Land Reform and Development: Evaluating South Africa’s Restitution and Redistribution Programmes | Land Portal

Informations sur la ressource

Date of publication: 
février 2008
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
salo:4137

At the first conference on land redistribution in South Africa, held in Johannesburg in 1993, Cyril Ramaphosa, the then secretary general of the ANC, noted that South Africa is not unique in its unequal land distribution but rather in the policy measures that have led to this situation (ANC, 1993). In contrast to most other countries with unequal land distribution, South Africa has a history of specific racial policies with clear implications for land distribution and ownership. This heritage of inequality was formalised with the implementation of the two Natives Land Acts of 1913 and 1936. The first act gave only 8% and the second only 13% of South Africa’s territory to non-whites, who at the time represented about 90% of the country’s population. This legislation further confined the coloured population to reserves and the black population to bantustans, where land tenure was insecure and farming practices
mainly communal. Other measures restricted land tenancy or sharecropping possibilities for black and coloured populations living on land owned by white farmers, which in effect suffocated the (commercial) farming activities of these nonwhite farmers and prompted an exodus to the reserves and bantustans. The result of these policies was the acquisition of land by whites and the elimination of the black peasantry, who then provided cheap adult male labour for the commercial farming, industry and mining sectors (Van Onselen, 1996)…”

Auteurs et éditeurs

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Ward Anseeuw & Ntombifuthi Mathebula

Publisher(s): 
AgEcon Search

AgEcon Search: Research in Agricultural and Applied Economics collects, indexes, and electronically distributes full text copies of scholarly research in the broadly defined field of agricultural economics including sub disciplines such as agribusiness, food supply, natural resource economics, environmental economics, policy issues, agricultural trade, and economic development.


Fournisseur de données

SALO logo

The South African Land Observatory is an initiative whose overall objective is to promote evidence-based and inclusive decision-making over land resources in South Africa. As its name ‘Observatory’ suggests, it collects data and information on land. The initiative is a repository of what is published on land in South Africa and on the events that take place around land in South Africa.

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