Commercial Agriculture inSouthAfrica since 1994: ‘Natural, Simply Capitalism’

The paper provides a survey of commercial agriculture in S outh A frica since 1994. It emphasizes, first, how effectively ‘organized agriculture’ positioned itself for the new dispensation, with the help of the last apartheid government, and, second, the importance of the removal of limits on the international mobility of S outh A frican capital and commodities imposed on the apartheid regime. The lacunae and ambiguities of the A frican N ational C ongress concerning land and agricultural policy during the political transition of 1990–4 and since then in government are also important here. The paper considers ‘transformation(s)’ with respect to farm labour, regulating agribusiness, and land reform, black farming, and B lack E conomic E mpowerment ( BEE , specifically AgriBEE ). It concludes that the course of S outh A frican agriculture and agricultural policy since 1994 has done little, if anything, to ‘transform’ the circumstances of the dispossessed – rural and urban classes of labour – whose crises of social reproduction remain grounded in the inheritances of racialized inequality.