ANDILE KHUMALO: Taking land is pointless if it won't end up in the right hands
Many black farmers have suffered from a lack of support from the department of rural development and land reform
In a country where land reform has dominated headlines, it's surprising that we haven't debated the real challenges behind land redistribution. The "land expropriation without compensation" debacle has been reduced to a dispute about whether to change the constitution or not. Few South Africans actually understand the intricacies of the government's land-reform policy; how it planned to implement it; how it then failed to achieve its own targets; and how it now believes that the "magic wand" of changing the constitution will miraculously "bring back the land". In basic terms, the main objective of the land-reform policy is to transfer non-government land, mostly owned by white people, into the hands of black people. The government tries to execute this by asking black people to approach the department of rural development & land reform (DRDLR) for help. However, a little-known fact is that a large proportion of the land acquired by the DRDLR for black farmers has eventually been tra...
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