The agrarian question in South Africa

The end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s election as President of the Republic turned a page in the history of South Africa. In 1994, some 60,000 (white) farmers held around 87 million hectares of land, while 14 million (Black) South Africans confined to the homelands shared the remaining 13 million hectares (13% of the nation’s land). What can be done about such legacies of inequality? This issue draws on an in-depth study of agricultural and land changes in contrasting agricultural regions to assess the country’s ‘market-assisted’ agrarian reform. The verdict is unequivocal:twenty years on, the structure of land tenure has barely changed, reflecting an agricultural development modelthat itself stands unchallenged. What went wrong?