The Key to Development

I wish more people would pay attention to Noah Smith’s observation in his post at Bloomberg about land reform in South Africa:

Zimbabwe expropriated its remaining white-owned farmland without compensation, handing it over to black farmers. This resulted in improved agricultural yields, rising incomes for farmers and reduced rural poverty. But the new small farmers didn’t end up using all of the land that was given to them, and total agricultural production suffered. The production of maize, a staple crop, fell by more than half during the early 2000s and 2010s, and the country was forced to start importing food. The country famously became an economic basket case under President Robert Mugabe, suffering hyperinflation and an economic crash. But interestingly, maize production recovered to its earlier levels in 2017, and some argue that land reform’s positive effects will ultimately prove more enduring than Mugabe’s economic mismanagement.

So if South Africa decides to go through with extensive land reform, it will be important to get things right. Farmers should only be given as much land as they’re willing and able to use, and they should be supported by high-quality training and agricultural extension services. Crucially, the government should allow the market to dictate what crops the new small farms grow, rather than issuing orders about what to plant. These policies will help make land reform a success, hopefully alleviating South Africa’s unemployment and setting it on the road to economic development.

Every country, repeat every country that has developed successfully has done so by moving relatively unproductive labor resources from agriculture to manufacturing and other more productive employment of labor without losing agricultural production. I’m more skeptical of South Africa’s seizing land from white farmers than Mr. Smith is. I think that strategy is more likely to be used as a way of cultivating political support through giving land to the ruling party’s allies than it is to promote development. I’m also more skeptical of the legal and moral underpinnings of it. I don’t think the Bantu-speaking black South Africans have any greater moral claim on the land than those of European descent do. Yes, whites are a minority in South Africa. Yes, the white minority abused the black majority during Apartheid.

But the ancestors of the Bantu-speaking people of South Africa began their trek from West Africa in the 13th century, arriving in what is now South Africa around 1600, just about the time that the ancestors of the Boers began their trek north from the Cape.

And what of the “Cape Coloured”, the descendants of the people whom the Bantu-speaking people ousted from their land and were living in what is now South Africa before either the Bantu-speaking or Dutch arrived? Will the land be restored to them or will it be given to cronies of Cyril Ramaphosa and other ANC bigwigs?