Working Papers

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Browsing by Author "Cousins, Ben"

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    Contested paradigms of ‘viability’ in redistributive land reform: perspectives from southern Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2009-06) Cousins, Ben; Scoones, Ian
    ‘Viability’ is a key term in debates about land reform in southern African and beyond, and is used in relation to both individual projects and programmes. ‘Viability’ connotes ‘successful’ and ‘sustainable’ - but what is meant by viability in relation to land reform, and how have particular conceptions of viability informed state policies and planning approaches? More broadly, how have different notions of viability influenced the politics of land in recent years? This paper interrogates this influential but under-examined notion, reflecting on debates about the viability of land reform – and in particular about the relevance of small- scale, farming-based livelihoods – in southern Africa and more broadly. These questions are not merely of academic interest. How debates are framed and how success is judged has major implications. With arguments for and against redistributive land reform often hinging on the notion of viability, justifications for public expenditure and budget allocations can be offered if programmes and projects are deemed viable. Conversely, portraying redistributive land reform as ‘unviable’ provides a basis for arguments that this is a poor use of public funds. Yet, despite its centrality in debates about land reform, viability is rarely defined, and its precise meaning often remains obscure.
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    Rights without illusions: The potential and limits of rights-based approaches to securing land tenure in rural South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2011-05) Cousins, Ben; Hall, Ruth
    Summarising the trajectory of tenure policy and law making from 1994 through to the present, the paper shows how discourses of rights, citizenship and democracy shape policies and legislation. We assess the policies and outcomes, and argue that the degree to which legally defined rights to land have been realised in practice depends in large part on the outcome of local-level struggles within shifting relations of power. Local arenas are not, however, hermetically sealed off from wider power relations, discourses and institutional contexts (including those of law and policy) which mediate the operation of power. This means that the impacts of land rights defined in law can be direct and indirect, material and symbolic. Inadequate state capacity for implementing law and policy, and the nature of structural poverty in rural South Africa (which tends to weaken the substantive content of rights) constrain the direct impact of law and policy. Nevertheless, a focus on rights can help defend people from dispossession, open political space for mobilisation, provide a grounded critique of unjust social orders and help articulate a vision of an alternative social order (Cousins 2009). Although inherently limited in their systemic impacts, rights in law are a potentially useful ‘weapon of the weak’3, along with other strategies, and should not be abandoned. Following Hunt (1991: 248), we term this a ‘rights-without-illusions’ approach, which can inform mobilisation, advocacy, litigation and research in relation to land tenure reform.
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    What is a ‘smallholder’? Class-analytic perspectives on small-scale farming and agrarian reform in South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Cousins, Ben
    It is often argued that the primary beneficiaries of land reform in South Africa should be ‘the rural poor’ and ‘smallholders’, rather than ‘emerging commercial farmers’. The term ‘smallholder’ is problematic, however, because it tends to obscure inequalities and class- based differences within the large population of households engaged in agricultural production on a relatively small scale. Much usage suggests that smallholders form a relatively homogeneous group, and fails to distinguish between those producers for whom farming constitutes only a partial contribution to their social reproduction, those for whom it most of their social reproduction requirements, and those for whom farming produces a significant surplus, allowing profits to be reinvested and, for some, capital accumulation in agriculture to begin. This paper argue that a class-analytic perspective centred on the key concepts of ‘petty commodity production’ and ‘accumulation from below’ is essential for understanding the differentiated character and diverse trajectories of small-scale agriculture within capitalism. The paper explores the policy implications of such a class-analytic approach, and proposes that land and agrarian reform should aim to support a broadly- based process of ‘accumulation from below’, in combination with supporting supplementary food production on small plots and fields by large numbers of rural (and peri-urban) households, in order to enhance their food security and reduce income poverty. This in turn could see a marked increase in the numbers of (black) small-scale capitalist farmers. This class would be well placed to play the leading role in reconfiguring the dualistic and racialised agrarian structure inherited from the past, through being able to compete with large-scale commercial farmers in supplying both domestic and export markets.