Occasional Papers Series

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Browsing by Author "Aliber, Michael"

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    The interaction between the land redistribution programme and the land market in South Africa: A perspective on the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2002) Aliber, Michael; Mokoena, Reuben
    The debate rages on, in South Africa and elsewhere, about the desirability and efficacy of the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach to land redistribution. In South Africa, the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach is frequently blamed for the fact that the government’s redistribution programme has thus far fallen well short of expectations. To what extent is this judgement justified? Moreover, if the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach has indeed contributed to the unimpressive rate of delivery of the land redistribution programme, is this on account of certain aspects of the approach i.e. which could be selectively remedied ñ or is the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach fundamentally unsuited to the task allocated to it? The objective of this paper is to provide a partial answer to these questions. In short, the paper argues, on the one hand, that the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach is not as fundamentally ill-suited a mechanism to effect state-supported land redistribution as is commonly claimed. On the other hand, the paper suggests that the unimaginative manner in which the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach is being applied is definitely contributing to the slow pace of redistribution, and reflects a lack of vision and ambition among policy-makers. The development of the argument involves examining the interaction between the land market and the redistribution programme from different angles. In one angle, we seek simply to gauge the magnitude of the land redistribution programme relative to the level of normal activity in the rural property market (Section 4). A second angle involves an econometric exercise to determine whether or not the redistribution programme affects market prices of rural land (Section 5). And from a third angle, we review the experiences and perceptions of estate agents and staff of the Department of Land Affairs, so as to shed light on some of the specific allegations as to how the land market may be inhibiting redistribution (Section 6). We begin, however, with two sections by way of background, the one offering a synopsis of the debate around the willing-buyer/willing-seller approach (Section 2), and the other reporting recent trends in the land market (Section 3). We conclude with an examination of a number of specific policy issues, some of which suggest promising avenues for policy development and some of which do not (Section 7).
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    Study of the incidence and nature of chronic poverty and development policy in South Africa: An overview
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2001) Aliber, Michael
    The purpose of this study is fourfold: first, to summarise the current state of knowledge about chronic poverty in South Africa; second, to describe the range of existing governmental and civil society initiatives which address chronic poverty; third, to identify challenges to addressing chronic poverty in South Africa; and fourth, to identify themes for further research. For the purposes of this study, house- holds or individuals are understood to be in chronic poverty when their condition of poverty endures over a period of time. Different researchers propose different time periods as characteristic of chronic poverty (for example, six months, ten years); this is usually taken to mean that the household or individual remains beneath the poverty line for all or virtually all of this period. Alternatively, and perhaps more meaningfully, chronic poverty can be understood as the inability of households or individuals, perhaps for lack of opportunity, to better their circumstances over time or to sustain themselves through difficult times. Chronic poverty can be a function of an individual’s characteristics (for example, elderly, disabled), or of the environment (for example, sustained periods of high unemployment, landlessness), or of a combination of the two. Indeed, a common scenario in South Africa involves the coincidence of poor health, meagre education, and fractured families, on the one hand, with skewed resource distribution, inadequate infrastructure, and scarce employment opportunities, on the other. The combination is more than sufficient to trap many people in poverty. To date, there has been only one set of data collected in South Africa which allows an inter-temporal comparison among the same households. This is the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS) which, as the name implies, covers only one of South Africa’s nine provinces. Because this data set and the analyses based upon it are unique, we discuss it at length. One of the important findings from the KIDS data is that 22 per cent of the 1 200 African households that were sur- veyed were poor in both 1993 and 1998. This represents about two thirds of all households that were poor in 1993, and one half of those that were poor in 1998, showing that at least half of those households that are poor, are chronically poor. Another interesting finding is that ‘ultra- poverty’ is not synonymous with chronic poverty. In other words, a household that is just below the poverty line in one period is no more likely to move above the poverty line in the next period than a household that started off much further below the poverty line. A key determinant of whether a household stays in poverty, escapes from poverty, or falls into poverty, is how that household fares in terms of employment. One of the surprising findings from the KIDS data set was the degree of employment volatility experienced by households. Notwithstanding the contribution of household income sources other than formal sector employment, employ- ment apparently makes the difference between survival and total destitution, but less commonly associated with the difference between being poor and not being poor. Income sources outside the formal sector may make the difference between survival and total destitution, but are less likely to determine whether an individual or household is poor or not. The KIDS-based studies as well as other poverty analyses allow us to identify groups especially likely to be chronically poor. These include rural households, households headed by women, households effectively headed by elderly people, and households headed by former (retrenched) farm workers. Over the next 10 years, however, AIDS orphans and households directly affected by AIDS will probably figure as the most prominent category of people trapped in chronic poverty.