(Re)constituting Class?: Owners, Tenants and the Politics of Land Reform in Mpumalanga*

Abstract

The article demonstrates some unintended consequences of land reform, showing how the restoration of land has become a local political resource. Sectors of South African society beyond the classic ‘black spot’/restitution constituency have latched on to the discourse linking restored land with restored citizenship: many farm workers and tenants, although their land rights are officially designated for protection under other legislation, have lodged land claims and are distressed at the state's failure to settle these. The article demonstrates contested relationships between such people – now evicted from their former homes on white farms and seeking refuge on restored African-owned farms – and their mostly unwilling landlords, set against a broader geographical and historical backdrop of owner–tenant relationships. Members of the two constituencies, configured in ethnic as well as class terms, variously draw on repertoires advocating, or contesting, forms of moral ‘good’. These include two contrasting views of citizenship: one highlights the rights of all citizens to be equal, while another is grounded in the restored ownership of private property. State officials have responded to owner–tenant ethnic conflicts by trying to appease the latter, facilitating their visions of citizenship by pandering to ethnically-defined regional majorities of the landless. The African National Congress (ANC), having promised equal rights at the election, has been ‘reshaped’ as the party of the poor and landless by tenants holding the Party to its promises, while the ANC-supporting title-holders whose land rights were restored to them, and who thus embody the inequalities inherent in private property ownership, have been redefined in the popular imagination as supporters of the opposition. Local perceptions of party and state, constructed in the course of owner–tenant conflicts on African-owned land, amount to a reshaping of citizenship by the landless. *The research for this article was conducted as part of a project, funded by the UK's ESRC (award reference number R000239795), entitled ‘Property, community and citizenship in South Africa's Land Reform programme’. Thanks to all whom we interviewed; to family members and friends who offered help and support; to Belinda Bozzoli of the School of Social Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand for helping to facilitate the research; and to the organisers of the conference on State and Society in South Africa held at Wits University in 2003, for providing the opportunity to present this article in an earlier draft. Opinions expressed are the authors' own. Some names have been changed.1 H. Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change