90% of land reform projects destroyed functioning farms and 88% of South Africans took money instead of land

Advocate Mark Oppenheimer, President of the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR), said that most people prefer money over land.

He shared this information during an interview on the State of the Nation podcast about South Africa’s Expropriation Act and property rights.

Oppenheimer explained that to assess the land issue, one must distinguish between land restitution and land reform.

• Land restitution is where people who had land taken away from them under racial laws after 1913 have the right to get that land back or receive financial compensation.

• Land reform provides the disadvantaged with access to land for residential and agricultural purposes, redressing the racially skewed ownership patterns.

Oppenheimer said that land restitution has been successful, but 88% of claimants chose financial compensation over receiving the land back.

“People wanted cash because it allows them to buy a house in the city, pay for their child’s education, or invest in a business,” he said.

“Land itself isn’t necessarily what everybody wants. What people want is capital and opportunity.”

He added that land reform has been a failure. “The outcomes of these projects have not been very good,” he said.

He cited the example of the Eastern Cape, where 264 farms were acquired by the state for land reform.

“These were working agricultural farms that employed a lot of people in the Eastern Cape,” Oppenheimer said.

10 years later, only 26 farms, accounting for 10%, were still operating. This represented a 90% failure rate.

“This means that all the people who used to work on those farms, who benefited from that employment and the active projects generated there, have lost out,” he said.

Despite these dismal figures, the South African government is continuing unabated with its land reform programme.

The Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mzwanele Nyhontso, provided details about recent developments.

He said that the South African government bought 93,096 hectares of land for redistribution since 1 January 2025.

The state spent R734 million to purchase this land, but it has not yet been transferred to the beneficiaries.

“However, there are 84,000 hectares of state land acquired that have been transferred to beneficiaries,” he said.