lower unemploymentrates than noncommonage households. Finally,the mean livestock holding in CEUs for com-monage households in 2003 was nearly 10,while for noncommonage households it wasfive.


5. ANOMALIES OF THE LANDREFORM PROGRAM

One of the most striking variations revealedby the research process was the large distancesbetween the group’s land that had been pur-chased by the Department of Land Affairsand their homes. As described above, thesetypes of decisions disadvantage the poor morethan the rich due to the difficulties the poorexperience in accessing affordable transport.Interestingly, the research results showed a verystrong, positive correlation between motorvehicle ownership and livestock holdings.Thus, the evidence from the case study

groups, and in particular the #Khomani San,shows that the government, while fulfilling itslegal responsibilities in terms of the restitutionprocess and buying land that group membersused to live on, have failed to take cognizanceof the fact that few group members live in theKalahari and can access it. Moreover, even ifland had been purchased close enough to alloweasy access by all households from the differentcase study groups, the government does notappear to have given the issue of humancapital development, in particular technicalagricultural skills, sufficient attention. Theapartheid regime failed to allocate resourcesto the education of black people, and in thework place, the policy of ‘‘job reservation’’effectively excluded black people from acquir-ing a range of managerial, administrative,and technical skills in all sectors of the econ-omy (Weber, 2002). In spite of these well-recognized constraints, none of the 118 landreform beneficiary households had receivedany type of technical agricultural training fromthe government during the five-year periodfrom 1999 to 2003. This is despite the fact thatthe government passed the Skills DevelopmentAct in 1998 with the intention of developingthe human capital of blacks. The Act, how-ever, has been criticized for being too narrowlyfocused on better paid employees, for allocat-ing only 20% of its funds for the unemployed,and for excluding many of the working poorsuch as farm and domestic workers—the twomost common jobs in rural areas (Bhorat &Leibbrandt, 2001).The case studies show that implementing

the land reform program in the NorthernCape is costly and made more difficult dueto vast distances. This situation is made morecomplex because much of the land being of-fered for resettlement is unattractive due to

its poor productive potential. However, whatthe research results demonstrated was thatby failing to offer any type of technical agri-cultural support to would-be farmers, the gov-ernment has exacerbated an already difficultsituation.The research findings showed that while more

households had gained access to the credit mar-ket, the numbers were limited. For example, in2001, it was 8%, and in 2003, it was 15%. Themajority of the loans in both years were beingused for consumption purposes, although in2003 eight households had successfully bor-rowed money from the Land Bank to purchaselivestock. 13 Evidence from elsewhere in thedeveloping world suggests that poor peopleoften require credit to satisfy immediateconsumption rather than for investment needsand the individuals accessing credit in the casestudies provide a measure of support for thisfinding (Matin, Hulme, & Rutherford, 2002;Moseley & Hulme, 1998).Because the credit market has still not been

reformed to enable easier access to black farm-ers, it is possible that this may constrain themfrom realizing their agricultural strategies.However, a strategy of not securing a loan toengage in agricultural activities may be eco-nomically rational for some groups, especiallythose that plan to make agriculture a minorpart of their livelihood. If they are able to ac-quire sufficient animals to establish a core herd,a fact that was corroborated by this research,then they are unlikely to have to access thecredit market, as natural reproduction shouldenable them to achieve their desired livestockmix. However, if they wish to purchase items,which they cannot self-finance, for example,improved livestock or farm equipment, thenthey will need to borrow money. Farmers,who wish to make agriculture a key elementof their livelihoods in the short term and areunable to finance it themselves, will have to ac-cess the credit market. This study showed thathouseholds will have to borrow from formalfinancial institutions, as the cost of borrowingfrom informal lenders (approximately 30% permonth) inhibits almost all types of investment.Thus, if black farmers are unable to access theformal credit market, their ability to make agri-culture a key element of their livelihoods will beconstrained.Another concern about the difficulty of

accessing the credit market is the need forworking capital to finance recurrent and capitalcosts on group farms. In the case of common


land, it is the owner of the land, the localmunicipality, that has responsibility for main-taining the infrastructure, although recent re-search emphasizes that the capacity of thelocal government to manage this task is limited(Atkinson & Benseler, 2002). However, for thelarger groups, if they are unable to raise thenecessary finances, then over time, the infra-structure on their farms will start to deterioratethereby making it more difficult for the groupto utilize its land effectively.

6. CONCLUSION AND POLICYRECOMMENDATIONS

This paper has demonstrated that an increas-ing number of households from the eight casestudy groups have made progress either inestablishing or in expanding their livestockholdings over a two-year period even thoughthe majority remain extremely small. Whileper capita incomes for most households haveincreased, what the results showed clearly wasthat the contribution that land has made tothese increases has, to date, been limited. Oneimportant explanation for the program’s poorrate of progress is the presumption that poorblack people with low levels of human capitalwould be able to manage large farms with littleexternal agricultural and managerial support.Experience from land reform programs else-where in the developing world has unambi-guously demonstrated the importance of thistype of advice, especially in the start-up phasesof projects.Moreover, the research identified additional

problems that were preventing the case studygroups from exploiting their new resource toits full potential: the land could not be accesseddue to large distances and the high cost oftransport, and credit market failures may con-strain the establishment of a black commercialfarming group as well as limiting investmentin farm infrastructural repairs and capitalequipment. What the results showed was thatwhile richer households were capable of utiliz-ing the land more productively than the poorhouseholds, for the majority, land does notprovide an important source of income.While this study identified a number of fac-

tors constraining households from integratingland into their livelihoods, it is interesting to re-cord why households wanted to make this rela-tively risky investment in the first instance. Theresearch findings identified two main reasons:

firstly, the leading cause was the desire ofhouseholds to diversify their livelihoods thatwould in turn lead to improvements in theirwealth status. This group comprised those indi-viduals who wanted to farm and those thattreated agriculture as an investment that theybelieved would provide an additional streamof benefits. Interestingly, during the two-yearperiod, none of the groups made such a pay-ment. Secondly, in restitution cases, the over-whelming motivation for accessing land wasto regain the farms that they had been illegallyalienated from in the past.One of the five objectives of the land reform

program is to reduce poverty. In spite of thefact that the mean per capita income of thesample has increased significantly, there is littleevidence to show that the land reform programhas contributed to this change. While richhouseholds are the main beneficiaries of theprogram, there is little evidence to suggest thatany of them are re-structuring their activitiesto make agriculture a key element of their live-lihood. In fact, the results explicitly show thatagricultural income is unimportant and thatsuccess in the labor market for rich householdsand accessing social grants for poor house-holds remain key to avoiding poverty. Consid-ering the risks involved in farming in theharsh, arid climate of the Northern Cape,and the difficulty that most households wouldexperience in coping with shocks affecting theagricultural sector, a strategy that developsagriculture as a marginal activity would appearto be rational.Therefore, the land reform program in its

current arrangement looks unlikely to have asignificant effect not only on poverty reductionin the Northern Cape but also on the creationof a would-be black commercial farming class.Even if the government addresses the con-straints outlined above, agriculture will remaina risky livelihood activity for the majority ofhouseholds in the province. While reformingSouth Africa’s land market is clearly an impor-tant political objective, the more substantivepoint that the research findings make for pov-erty reduction is that investments that developpoor people’s human capital, thereby improv-ing their ability to access the labor market aswell as making the social security system moreinclusive, are likely to bring about larger andfaster reductions in poverty than land basedinterventions in areas that have similar socio-economic and environmental characteristics asthe Northern Cape.


NOTES

1. Since the early 1990s, the government has produceda number of new data sets, for example, OctoberHousehold Survey (1993), South African Labour andDevelopment Research Unit (1993), Participatory Pov-erty Assessment (1995), Income and Expenditure Survey(1995), and Census ’96 and Census ’01. In 1993, theWorld Bank supported a national study of poverty thatwas undertaken by the University of Cape Town’s SouthAfrican Labour and Development Research Unit (SAL-DRU).

2. The apartheid regime divided the South Africanpopulation into four racial groups: White, Indian,Colored, and Black. While these classifications stillpersist, they are not utilized for discriminatory pur-poses but for monitoring social and economic change.

3. While the Native Lands Act of 1913 did not affectthe Colored community, 37 years later the apartheidregime passed the Group Areas Act (1950). This piece oflegislation severely restricted the Colored community’sability to gain access to land for productive purposes(De Klerk, 1996).

4. This element of the land reform program is the causeof much on-going debate. There are real concerns thatthe government’s new CLRB [B67-2003] that was passedinto law in early 2004 is flawed.

5. It was not possible to choose groups from the land-tenure reform program due to the slow progress that thegovernment had experienced in launching it. Some of thereasons for this have already been discussed above.

6. Many small towns across South Africa acquiredmunicipal commonage early in their history with the aimof helping their poorer residents (Turner & Ibsen, 2000).However, following the introduction of discriminatorypolicies after the election of the National Party in 1948,black people were increasingly excluded from gainingaccess to this resource.

7. The title deeds for the freehold of restitution andnoncommonage redistribution projects are vested in thegroup whereas for commonage projects they are held bythe local municipality. The commonage component ofthe land reform program generally involves the govern-ment purchasing private land for the municipality withthe main aim of providing access to land for low incomeblack households from the immediate vicinity. House-holds wanting to utilize commonage have to lease itfrom the municipality. It should be noted that whilecommonage comprises a significant part of the redistri-bution component in the Northern Cape it is a relativelyminor element in the other eight provinces.

8. The same questionnaire was used in the datacollection in both years.

9. The distribution of the sample survey data wastested using a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test that showedthat none of the data is normally distributed, andtherefore nonparametric Spearman statistical tests wereused.

10. All livestock were converted into CEUs. This wasachieved by taking market value ratios between themean current price (5% trimmed mean) of differentlivestock species. In 2001, for example, the figures wereas follows: Cattle = 1; Goats = 0.13; Sheep = 0.15;Pigs = 0.15; Horses = 0.52; Donkeys = 0.17.

11. Twenty one households experienced such minorchanges in their incomes that they were omitted fromthis part of the analysis.

12. Acknowledging the fact that age and gender affectthe amount of resources consumed in a household,different members were allocated adult equivalent units.

13. The Land Bank provides financial products thataim to support and contribute to the development ofSouth Africa’s agricultural sector with special referenceto previously disadvantaged groups.

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Changing livelihoods and land reform: Evidence from the Northern Cape province of South Africa