No whites allowed: Government department’s rules for leasing state land

The Department of Land Reform and Rural Development states that leasing state land is not open to white citizens of South Africa.

The department’s mandate is to facilitate equitable access to land and address historical injustices of land dispossession.

This is done through land restitution and tenure security, and through the promotion of comprehensive rural development and spatial planning.

It must also initiate, coordinate, and implement integrated rural development programs to build sustainable rural livelihoods and foster inclusive rural economies.

The department operates under foundational statutory frameworks such as the Deeds Registries Act, State Land Disposal Act, and the Provision of Land and Assistance Act.

The department has published numerous ‘Applications to Lease State Land’, along with the eligibility criteria.

It cites the department’s Beneficiary Selection and Land Allocation Policy and State Land Lease and Disposal Policy as part of the criteria.

The first criterion eliminates all white citizens of South Africa, independent of their farming experience.

Applicants must be Africans, Indians, and Coloureds who are South African citizens. The African in this context includes persons from the first nations of South Africa.

The other criteria include that applicants must be 18 years or older and have a valid South African bar-coded identity document (ID).  

The department added that priority shall be given to women and youth, and that the successful applicant must be willing to stay on the farm.

The only criterion related to the person’s ability to do the work is that applicants must have at least 3 years of farming experience.

Most land reform projects in South Africa fail

Theo de Jager, executive director at Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI), explained that most land reform projects fail.

He said politicians confuse unused land with operational farms, which require complex business models, continuous capital, and market access to survive.

“Not all land is a farm. A farm is a piece of land, but it is much more than that. It requires a business plan, capital investment, and active management,” he said.

This is the issue which Zimbabwe is grappling with. They took the land and now want to compensate the former farm owners for the improvements.

However, those improvements are long gone. “That infrastructure is what turned raw land into a farm,” he said.

A similar situation is playing out in South Africa through land reform projects, where productive farms are given to black beneficiaries.

De Jager highlighted that 90% of land reform projects have failed on a business level. However, this is a best-case scenario.

“I still want to see the remaining 10%. While there are successful farms out there, they are few and far between,” he said.

He said the main reason for the failure isn’t that beneficiaries don’t know how to farm, as the majority do.

“The issue is that they cannot do so profitably. The business model simply doesn’t add up,” De Jager said.

“They lose connection to mainstream commercial markets and end up producing solely for their own subsistence.”

He said the situation means commercial agriculture is being reduced to smallholder operations and subsistence farming.

“Unfortunately, this dismantles our greatest economic asset in rural areas: the commercial businesses, the job creators, and the exporters,” he said.

He said that the land reform projects destroy successful commercial farms, which generate foreign currency in the country’s poorest regions.

Application to lease state land