As originally published on Montegray
Aussie band Midnight Oil’s 1986 song “Beds are Burning” was a global hit, including in South Africa. The chorus line, “How can we dance while our earth is turning?” was a call for justice: that indigenous people who had their land forcibly removed to make way for mining and agriculture, should regain land ownership rights. The final bars of the song include a rhythm that sounds like a ticking clock, suggesting that the time has come.
In 2024, South Africa the clock is ticking too and it is time for urgent action. Land reform here is both a crucial economic and a political issue. During apartheid, a big part of the black population was removed from their land and confined to homelands. Barring black South Africans from land ownership in large parts of the country resulted in exclusion from economic opportunities. Land is important for livelihoods and food security. It holds deep symbolic meaning as an acute loss during apartheid but also as hope for a more inclusive and fair future.
Fortunately we have made some progress. As the respected agricultural economist Wandile Sihlobo points out, some 24% of farmland has been redistributed or land rights restored since 1994, which comes close to government’s target of 30%.
Still, there is one major initiative that would move the earth: giving legal title to many millions of families who are living freely and openly on land that notionally does not belong to them.
Here are two startling facts. Some 13% of all the land in South Africa is held in trust by tribal authorities. About 17 million people or a third of the population reside on these communal lands. Allocating title deeds to these subsistence farmers would turn impoverished rural dwellers into property owners. Newly titled farmland could be leveraged for development loans or eventually even sold. Either way this would unlock and unleash massive capital for growth. In one fell swoop, a third of our citizens would build wealth through property appreciation while having stability and control over their livelihoods. They could make changes and improvements to their properties without the threat that their living rights could arbitrarily be taken away.
To be fair, some deal will need to be struck with the tribal authorities to compensate them for losing their vested interests in administering these lands. The individuals affected could also become landowners themselves. Or they could receive a monetary incentive to relinquish control. The prize of creating 13 million new land owners would be worth the price.
Apart from tribal land, there are other aspects of titling that also need to be tackled, especially the 5 million South Africans living in informal settlements. As the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues, giving title to residents of informal settlements promotes investment, access to credit and socio-economic integration.
Again, there may be a need to compensate some private landowners. This has been done successfully by other countries. For example, in Tanzania the government was able to grant 200000 titles to unplanned settlements in Dar es Salaam; while compensating previous landowners. Rwanda used a participatory and low-cost process to deliver 6.7 million titles in less than 3 years. In South Africa the land in informal settlements is mostly state-owned, which makes it much easier to get going.
Ideally all of these titling programmes need to be done as part of a comprehensive improvement of socioeconomic conditions such as access to data, training, schooling and transport. Community participation to address the root causes of poverty, improve living conditions but also to stop opportunism when titles become available, will certainly be needed. And of course, further overall land reform beyond titling will still be required.
But we need not wait until everything is perfect. Let’s get going with a massive titling project. It is completely possible for an additional 23 million South Africans to live on land that they, or a family member, own outright, soon. To slightly paraphrase Midnight Oil: “The time has come, a fact’s a fact. It belongs to them, let’s (find a way to) give it back.”
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