South Africa's Agrarian Question: Extreme and exceptional?

This introductory essay first sketches the context of the agrarian question in the trajectory of capitalist development in South Africa since the mining revolution of over a century ago. This provides a framework for a review of the contributions to this volume and the issues they illuminate. A third section addresses the question of the title. On one hand, the agrarian question in the sense of a transition to capitalist agriculture and industry has been completed, thereby resolved for agrarian and industrial/urban capital. On the other hand, it has not been resolved for those who long struggled against extreme national oppression. The legacy of massive dispossession is central to post-apartheid South Africa and democratic transition as 'unfinished business', as are widespread poverty and insecurity inherited from the structural crisis of the economy shaped by apartheid.