South Africa: Poor Black South Africans Are Ready for Real Land Reform, but Who Will Benefit?

9 March 2018
opinion

The South African parliament has voted for a motion to amend the constitution that will allow the government to expropriate private land without compensation. However, a true resolution of the land question must be in accordance with the needs of those who work and live off the land. This means the destruction of all existing tribal and feudal relations in the rural areas and the nationalisation of the land.

Earlier this month, the South African parliament voted for a motion to amend the constitution that will allow the government to expropriate private land (largely in the hands of white South Africans) without compensation. There is a general assumption that the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is talking about white-owned private farms, but neither the African National Congress (ANC) nor the EFF have said anything to clarify exactly which (if any) lands the government will expropriate. Debates about land reform in South Africa predate its democracy. Market-oriented land reform policies have been tried since the end of apartheid, but they have failed. The "willing buyer-willing seller" mechanism failed, as it did in Zimbabwe. More than two decades after democratisation, the white minority still controls most of the country's productive lands.

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