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Book Review

Book Review JOURNAL O F AFRICAN ECONOMIES, VOLUME 7, NUMBER 3, PP. 445-448 The Agrarian Question in South Africa Henry Bernstein (ed.), 1996, London, Frank Cass, 301 pp . Doreen Warriner's warning is still relevant today: 'Land reform is emphatically not a question for experts; it cannot be advised into existence, but must be based on an impetus within the country' (1962: 9). Major land reforms occur in the train of swift social change, as a by-product of wars and revolutions. Taiwan's land reform occurred when Chiang Kai Chek invaded the island, killing off the land- owners and buying the peasants' support by redistribution. It was the 'glorious commander' General McArthur who pressed land reform on Japan in 1946 in the wake of that nation's defeat by the Allies. Given South Africa's gentle transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994 — gentle, that is, by the standard of these cataclysms — it is no surprise that the land reforms undertaken so far have been tiny. To date, only 5,000 family units have benefited from the programme. This is fewer than the 35,000 who got land in Zimbabwe just three years after independence in 1980, let alone the Million Acre Scheme in http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of African Economies Oxford University Press

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Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© Published by Oxford University Press.
ISSN
0963-8024
eISSN
1464-3723
Publisher site
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Abstract

JOURNAL O F AFRICAN ECONOMIES, VOLUME 7, NUMBER 3, PP. 445-448 The Agrarian Question in South Africa Henry Bernstein (ed.), 1996, London, Frank Cass, 301 pp . Doreen Warriner's warning is still relevant today: 'Land reform is emphatically not a question for experts; it cannot be advised into existence, but must be based on an impetus within the country' (1962: 9). Major land reforms occur in the train of swift social change, as a by-product of wars and revolutions. Taiwan's land reform occurred when Chiang Kai Chek invaded the island, killing off the land- owners and buying the peasants' support by redistribution. It was the 'glorious commander' General McArthur who pressed land reform on Japan in 1946 in the wake of that nation's defeat by the Allies. Given South Africa's gentle transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994 — gentle, that is, by the standard of these cataclysms — it is no surprise that the land reforms undertaken so far have been tiny. To date, only 5,000 family units have benefited from the programme. This is fewer than the 35,000 who got land in Zimbabwe just three years after independence in 1980, let alone the Million Acre Scheme in

Journal

Journal of African EconomiesOxford University Press

Published: Oct 1, 1998

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