Evictions from farms – the role of local government

Abstract

Recently, land reform has gained greater prominence in public debates, notably with the latest call for the nationalisation of land, which has been met with mixed responses. The call highlights why the need for nationalisation of land is being emphasised, and accentuates the lack of transformed land holding patterns in the country. The land reform process has been slow and uneven and many land reform projects have failed. In 2009, Government created a new Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) and committed itself to linking land reform to a broader programme of rural development. Nonetheless, two years later indications are that land reform has not sped up sufficiently to meet its targets or to revive the broader rural economy. Emerging policy proposals - the Land Tenure Security Bill (LTSB) and the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Bill (SPLUMB) - indicate that policy processes are poorly focused, contradictory and not informed by an adequate analysis of real needs and past problems.