In this chapter we examine cases of market-led land reform in the Western Cape. The case material is derived from a study conducted during the period January to April 2010 (Tienstra 2010). The Western Cape has a long history of exporting fruit and wine produced on large farms and estates. Most land is owned by white farmers and estate companies. This may explain why land reform in the area mainly takes the form of land reform beneficiaries purchasing agricultural land (100 per cent ownership projects) or acquiring equity shares in an existing farming enterprise (Farmer Worker Equity Share projects, or FWES). This chapter explores the ongoing dynamics on both forms of farms, from a property perspective. We examine how the changing ‘bundles’ of rights and obligations experienced by the actors involved are transforming property rights and property relations on the farms.

Property relations and ordering modes of property

Land reform involves the transfer of property. In the legal anthropological approaches that are critical of mainstream economic approaches to natural resource management, property refers to the many ways in which people attribute value and meaning to goods or elements of their environment, and how they define rights and obligations, organise their social relationships, legitimise claims, and deal with conflicts pertaining to such valuables (Benda-Beckmann et al. 2006; Hann 1998, 2007). Property is regarded as a broad set of arrangements, not just a specific type of right or relationship such as ‘ownership’ (Benda-Beckmann et al. 2006). Property rights are in fact ‘bundles’ of rights and obligations, benefits and burdens, duties, freedoms and restrictions. Recent work on property has paid specific attention to the transformation of property. Changes of property regimes may generate a variety of new property relations. While attention is usually focused on the benefits of the resources that are transferred, risks, responsibilities, obligations and restrictions can also be transferred (Verdery 2004). Verdery (2004) and Hann (2007) associate this with the ‘bads’ of property. To understand the property dimensions of the socio-political and economic changes initiated by land reform in South Africa, it is necessary to give greater attention to the complexities that attend the transformation of property rights and the relationships that accompany them.