Date: 24 October 2017
Time:  12h30 – 13h30
Venues: Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town 

Presenter: Prof. Nhlanhla Cyril Mbatha, Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business Leadership

Presentation available for download below:

With reports of widespread failures in South Africa’s land reform programmes there have been growing levels of uncertainty in the political rhetoric that influences policy. Since 1994 policy targets to transfer land to Black farmers have not been met. Of the 2005 target to transfer about 25 million hectares of commercial farmland to black farmers by 2014, less than five million hectares were transferred for commercial use. Moreover, some studies report failure rates in resettlement projects of up ninety percent. To account for the failures, revisions of policies and amendments to legislations have been proposed within a political environment that is becoming increasingly intolerant to slow progress in land transfers and to resettlement failures. This paper presents a typology for evaluating important elements of the land reform process in South Africa. This is performed from reviews highlighting key historical lessons from land reform projects in Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa as well as reviews of world data of average sizes of efficient farms. A proposition is made on how to use the typology to guide interventions for more successful results in different areas of the reform process.

Please RSVP by 23 October 2017

Cape Town: HSRC, 116-118 Merchant House, Buitengracht Street, Cape Town. Contact: Carmen August ,Tel (021) 4668004, Fax (021) 461 0299 or e-mail: caugust@hsrc.ac.za
Durban:  The Atrium, 5th Floor, 430 Peter Mokaba Ridge, Berea, 4001 , Contact: Ridhwaan Khan, Tel (031) 242 5400, cell: 083 788 2786 or email: RKhan@hsrc.ac.za , or Hlengiwe Zulu at e-mail HZulu@hsrc.ac.za
Pretoria: HSRC Video Conference, 1st floor HSRC Library Human Sciences Research Council, 134 Pretorius Street, Pretoria. Arlene Grossberg, Tel: (012) 302 2811 or e-mail: acgrossberg@hsrc.ac.za