The aim of this section is to bring into the land reform debate the concept of sustainable livelihoods. This chapter has already introduced the vulnerability of livelihoods in South Africa in the context of the poor delivery of land reform, continued tenure insecurity and poverty. The argument here is that ideally land reform in South Africa should promote sustainable livelihoods.
The concept of sustainable livelihoods is important for rural development and poverty alleviation (Scoones, 1998). The FAO (2002) noted that livelihoods approaches are increasingly utilised by governments and development agencies in addressing food insecurity and poverty. The UK Department for International Development (1999: 1) defines a sustainable livelihood as: "A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means ofliving.
A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future while not undermining the natural resource base."
Land redistribution provides a basis from which sustainable livelihoods can be launched.
However, the redistribution of assets, including land, to the poor is important but it is not instrumental in reducing poverty and inequality unless there is appropriate policy to provide opportunity for asset building (May, 2000). This is where the Sustainable Livelihood Approach can assist.
The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach is a way of thinking about the objectives,scope and priorities for development, in order to address poverty (Ashley and Carney, 1999). The essence of the approach is putting people at the centre of development, through investigating people's lives,thereby increasing the effectiveness of development assistance (Department for International Development (DFID), 1999). The approach also considers that people have multiple livelihood strategies, which are dynamic, that are part of the
complex environment in which people live (Scoones, 1998). Analysis of assets (namely human, social, financial, physical and natural) in peoples' possession and the vulnerabilities, factors that threaten livelihoods,people are exposed to enable the approach to focus on what resources people have available to them (Ashley and Carney, 1999).
2.6.1 South Africa follows global trends away from sustainability
The United Nations defines a sustainable society as one which: "meets the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (UN World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: 43). The premise behind the concept of sustainability is the fact that the earth's resources are finite (Dobson, 2000).
South Africa much like other developing countries of India, Brazil and China is conforming to current global trends. Globalisation, discussed in Chapter 1, is a powerful factor dictating how economies participate in global markets. Globalisation deteriorates the environment with its emphasis on production and development without concern for the environment can only be short term and in the long term may increase poverty and oppression (Bamberger and Valadez, 1994). Roberts (1995: 3) notes that, "Global society is affecting our finite planet in three different ways:
1. By the numbers of people the earth is expected to sustain.
2. By the levels of consumption of ever more materialistic societies, which harvest renewable resources beyond their sustainable harvest rate.
3. By pollutants or byproducts, including and increasing range of synthetic products which nature cannot decompose."
Governments often react inadequately to problems of the environment with the belief that environmental problems can be solved without fundamental changes in present values or patterns of production or consumption. However, sustainability is much more than signing up to a concept,it has essential financial and social connotations that cannot be ignored but it seems that the concept of sustainability will remain peripheral until it becomes a valuable commodity on global markets (Dobson,2000).
In South Africa, the land reform programme has placed some emphasis on sustainability (Ministry for Agriculture and Land Affairs, 2000). The sustainable use of land is an
objective of land reform (Department of Land Affairs, 1997). Land goes along way to improving livelihoods and provides a platform to create sustainable livelihoods for the rural poor (Wegerif, 2004). Therefore, the sustainability of land and its environment is critical to people who live and depend on this resource for their livelihoods. As such sustainability should be a principle of any intervention that impacts on the natural environment. In this context, agriculture should be moving away from unsustainable,large scale, high input farming.
Conclusion
The land reform programme was established to address inequiiable land distribution in South Africa by entrenching land rights. The lack of progress in delivering land to the landless has not impacted on poverty or inequality on a significant scale. The market related approach to redistributing land is not a fair approach to address the scale of land need and tenure security for residential, agricultural and non-agricultural activities.
Additionally the objectives of land reform are compromised if only previously disadvantaged black farmers and not the landless majority are target beneficiaries.
The process of urbanisation is drawing people away from their homes in rural areas.
However, the majority of these people (poor people) can only afford to live in informal settlements. People are searching for a livelihood whilst simultaneously making themselves more vulnerable than their rural counterparts. Therefore,urbanisation is not a sustainable long term solution to unemployment,evictions,land tenure insecurity and other factors that contribute to rural flight. Effective land reform and income generating activities in rural areas are therefore crucial to alleviating the population pressure on urban centres. Presently,land reform is exacerbating problems of urbanisation through the direct failure of land reform to secure tenure and improve the livelihoods of the poor. Farm evictions indicate the extent of the human rights violations still occurring on farms. This points to current law (and the enforcement of this law) supposedly protecting farm labourers as being incomprehensive and ineffective. Additionally, and importantlyin the context of this thesis,the farm eviction statistics show how current trends in farm evictions have dramatically counteracted the impact of land reform.
The establishment of PEFOL to monitor and regulate foreign land ownership is a progressive step towards reducing land ownership inequities. But there is still a need to regulate local ownership, especially large scale land holdings, in a similar manner if government is truly committed to redistributing land for the benefit of the majority of rural people. However,whether it is possible to monitor land ownership remains to be seen.
A change in approach to land reform hinges on politics. The current market-led approach to land reform is entrenched in economics and while much has been done to assist with creating a more racially equitable land market through Black Economic Empowerment and other transformation policy, not enough has been done in practice to ensure that the majority of South Africans benefit from land reform. Economic approaches tend to ignore the rights of the landless poor and there is growing dissatisfaction with the current resource distribution measures. The signs of dissatisfaction are there in the form of land invasions and landless people's movements. However,until such time as there is the political will to implement land reform on a large scale the status quo will continue.
Agriculture is an increasingly difficult business to make viable especially for emerging farmers, like LRAD beneficiaries, entering the market. Agricultural decline and the land reform programme'sdependency on agriculture as a livelihood strategy does not bode well for land reform beneficiaries. The low growth within the agricultural sector and the increasing number of stakeholders,black and white farmers alike,sharing the sector may be cause for concern. In an economy where agriculture plays an ever decreasing role it is doubtful whether LRAD will revive and grow the agricultural sector. Therefore, land reform policy needs to consider other strategies for land based livelihoods as multiple strategies contribute to making livelihoods sustainable.
Ithas been established clearly that the land issue in South Africa is very complex. The objectives of land reform have been manipulated for perceived market gains from which the poor are expected to feel the 'trickle down effect'. The right to land is not enforced and the landless poor continue to be excluded from land reform processes. The decreasing contribution of agriculture to the formal economy and the net effect of growing agriculture on rural livelihoods presents motivation for transferring land to the poor for agricultural production on any scale.
The importance of dealing with land issues in an efficient and effective way is an aspect that the South African government has not taken seriously. In the context of LRAD this means not only handing over land to prospective emerging farmers but enabling them to farm the land productively. .To do this effectively requires the use of a system to monitor and evaluate the process of land redistribution and agricultural development for the purposes of improving implementation. Monitoring and evaluation is the focus of the next chapter.
Chapter 3:
Evaluation inland reform
The previous chapter exposed some of issues for debate on land reform. The land reform debate is complex and requires adequate information in order for debate to be informed.
This chapter introduces evaluation as an important component of any intervention.
Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems are vital for information generation on programmes or projects and this information is used to assist with decision making and inform debate. Additionally, this chapter strengthens justification of the research carried out in the case study. In section 3.1, a review of literature commences to provide a background to evaluation. In section 3.3, this review is used as the basis for analysis of evaluation of land reform in South Africa and some of the challenges for LRAD. It is argued that for effective land reform to occur there has to be an effective system of evaluation in place.