Land reform ignored in recent State of the Nation Address: a regrettable omission

Regrettably, land reform was not mentioned as a priority area when President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his State of the Nation Address (Sona) last week. 

Land reform appears to have been relegated to the periphery, when in fact it should be a priority, given the drastic and systemic slowdown in land reform, says Peter Setou, chief executive of Vumelana Advisory Fund. 

“Vumelana maintains that land reform should be a primary focus of the administration rather than an afterthought, and that we need to achieve scale in supporting more land reform beneficiaries to put their land to productive use,” Setou says in response to an "Independent Media Property" enquiry.

Vumelana, a non-profit organisation that supports land reform beneficiaries, says it looks forward to the Budget Speech to be delivered by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana next week.

“We are hopeful for a robust financial commitment to land reform to truly drive an empowering land reform programme that is well resourced to break through current bottlenecks and turn stagnant policies into the lived reality of the promise of land reform for South Africans,” 

Vumelana adds that it welcomed the President's recently delivered Sona as it addressed several pressing matters impacting South Africans in general. 

While there are signs of an improving economy, with the agricultural sector in particular showing signs of resilience, the slow pace of land reform, coupled with the failure to develop or improve infrastructure in rural areas, is threatening long-term investment in rural areas and has a spiralling effect on joblessness, says Setou.

He says the focus for 2026 must be a shift from policy debates to the implementation of existing policies and addressing some of the shortfalls that have been aptly defined through a number of reports commissioned by the government itself, such as the High-Level Panel report, usually referred to as the Motlanthe Report.

The CEO says the overall thrust, therefore, calls for a much quicker, better-coordinated and measurable approach to ensure sustainable land reform.

“The outlook further demands transparent and evidence-based interventions to deal with the challenges impacting successful land reform. Closer collaboration between sector players and other key stakeholders is key to avoiding the repetition of past mistakes.

"Sustainable land reform is a constitutional imperative. It also remains one of the key interventions that can ensure restored land is put to productive use and that jobs are created, particularly in rural areas, if implemented correctly.”

According to the State of the Nation website, the South African Government is on record saying that it is accelerating land redistribution through a variety of instruments, such as land restitution and expropriation of land, to boost agricultural output.

It says that expanding access to land is vital for the country’s efforts to reduce hunger and provide people with meaningful livelihoods.

“We are moving ahead with land reform in terms of the Constitution, and anticipate the approval of the Expropriation Bill during this year.

“The establishment of the Agriculture and Land Reform Development Agency will be finalised this year.

“The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure will finalise the transfer of 14,000 hectares of state land to the Housing Development Agency,” reads the text on the website.

According to a report titled "Land Reform and Development: Selected South African Case Studies" by Natalie van Reenen, land reform has one primary goal: to broaden and improve the distribution of land ownership structures of a country. 

This report has been prepared under the guidance of Nomvuyo Guma, formerly chief director: microeconomic policy in the Economic Policy Division of the National 

Treasury, and with editorial assistance by Andrew R. Donaldson, Southern Africa Labour and 

Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town says that owned land is incorporated into a person’s asset base and can act as collateral when an individual applies for loan funding.

“More broadly, when there is security of land tenure, owners are more likely to invest in that piece of land, which increases its value. This will, in turn, contribute to housing, services, or economic production, on which taxes can be raised, which will increase government revenue.” 

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