South Africa: New Black Farmers Carve a Niche for Themselves

When the African National Congress took power from the white apartheid government in 1994, it placed land reform at the top of its political agenda and launched an ambitious programme of land restitution, redistribution and security of tenure for farm workers. The restitution programme aimed to address wrongs that dated back to the 1913 Land Act, under which whites were allotted 87 percent of South Africa's land - while the majority blacks were crammed into the remaining 13 percent. According to government officials, some three million hectares have been transferred to 700,000 black households and individuals since the advent of democracy in 1994. This includes land transferred through restitution, redistribution and the allocation of state property, says the Department of Land Affairs.