The land question in South Africa: the challenge of transformation and redistribution

Abstract

The extent to which indigenous people were dispossessed of their land by whites in South Africa under colonial rule and apartheid has no parallels on the African continent.Since the advent of democracy in 1994, issues at the heart of the land question in South Africa are how to reverse this phenomenon and how a large-scale redistribution of land can contribute to the transformation of the economy and the reduction of poverty, both rural and urban. The Land Question in South Africa debates these issues against the backdrop of a land reform programme that made limited headway in the first decade of South Africa's democracy. The book offers a robust assessment of that programme and raises critical questions for its future.