"The Land Belongs To Those Who Work It": A Critical Evaluation of Land Redistribution Policy in South Africa, 1994-2012
type: CreativeWork
description: Land ownership in post-apartheid South Africa carries a powerful symbolic charge for both black and white citizens. Under apartheid, state legislation denied black South Africans access to landownership rights, and confined them to 13 per cent of the available agricultural land. The election of the ANC government in 1994 marked the formal end of this process. Policies to provide access to land ownership to black South Africans were developed, raising widespread expectations for radical agrarian reform. The land reform policies of successive post-apartheid governments have, however, been unsuccessful in achieving any significant change to the overall proportions of land owned by black and white farmers, and the small amounts of land that have been transferred have failed to improve the lives of beneficiaries. In fact, the land ownership regime created under apartheid continues unchallenged in the post-apartheid era. This thesis seeks to investigate why successive democratically-elected governments with a mandate for reform have done so little to redress the entrenched inequality in land ownership. Informed by an anti-foundationalist ontology and an interpretive epistemology, this study focuses on processes of institutionalisation as they relate to both patterns of land ownership and the wider institutions of government inherited from the apartheid era that have continued to frame the policy process in South Africa. More specifically, the study adopts a ‘constructivist institutionalist’ approach to capture the way these institutions have been driven by a dominant discourse informed by apartheid-era values. It undertakes a multi-level institutional analysis, seeking to clarify the ideas underpinning the institutions and the discourses influencing the actors at the constitutional, national policy and provincial levels. The research involved examining key constitutional and policy documents and analysing interviews with key policy actors in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-N…
abstract: Land ownership in post-apartheid South Africa carries a powerful symbolic charge for both black and white citizens. Under apartheid, state legislation denied black South Africans access to landownership rights, and confined them to 13 per cent of the available agricultural land. The election of the ANC government in 1994 marked the formal end of this process. Policies to provide access to land ownership to black South Africans were developed, raising widespread expectations for radical agrarian reform. The land reform policies of successive post-apartheid governments have, however, been unsuccessful in achieving any significant change to the overall proportions of land owned by black and white farmers, and the small amounts of land that have been transferred have failed to improve the lives of beneficiaries. In fact, the land ownership regime created under apartheid continues unchallenged in the post-apartheid era. This thesis seeks to investigate why successive democratically-elected governments with a mandate for reform have done so little to redress the entrenched inequality in land ownership. Informed by an anti-foundationalist ontology and an interpretive epistemology, this study focuses on processes of institutionalisation as they relate to both patterns of land ownership and the wider institutions of government inherited from the apartheid era that have continued to frame the policy process in South Africa. More specifically, the study adopts a ‘constructivist institutionalist’ approach to capture the way these institutions have been driven by a dominant discourse informed by apartheid-era values. It undertakes a multi-level institutional analysis, seeking to clarify the ideas underpinning the institutions and the discourses influencing the actors at the constitutional, national policy and provincial levels. The research involved examining key constitutional and policy documents and analysing interviews with key policy actors in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-N…
author: Mackenzie, Graeme Richard
keywords: South Africa, land reform, land redistribution, public policy, policy analysis, apartheid, constructivist institutionalism, discourse analysis, institutions
license: https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstreams/b552a98d-53cb-4ad8-be33-3c7c7d66e94f/download
date published: 2015
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:57:24Z
provider: University Waikato
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Waikato