Sweetening the Deal: The Political Economy of Land Redistribution in South Africa’s Sugar Sector

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Alex Dyzenhaus titled Sweetening the Deal: The Political Economy of Land Redistribution in South Africa’s Sugar Sector

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a seminar presented by Alex Dyzenhaus titled Sweetening the Deal: The Political Economy of Land Redistribution in South Africa’s Sugar Sector on 26 July 2024, 13:00 - 14:30 (SAST).  

Abstract:
Under what conditions do land transfers occur under land reform? Theories of land redistribution focus on demand-side explanations for land transfers where the state allocates land in exchange for support from voters or rural elites. In this article, I argue that land transfers under market land redistribution are driven by supply-side characteristics of landholders. Using the case of South Africa’s sugar sector, I show that landholders chose to sell their land via redistribution when they had the economic incentive to preserve existing state-support frameworks and had collective capacity from centralized institutions. To understand when and why land redistribution occurs, one must pay attention to the landholders’ relationship to the state and their internal sectoral organization. In some cases, landholders may have an incentive to redistribute their land.

About the speaker:
Alex Dyzenhaus is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science at the University of Toronto and a Fellow in Democracy and Development at the Mandela School at the University of Cape Town. His research focuses on the political economy of land reform in South Africa and Kenya. His current project looks at how market forces interact with political imperatives to redistribute land and how existing institutions and firms that govern agriculture set parameters that dictate how and when land redistribution occurs. 

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