Market Liberalisation in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Restructuring of Citrus Exports after 'Deregulation'*

Abstract

This paper is about the impact of market liberalisation on South Africa's citrus export industry. It responds to the lack of critical research on this topic: debates on the impact of liberalisation in agriculture are dominated by neo-classical economic approaches, which have uncritically applauded the impact of the 'free market'. According to these studies, (white) agriculture has become more competitive and responsive to global market forces. Our analysis of the 'deregulation' of citrus exports draws on political economy approaches to markets and suggests that the impact of liberalisation is far more complex. Based on detailed field research in the Western and Eastern Cape we explore the impact of changes in the regulatory environment for black and white citrus growers, newly privatised cooperatives, and labour. Our findings suggest that former cooperatives have faced problems in using the resources they inherited from the past. With regard to growers, there is increasing differentiation between those who are able to take advantage of deregulation and those who are not. A proportion of black and white citrus growers find themselves in the same structural position in relation to export markets in a liberalised economy. Deregulation has affected labour on farms and in packhouses in significant ways, although we suggest that the liberalisation of the economy has intensified structural changes in the agricultural labour market that have been present for some time.