Paper long abstract:

The paper analyzes the Agrarian Question in South Africa from an historical perspective. It does so understanding the long dureé of historical transformation of rural social relations that affected the development of capitalism in the South African countryside and the resistance it encountered. The aims of the paper is to intermesh different levels of analysis starting from the international, the national and completing it with a view of the consequences of processes of semi-proletarianization on the local scale. Synergizing the local and the global, the macro and micro is the constant effort of the paper to better uncover the complexities of the ongoing transition which is taking place in the context of market-based land reform started in the 1996.

The paper will also focus on Inanda, the rural-urban region in the inner part of the newly erected Ethekewini Municipality (the greater Durban). This case study helps explain contemporary processes of urban/rural articulations, rural marginalization and development/underdevelopment.

The analysis will explores the contested terrain of the consequences and outcomes of politics of land set up in South Africa on the base of the willing buyer-willing seller principle which is increasing uneven processes of commoditization.

The three pillars of the land reform: land restitution, redistribution and tenure security will be the object of the final scrutiny of the paper with the annexed proposal of different policy measures aimed at overcoming the limits of the present Government of South Africa approach.