Land reform in South Africa — 5 myths about farming debunked

SOUTH Africa's land reform policy remains highly contested. But, in our view, a number of persistent myths about farmland statistics and the structure of commercial agriculture skew debates. This makes it difficult to reach some common understanding about the realities of land and agriculture in the country.

In 1994 when South Africa became a democracy, white farmers owned 77 580 million hectares of farmland out of the total surface area of 122 million hectares. The new government set a target of redistributing 30% of this within five years. This target date has been moved several times and is now 2030.

According to popular belief between 8% and 10% has been redistributed so far. But this is incorrect as it omits a number of key statistics.