Land reform in South Africa: 5 myths about farming debunked

By Johann Kirsten, Director of the Bureau for Economic Research, Stellenbosch University
Wandile Sihlobo, Senior Fellow, Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch University

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…

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