Reproducing White Commercial Agriculture

Conclusion

While there have been some significant changes to agriculture, land and labour policies and programmes since 1994, these have taken place in a manner that in large part leaves the power of white agricultural capital intact and reproduces the racially-based and class character of the South African countryside. The overall trend is to entrench capital in the countryside at the expense of meaningful agrarian transformation.

Any prospect for transformation requires significant mobilization and organization in the countryside (supported by urban-based progressive forces) in order to tackle the ongoing predominance of white farmers and the exploitative relations of production, along with a much more forceful intervention by the state.

Struggles to advance the cause of agrarian transformation entail the formation of a broad counter-movement (within both state and society) to break the back of agricultural capital and the national and global commodity chains within which they are inserted. Unless the power of capital is confronted directly, including by the state, the racialised countryside will be maintained and the prospects for rural development will be negligible. A developmental state is necessary, but not of an authoritarian kind as traditionally pursued (for instance, by the Asian Tigers) around the world. In this respect, the current talk of a developmental state by the ANC party, led by President Jacob Zuma, would probably involve a highly centralized and insulated state, unresponsive to popular demands, given the centrifugal tendencies that have marked state restructuring in South Africa since 1994. This brings to forcefully to the fore the necessity for popular struggles to ensure downward accountability to marginalized rural citizens.

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