Abstract
In this introductory paper we review historic and contemporary development of sugar cane production across the southern Africa. We argue that the region’s sugar industry provides a useful lens through which to understand current dynamics of corporate capital and agricultural production in Africa. We identify three distinct elements of political-economic analysis: first, the operation of logics of capital investment in different settings; second, the nature of state policies and politics in different national contexts; and third, local processes of production, accumulation and livelihoods, including effects on labour and social differentiation. The paper draws on the empirical cases from seven southern African countries presented in this collection. It highlights the rapid concentration of corporate control by three South African companies over the past decade, but also a diverse set of outcomes contingent on local context. This is particularly evident in the nature of ‘outgrower’ sugar cane production which is found in all cases but constituted in different places by quite different social categories in terms of wealth and scale of production. We argue that common stereotypes of corporate investment as either ‘win–win’ or as a ‘land grab’ rarely apply. Rather, the nature and outcomes of ‘outgrower’ systems needs to be understood as a manifestation of context-specific political-economic relationships between corporate capital, national governments and a variety of local holders of capital, land and labour.
Highlights
The past decade has witnessed an upsurge in interest in the relationship between corporate capital and agricultural production in Africa
We argue that the region’s sugar industry provides a useful lens through which to understand current dynamics of corporate capital and agricultural production in Africa
The preponderance of rain-fed production in the traditional Natal sugar heartlands of South Africa, compared to the almost universal use of irrigation elsewhere, is undoubtedly a key factor in these productivity figures. It suggests at least one reason for the northwards expansion of South African sugar companies, and the decline, in both relative and absolute terms, of production within South Africa that contracted by about a third from 2002 to 2012.46 This drop in South African production has been compensated by increases elsewhere in the region, so that overall regional output has remained quite level for the past decade, while production within South Africa dropped from 70 per cent of the region’s sugar cane output in 1992 to 57 per cent in 2012
Summary
The logics of capital and the investment, production and market strategies of (mostly) South African companies; second, the national political economies across the seven country cases, and the particular roles taken by different states (sometimes in relation to international donors); and third, the local conditions, including the availability of land and water, and in particular differentiated ‘smallholder’ livelihood strategies, and their role as outgrowers. Sugar cane expanded following similar patterns: government subsidy for irrigation infrastructure in lowveld areas (Malalane (formerly Malelane) in the East Transvaal, and Hippo Valley and Triangle in Southern Rhodesia), to be used for white settlers on medium- to large-scale farms and with significant private sector investment (TSB22 in Malalane, and Anglo American and Tate and Lyle in Hippo Valley/Triangle) These irrigated developments took place against a backdrop of more general expansion of sugar cane plantations and factory capacity within South Africa as a response to favourable international sugar prices.[23]. Government eagerness to legitimate Bantustans with the promise of ‘development’ resulted in further expansion of production by small-scale black growers to substitute that of white planters who were dropping out, while miller facilities grew progressively more capital intensive.[33]
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