The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenges of Transformation and Redistribution

We probably all agree that these are worthy objectives and worthy beneficiaries. However, working at this level of high-flying, feel-good generality does not sharpen our understanding of what contribution land reform can actually make towards either improving or transforming the (different) positions of these somewhat different social categories of people, nor what scale of land reform the state can actually as opposed to ideally implement, nor how much weight we should attach to land reform compared to other state programmes (job creation, housing, health, education, welfare, basic services, infrastructure, conservation, etc.), nor what the trade-offs and synergies between these programmes could or should be, nor, if the state is to prioritise, where it should concentrate its land reform efforts.