Performance of Smallholder Irrigation Schemes in the Vhembe District of South Africa

Abstract

South Africa needs to raise employment and reduce poverty, particularly among rural African people. The New Growth Path released by the government in November 2010 was a response to the persistent unemployment problem. It aims to create five million new jobs by 2020. The New Growth Path intends to create 300 000 of these new jobs through the establishment of smallholder farmer schemes (Department of Economic Development, 2010). This suggests that policymakers believe that smallholder scheme development can create a substantial number of new employment opportunities in South Africa. However, the performance of the smallholder schemes that have been set up as part of the postdemocratisation land reform programme has been dismal (Umhlaba, 2010). Assessments of smallholder irrigation schemes indicated that many of them also performed poorly (Bembridge, 2000; Machete et al., 2004; Tlou et al., 2006; Mnkeni et al., 2010). Yet, in waterstressed South Africa, expanding smallholder irrigation is one of the obvious options to trigger rural economic development. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Asia, investment in irrigation was a key ingredient of the green revolution, which lifted large numbers of rural Asians out of poverty and created conditions that were conducive for the industrial and economic development that has occurred (Turral et al., 2010). A similar development trajectory has been recommended for South Africa and other parts of SubSaharan Africa (Lipton, 1996). So far, the developmental impact of smallholder irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa has been limited (Inocencio et al., 2007).