Dispossession and redress: The challenges of land reform

This think piece sets out to:

• briefly trace an outline of where we have come from;
• examine how we have tried to address the toxic legacies of our history over the past two decades since 1994;
• review the current issues, shifts trends and actors shaping the future land and agrarian reform agenda.

The piece argues that the past, present and future of land reform are intimately connected with national choices about economic strategy and the capacity within the state to implement its policies and programmes. The Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation(DPME) has recently highlighted the risk to current growth-led strategies of “the Marikana effect – where the benefits of growth are captured by a few so conflict persists and growth stops” (The Presidency, 2014). Such elite capture thrives in the absence of legible, equitable policy and a capable state – factors that may have some relevance for the development of future land reform scenarios.