The failure of land reform in South Africa Iqra Qalam and Joshua
Lumet 6 December 2012 Almost two decades after the end of
apartheid in South Africa, the failure of the agrarian reform
policies of the African National Congress (ANC) has exposed the
bourgeois nationalist liberation movement’s inability to resolve
the land question. The land reform promise was encapsulated in
the ANC’s 1955 Freedom Charter, the movement’s main statement of
principles and program. It was advanced in order to garner the
political support of the rural poor. The ANC claimed that “all
the land (would be) re-divided amongst those who work it to
banish famine and land hunger” and that “the state shall help
the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save
the soil and assist the tillers”, and that the rural masses
would be entitled to “the right to occupy land wherever they
choose”. After 1994, the ANC promised to undertake broad and
sweeping action to reverse the deprivations institutionalized
under Apartheid. These promi