Journal of US-China Public Administration (Abel J Diale)

Journal of US-China Public Administration, ISSN 1548-6591
December 2012, Vol. 9, No. 12, 1341-1350

The Land Question in Post-Apartheid South Africa—A Paradox
Abel J. Diale
Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa
There is a consensus on the distinguishing features of rural communities, particularly in countries that have a
history of social injustice. These include high levels of poverty and education, weak manufacturing base and poorly
developed infrastructure, inadequate human resources capacity and, little if any, tax/revenue base. Based on South
Africa’s history of social injustice and unequal distribution of resources, the post-apartheid government sought to
put land reform and rural development at the center of the political and socio-economic discourse. However, those
disposed of their land and their plight to re-claiming it would prove a mammoth task, which would later lead to
discontents and continuous legal battles between the affected communities and the post-apartheid government. This
article seeks to unravel the quackmire faced by the dispossessed communities in South Africa regarding the
acquisition and usage of the land of their birth-right and the laxity with which the post-apartheid government has
dealt with the matter. The responses by the post-apartheid government will be alluded through various programs
and initiatives thus far introduced. The evidence presented is primarily drawn from widely researched literature
sources, applicable legislations, policy documents and pronouncements. In conclusion, issues worthy of
consideration by the authorities for the benefit of the predominantly African rural communities will be provided as
recommendations.
Keywords: land reform, restoration and restitution, post-apartheid government
The post-apartheid South Africa under the African National Congress (ANC) led government (1994 to
date) bring some high levels of skepticism to the advocates and activists of land reform, and intoxicating
excitement for the rural poor, i.e., those whose land was unjustly dispossessed during the apartheid regime. To
their shock, these communities would still, to this day, wait in vain for their dream to be realized. This dream
refers to the restoration of land to its rightful owners which were disposed since the advent of the colonial
period right through to the apartheid system. This is despite the fact that the 1913 Natives Land Act (now
repealed) was a rallying point and a key political issue in the quest for land and agrarian reform in the struggle
for the emancipation of the majority of the impoverished black population of South Africa. What would later
transpire during the rule of the democratically elected government, was that the Reconstruction and
Development Programme (RDP), the key policy advocacy for national land reform programme to address the
injustices of the apartheid past, purported to be the central and driving force of a rural development programme,
would later be radically counter-posed to the restrictive and neo-liberal policy framework under the auspices of
Growth Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR). This is the paradox that the current government is
still facing, in that according to the former Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Honorable L. Xingwana in
Corresponding author: Abel J. Diale, senior lecturer, Department of Public Management, Tshwane University of Technology;
research fields: local government management, corporate governance and accountability, public and business ethics,
whistleblowing and organization integrity. E-mail: dialeaj@tut.ac.za.
DDAVID PUBLISHING

THE LAND QUESTION IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

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2008 when stating that “the RDP is a rights-based approach programme undertaken for the restitution of land to
persons dispossessed by government action since 1913”, and “the GEAR strategy as a further strengthening and
consolidation of government focus on sustainable agricultural development”.
The article intends to unravel this paradox by looking into the following: firstly, highlighting the historical
antecedents to the current status; secondly, land reforms initiatives under the post-apartheid government; thirdly,
contentious issues that compromised the land reform process; and lastly, conclusion by offering suggestions on
the possible alternatives.
The Historical Antecedents of the Land Question in South Africa—A Brief Overview
The history of the land question in South Africa dates back more than two-and-a-half centuries and has
been reconfigured over through various systems of oppression against the black majority, and sparked many
violent conflicts (Terreblanche, 2002). Compared to other countries in the African continent, the extent of
South Africa’s land plunder was extraordinary, which resulted in an extremely skewed land tenure, wherein the
white minority (5%) occupied 87% of the land and the majority of blacks reserved for the remaining 13% prior
to the 1994 democratic elections (Ntsebeza, 2007a; Manji, 2001; Karuiki & Van Der Walt, 2000; Thwala, 2003;
Moyo, 2007).
The literature on the causes of this state of affair is abounding; however, an illustration is made to put this
matter into context. The historical context of the South African land dispossession can be traced back to the
colonial era and later apartheid regime through complex processes of colonialism and land dispossession with
white settlers ended up legally appropriating more than 90% of the land surface through the notorious Natives
Land Act of 1913 (Feinberg, 1995; Ntsebeza, 2007a; Karuiki & Van Der Walt, 2000). It needs to be pointed out
that the Land Act of 1913 was not the sole piece of legislation responsible for land dispossession and plunder.
Instead, as the Draft Policy on Expropriation Bill (2007) duly recognized the period in 1659, when a little war
of plunder broke out between the Dutch and the Khoisan. This was after many years of abuse at the hands of
the Dutch that the Khoisan decided to wage resistance. The Land Act of 1913 is used in this article as a cut-off
period since it was made a reference point during the negotiations in the early 1990s, for a new dispensation in
South Africa of how the land issue could be addressed. The purpose of this Act was mainly to restrict land
ownership by Africans (referred to as Natives) and restrict them to reserves made up of approximately 10% of
the land surface. In summarizing the 1913 Land Act, Thwala (2003, p. 2) stated that “it restricted the area of
land for lawful African occupation, and stripped African cash tenants and sharecroppers of their land and
consequently replaced sharecropping and rent-tenant contracts with labor tenancy”. This Act was specifically
against and aimed at the small successful, market oriented African farmers that had emerged over the decades,
and against other numerous African farmers and sharecroppers who rented white-owned land outside of the
reserve areas (Karuiki & Van Der Walt, 2000). In summary, the ultimate aim of the 1913 Land Act, through its
draconian land dispossession of the African population in South Africa, was driven by the urge to minimize or
even wipe out potential competition to white farmers, and as articulated by Thwala (2003), Ntsebeza (2007a),
and Feinberg (1995), it was to create a pool of cheap labor to work on farms and mines, and later industry. Its
main thrust was to achieve territorial segregation, and it prohibited land sales to areas outside designated
reserves, allowing only Africans only about nine million hectares (about 7% of South Africa), the marginal
portions of the land.
According to Hall and Ntsebeza (2007, p. 3), this process forced a large number of rural residents to leave


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the rural areas for urban and farms in search of work, a significant number of which became rural
proletarianized, while others became migrant workers with a tenuous link to land. This process resulted in
currently a defining characteristic of South Africa’s agricultural economy, which was predominantly white
commercial farming that came as a result of the disintegration of rural economy in the former Bantustans and
the cheap labor policy. What needs to be pointed out though is that South Africa is not necessarily and
primarily an agrarian society, but the extent of land dispossession from the indigenous people has been that a
substantial number of them were converted into wage workers to support the settlers’ capitalist intentions and
endeavors (Hall & Ntsebeza, 2007; Kariuki & Van Der Walt, 2000; Thwala, 2003). This view is further
captured by Mbeki (2012) in his analysis of Why the ANC Has Failed to Transform South Africa. In his view,
when the ANC took over the government of South Africa in 1994, the party in fact inherited a poisoned chalice.
By the end of the 20th century, Mbeki contended that South Africa has become a hugely damaged society; its
mining industry was founded on the destruction of the peasant agriculture and the conversion of the male
peasant farmer into a migrant worker. This historical occurrence devastated the African family (Mbeki, 2012).
As indicated in the previous section, the Land Act of 1913 was not the only mechanism through which
African land ownership was systematically eroded, equally so where the following pieces of legislation: 1923
Principle of Separate Development/Residential Areas, Development Trust and Land Act of 1936, the 1937
Natives Laws Amendment Act, Group Areas Act of 1950, and Bantu Authorities Act of 1951, to name but a
few. To this day, there is still no clear policy direction and the apparent lack of political willingness to bring
about formidable change on how to deal with the land issue. There are mixed pronouncements as the following
sections will allude.
Land Reform or Official Entrenchment of the Land Plunder?
In the preceding section, it was highlighted that the 1913 Natives Land Act and its consequences were
rallying points for the quest for land reform and restoration to the rightful owners who were inhumanely
dispossessed of it. In addressing this aspect, the promulgation of RDP was to be the answer, and later to be
replaced and augmented by other policy initiatives such as the GEAR policy as explained earlier. These
policies mainly emphasized the market approach and instruments of land transfer, the debate that has reached
unsparing proportions in the 18th year of the ANC rule. What needs to be emphasized in this case is that the
ruling party was not the initiator of the debate for the restoration of land to those dispossessed but became the
culprit by agreeing to the preservation of the property clause during the negotiation processes, i.e., Convention
for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) I & II respectively. The results of these two main negotiation
processes were contained in the Interim Constitution of 1993 and later, in the Constitution of the Republic of
South Africa (1996). This was despite the protestations from the Pan African Congress (PAC), and another
political formation whose aim and slogan was restoration of the land to those unjustly dispossessed.
As Ntsebeza (2007a) alluded, at the advent of democracy in 1994, the organized voice from below in the
land sector was a group of land-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that established a network
referred to as the National Land Committee (NLC). These organizations, as Ntsebeza (2007a) contended,
emerged during the apartheid period in the 1980s as a response to the forced removals of millions of blacks
from white designated areas. The movements for land and agrarian reforms were led by those NGOs who acted
for and stood on behalf of land seeking black victims of segregation and apartheid. Ntsebeza (2007a) further
indicated that the composition of the land movements of the 1980s differed from those of the 1940s, 1950s, and


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early 1960s. What is interesting in these developments is that in the majority of cases, especially during the
1940s-1960s, there was no direct involvement of political parties and NGOs hardly existing. These were
predominantly led by the rural residents, with no or hardly any involvement by political organizations, which
resulted in them being ruthlessly suppressed by the apartheid forces and as such, became isolated cases of
resistance. It was in later years that the focus shifted to the urban areas, around the trade unions, later the
uprisings of the 1976 and the subsequent formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) (Ntsebeza, 2007a,
pp. 15-16).
What is of importance in the South African case concerning the land question is that the struggle for
liberation is not overtly fought around the land question, however, the expectation is always that the advent of
democracy will bring justice to those deprived of their land. It was justifiably expected that the land issue
would be among top priorities of the democratic government, an expectation that has become a pipe dream for
the dispossessed black majority. Compared to other countries in the region such as Tanzania, Zambia, and
Mozambique where the land issue was to become the epitome of the liberation struggle, that of South Africa
was a negotiated settlement with a number of guarantees not to antagonize the (local and international)
capitalist world and actors. A view expressed by Moyo (2007, p. 62) was that: “Where liberation was relatively
partially concluded, as in the cases of Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, negotiated settlements left both
the national and land questions relatively unresolved”. In the South African case, this can be seen through a
plethora of research findings, new and revised programmes of action, commentaries and publications (Hall &
Ntsebeza, 2007; Kariuki & Van Der Walt, 2000; Thwala, 2003; Manji, 2001; Centre for Development and
Enterprise, 2008).
In highlighting the trend in the Southern African region, South Africa included, Moyo (2007, p. 73)
contended that land redistribution initiatives have tended to be constrained by legal, institutional and
constitutional frameworks, which have led to costly and slow processes of land acquisition and transfer of land
rights. Land redistribution policies, as Moyo (2007, p. 73) put it, have tended to be influenced by
market-oriented approaches to land reform and acquisition and circumscribed by the legal challenge by large
land-owners and commercial farmers, while the negotiated voluntary transfer of large amount of land on a
significant scale has not occurred. The debate about the untenable situation regarding the land question is
beginning to take the center stage in the deliberations by the ANC structures lately. Like in the case of the ANC
Youth League (ANCYL) which went as far as “to warn of Zim-style land invasions in South Africa”, the
ANCYL through its Deputy President argued that “Farm invasions are inevitable should white South Africans
not voluntarily hand over land to the government… Whites must volunteer some of the land and mines they
own. They cannot only be compelled to do so through legislation” (Lamola, 2012). This is a harsh reality as
experienced by the white farming community in Zimbabwe at the turn of the 21st century. On the basis of the
above exploration, it can be summarized that dealing with the land issue is a paradox for a post-apartheid South
Africa. It will be fitting and appropriate to highlight on the initiatives and milestones that the post-apartheid
dispensation has thus far undertaken and achieved since 1994.
Land Reform Initiatives in South Africa
It has been highlighted that the South African liberation is a negotiated settlement (prior to the 1994 first
inclusive general elections) between the erstwhile apartheid rulers, its economic and financial backers and
beneficiaries; and the then liberation movements under the leadership of the ANC were highlighted. What


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characterize South Africa then and to some extent currently are the following: racially inequitable structures of
wealth (even though there are pockets of the black elites); inequity in land ownership and its attendant poverty
patterns; and a fluid political will to bring about radical and fundamental changes to the legacy of the apartheid
system regarding the land issue.
Officially, apartheid ended in 1994, and the new government started much enthusiasm with the publication
and adoption of the RDP. In its one of the major issues needing immediate attention at the time, the RDP has
identified the issue of land redistribution as paramount. It espoused among others: “a national land reform
programme that addresses the injustices of the apartheid past as the central and driving force of a programme of
rural development”. Such a programme will be demand-driven and aim to supply residential and productive
land to the poorest section of the rural population and aspirant farmers (RDP, 1994). This, without doubt,
created a lot of expectations on those dispossessed of the land of their birth-right. Policies/statutory laws and
programs (and subsequent amendments) that followed over the years would prove how power intoxicated,
leading to a seriatim of paradoxes.
The ANC-led government, on the advice of the World Bank as early as 1993 before even coming to power,
had acceded to a number of concessions that would prove to be daunting for the landless. This involved
agreeing and committing to a land reform policy that rested centrally on a restrictive and neo-liberal policy
framework that, according to Kariuki and Van Der Walt (2000), had been lifted directly from a World Bank
report on land reform in South Africa entitled Rural Restructuring Programme. The advice which was further
developed into an undertaking culminated into constitutional provisions (see Constitution of the Republic of
South Africa 1996, section 25), and later into a series of neo-liberal policy frameworks and programs. The
framework recommended was to rest on two central pillars, namely restitution (designed to restore land
ownership or provide compensation to those who were dispossessed without adequate compensation by racially
discriminatory practices after 1913) and redistribution (aimed at providing the disadvantaged and the poor with
access to land for residential and productive purposes—this would entail a principle of
willing-buyer-willing-seller). This was and still is a market-driven programme. What is interesting is that there
was ample evidence from South Africa’s neighboring such as Namibia and Zimbabwe that the programme that
the ANC has subscribed to on the advice of the World Bank, had dismally failed as the consequences retained
the status quo of pre-independence, without meaningful results for the dispossessed. South Africa instead,
proceeded to add to the programme advised by the World Bank, a sub-programme of Land Restitution Reform.
This was intended to address and provide security of tenure to all South Africans under diverse forms of locally
appropriate tenure. Despite many objections and criticisms, the ruling party nonetheless proceeded unabated
and unperturbed with their cause of action that involved using the same constitutional provisions on the
protection of property rights, including the land (Hall & Ntsebeza, 2007). This cause of action basically
reinvented structural adjustment programme wherein the accumulation, preservation and protection of private
property (including the land) would be the hallmark of the new dispensation under a negotiated settlement. The
following section provides an insight into the path pursued at the time and the current state.
Land Reform, Restoration, and Restitution
The history of the World Bank is well documented and known for its vociferous advocacy for preservation
of private property, and the unfriendly policies toward the poor when advising on public sector reforms.
However, it got its way in convincing the ruling party to embark on a programme that would not disturb capital


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accumulation. This could be seen from the programme that the ANC-led government embarked upon in the
form of the 1997 White Paper on South African Land Policy. This policy came on the heels of the 1996 Growth
Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR), a conservative set of macro-economic policies that the ANC
unilaterally adopted. This would later become the entrenchment of the market-based
willing-buyer-willing-seller principle as the basis for land reform in 1997 and beyond (Hall & Ntsebeza, 2007).
With the willing-buyer-willing-seller principle, the government would later accede that in a country like South
Africa, it will not meet the requirements for redistributive justice. This acknowledgement is further made by the
current Deputy Minister responsible for rural development and land reform (Tsenoi, 2012). In it the Deputy
Minister stated that the ANC Policy Conference held in 2012, has endorsed to drop the
willing-buyer-willing-seller approach. The reason forwarded was that it was too costly for the government, as it
was the only willing-buyer, making it susceptible to inflated prices, sometimes with the involvement of corrupt
public officials.
The emphasis of the land reform programme that started in 1994 was to ensure that 30% of the land in the
hands of the white commercial farmers would be transferred to rightful owners between 1994 and 1999. Five
years into democracy, this ambitious programme would only achieve approximately 1% of the agricultural land
being transferred, and at the end of the first decade, the figure would be put at 3.1% (Mayende, 2010; Hall &
Ntsabeza, 2007). What was touted as the reason for the non-achievement of the target as set out was lack of
capacity in the institutions entrusted with the programme. No mention was made of the failures of the
market-driven approach, as well as the limitations on state expenditure to buy back 30% of the land. The issue
of corruption rears its ugly head more often when the government cannot deliver on its promise to deal with the
land issue.
In 2008, according to the Acting Chief Land Claims Commissioner, since its establishment in 1994, South
Africa’s Commission on Restitution of Land Rights has settled 74,808 out of 79,696 land claims lodged at the
cost of R16 billion. The beneficiaries included among others: 289,937 households and 1.4 million individuals.
At the time the commission further committed to settling the 4,888 outstanding claims by 2011 (Mphela, 2008).
The Land Claims Commission was initially given a 2005 deadline to settle all the claims, but the deadline was
extended to December 2008, and later to 2011. The reasons forwarded not to settle all the claims are among
others: the nature of the challenges that affects the claims such as opposition from some of the land owners who
are disputing the validity of the claims, exorbitant land prices, boundary disputes involving traditional leaders
(Mphela, 2008). This aspect is further articulated by Mayende (2010) pointing out that central to the problem of
this nature is the tendency by sellers (predominantly white commercial farmers) to demand exorbitant prices for
their properties as they perceive a bonanza opportunity from a government under pressure to deliver. What is of
interest is the ever-changing deadlines to complete the land restoration and restitution claims process.
According to the Minister in the Presidency for Monitoring and Evaluation, the honorable Collins
Chabane delivering the government’s mid-term review report of the administration that took office in 2009,
whose term is due to expire in 2014, indicated that between 1994 and 2011, South Africa transferred over 6.8
million hectares of land to people dispossessed under apartheid, a figure that represented 27% of the
government’s target of transferring 24.5 million hectares by 2014 (Chabane, 2012). As outlined above, this
initial target was conveniently extended to 2014, and then to 2025. This was previously communicated in an
address by the then Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs during the 2008 Agri-Consultation—Challenges
and Opportunities for Land and Agrarian Reform: Towards 2025. To this extent, one is tempted to argue that


1347
land reform, restoration, and restitution in South Africa are and will largely remain a dream deferred for the
dispossessed majority of African community. It is the contention of this paper that many other programs were
introduced not by government voluntarily willing to deliver, but responding to the pressures exerted by
communities of the dispossessed.
The other thorny issue was and still remains the role of traditional leadership and authorities on land
administration and communal land rights. On the former, traditional authorities have been reshaped and
transformed through exposure to colonialism and apartheid, until in most homeland areas, it became little more
than a weakened extension of the apartheid state (Pycroft, 2002; McIntosh, 1995; Kanyane, 2007; Ntsebeza,
2004). Most homeland rulers built their power based on their ability to manipulate traditional leadership, and on
the access to land and other benefits controlled by traditional leaders. To date, most rural areas in South Africa
are still under the rule of traditional authorities, which are predominantly hereditary. This state of affair still
prevails to this day, and more so, it is a constitutionally guaranteed structure, challenges on constitutional
requirements for democracy, community participation in development and governance has become more
pressing.
Most importantly, it is the function of land allocation that most of the tension revolves around, wherein
civic structures and traditional authorities had more or less equal support from their communities, the
relationship that Pycroft (2002) referred to as being complex and frequently contradictory. The tension
manifested itself at two levels: law and practice. That is, apartheid-initiated laws are still being practiced,
though with minor adjustments. This involved traditional leadership (chiefs/headmen) being the custodians of
land allocation in the areas of their jurisdiction (Kanyane, 2007). This can be seen from the ruling, by the
Constitutional Court of South Africa (Case CCT 100/009 [2010] ZACC 10) wherein the Parliament of the
Republic sought to short-circuit the processes and undermine the customary law provisions of land ownership
by, among others, giving a blanket and undue privilege over communal land ownership and its constitutional
protection under the so-called “new-order rights” whose content was still to be determined. This development
led the affected communities, whose land rights ownership was going to be negatively affected, to launch a
constitutional court battle and, emerged victorious. The Act involved was the Communal Land Rights Act of
2004. This legislation was subsequently declared unconstitutional, and rendered null and void (Hall, 2007, pp.
87-106).
On the latter, the issue was about land ownership, the programme which, according to Feinberg (1995),
was initiated as early as between 1880s and the 1940s, and later to be modified under the sub-programme of the
land redistribution in 2001 driven by the same market-oriented principle. This involved communities clubbing
together to make some form of down payment or own contribution so as to qualify for state subsidy. Needless
to say that those earmarked for this programme, are the dispossessed majority whom are poor.
Is There a Way out or a Way Forward?
It will be interesting to see if the ruling party considered to be paramount to a viable rural community will
be addressed as per the aspirations of the majority who have waited in vain for almost 18 years of
post-apartheid rule to restore back land unjustly dispossessed. This is articulated on the much touted
Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) (Diale, 2010, pp. 238-239). This is a culmination of
the ANC’s 52nd National Conference: Resolutions held in Polokwane on December 16-20, 2007, in which the
ruling party noted:


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… Interventions such as the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) have made significant,
but insufficient progress… in improving potential for economic growth in rural areas.
… Municipalities in the poorest and most rural parts of South Africa are among the most deprived in terms of human,
physical and financial resources. This lack of capacity limits the extent to which rural municipalities can act as catalysts for
growth and development. (ANC, 2007)
These and other considerations led to the resolution to embark on an integrated programme for rural
development, land reform, and agrarian change (ANC, 2007). It is one of the key five priorities that the ruling
party set themselves for the next five years starting from 2009.
The CRDP has a three-pronged strategy:
(1) Agrarian transformation
This will include initiatives such as increased production and sustainable use of natural resources,
strengthening rural livelihoods for vibrant local economic development, use of appropriate technologies,
modern approaches and indigenous knowledge systems, food security, dignity and improved quality of life for
each rural household;
(2) Rural development
This program will be geared toward picking-up pace of redistribution of land toward 30% and tenure
reform, speeding-up of outstanding restitution claims, and support to all land reform programmes through land
and planning information;
(3) Land reform
This programme will be geared toward improved economic infrastructure, social infrastructure, public
amenities and facilities, and institutional infrastructure.
The CRDP terminology described rural development to be multi-dimensional, encompassing improved
provision of services, enhanced opportunities for income generation and local economic development,
improved physical infrastructure and active representation in local political processes. Rural development in the
context of CRDP is thus much broader than poverty alleviation through social programs and transfers. The
concept and possibly its implementation place emphasis on facilitation of change in rural environment to enable
the poor people to earn more and invest in themselves and their communities.
The program has, as its key elements, a vision for growth process in rural areas, mechanism for integrating
existing rural programs, defining laws of decision-making, a meaningful role for local stakeholder, and key
performance indicators or a process for generating them internally to do strategy (CRDP, 2009). Key to the
envisaged implementation of this programme is geared toward developing a relevant and targeted policy in the
form of the White Paper on Agrarian Transformation, Rural Development and Land Reform, and increasing
capacity, this will be in the form of creation of the Rural Development Agency (RDA), which will be tasked
with coordination, planning and resource mobilization, monitoring and evaluation, and reporting systems and
accountability.
This initiative needs to be viewed with a sizeable amount of caution, since the underlying principles as
contained in many other programmes underpinned by the neo-liberal approach to economic development, are
still very much in force.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (former Agriculture and Land Affairs) published
the Green Paper on Land Reform, 2011. To this end, this document is still in its infancy and comments on it
might be premature.


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Concluding Remarks
The exploration above is indicative of the predicament that the post-apartheid government will have to
decisively deal with, instead of embarking on cosmetic proposals that do not address the critical land question.
To use the words of Mayende (2010, p. 60), “White privilege, borne out of colonial land theft, has become
firmly entrenched and now enjoys the sanction of the new constitution”. The onus is upon the ANC-led
government to consider this important issue and face the challenge head-on with tenacity. The other issue also
worth of consideration is that the current dispensation of land reform is limited to the 1913 Land Act as if prior
to this period, all were above board. But as Maserumule (2012, p. 311) succinctly put it that the National Party
(NP) out-smarted the ANC by ensuring that the land reform and distribution programmes were limited to this
period that did not recognize the ancestral lineage in terms of ownership of the land. The irony of the negotiated
settlement, especially regarding the land issue, was that the apartheid state dictated terms of how justice should
be dispensed when resolving the land issue. The following are some of the proposals or recommendations that
have been echoed by land activists, researchers, practitioners and commentators with which this article concurs:
(1) Revisiting the property clause in the Constitution section 25 (1-3) with the view to design a state-led
intervention programme, and recognize the plight of those dispossessed of their land prior to the 1913 deadline,
even if it may portray post-apartheid South Africa as discrimination in reverse, justice has to be seen to be done.
The revision envisaged should appreciate and recognize the injustices that were inflicted during the
dispossession period wherein no compensation was considered for the victims of land deprivation (Ntsebeza,
2007b);
(2) To reopen the claims process which will be characterized by consistent, transparent and all-inclusive
engagement process led by the government and its institutions with stakeholders and affected
parties/communities who were deprived of their land, this process should not necessarily limit it to the minority
of land owners, both on matters of pricing and future land use;
(3) Providing adequate sustainable post-settlement support for those successful land claimants, small and
medium agricultural enterprises to enable them to become meaningful participants in the economy;
(4) Lastly, the state has to ensure that a comprehensive audit is carried out on the land currently in the
possession of the state to ensure a fair and adequate redistribution process.
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