SETTING THE AGENDA - A CRITIQUE OF THE WORLD BANKS RURAL RESTRUCTURING PROGRAM FOR SOUTH-AFRICA

This article offers a critique of the presuppositions of the recommend ations put forward in the World Bank's 'Options for Land Reform and Ru ral Restructuring in South Africa' 1993. It examines the documents whi ch informed the proposals; the adequacy of their accounts of the exper iences, notably of land reforms in Kenya, on which they draw; the stre ngth of their evidence and arguments, particularly regarding agricultu ral performance and policies; and the feasibility and purposes of thei r proposals for land redistribution. It argues that the World Bank pro posals rest on misleading intellectual foundations. The World Bank's a nalyses regarding the relative (in)efficiency of large-scale farming i n South Africa with respect to scale of production, factor productivit y and prices are not supported by much of the evidence they cite. Thei r proposals revived aspects of the thinking behind the Swynnerton and Tomlinson reports of the 1950s. Government programmes to develop black farmers in South Africa in the late 1980s followed the approach of th e World Bank's unsuccessful agricultural development projects elsewher e in Africa. The 'surprisingly small' cost of the Would Bank's land re form proposals depend on unrealistic assumptions and proved to be well beyond the resources available to the new government.