Principles and practice for successful farmland redistribution in South Africa

Abstract

The current debate on land reform in South Africa is unnecessarily polarised between those who believe that the market has failed to deliver, and those who believe that the bureaucracy has failed to deliver. Instead, we propose a ‘state-incentivised but private sector-delivered’ land reform that has a first ‘fast-track’ phase of a decade in which rapid land transfer is effected by a joint effort between the state and private actors. This calls for the creation of a virtual land depository and a Land Reform Fund where the private sector provides the bulk of the land and the funds, and these two actors partner with land reform beneficiaries and commercial farmers to create a support environment that allows new farmers the opportunity to establish themselves successfully in the agricultural sector.