FARMERS
Land reform policy itself a stumbling block to successful redistribution
One man’s long struggle with red tape and bureaucracy shows how the system sets beneficiaries up for failure
One key observation from the political discourse over land reform is that beyond the broad objective of what it seeks to achieve, the more specific problems around how to execute its implementation are misrepresented, poorly framed and therefore misunderstood. In May we argued that land reform has not been as slow as portrayed in many political messages and that the problems that have since emerged out of land reform implementation are largely to do with a lack of focus on agrarian support. This is a conclusion we reached after having carefully analysed the implementation of land reform policy in post-democratic SA. To further this argument we want to illustrate that some of the limitations in ensuring success establishing commercial black farmers are due to unintended consequences in the implementation of the land reform policy itself. A case in point is the proactive land acquisition strategy, which was introduced in 2006, for the state to acquire farm land for land reform purpose...
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