An Analysis of Post-apartheid Land Reform Interventions Fostering Restoration of Dignity and Equality in South Africa

This article discusses constitutional, legislative and policy frameworks strategically introduced post-apartheid era to foster land expropriation reforms that would restore dignity, equity, equality and justice to the forcefully dispossessed Black South Africans from their land during the pre-colonial and apartheid regimes. More importantly, even though the colonial and apartheid settlers metamorphosised into rulers expropriated land without compensation, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 has brough about various interventions that seek to ensure that the land that was forcefully taken should be returned to the right owners. This proposition has continued to generate fierce debates in the country. While some pundits have asserted that the Black majority now in charge of governance, should use postapartheid laws to expropriate land without compensation, there have been stiff resistant from the white minority who are both the owners of vast land and at the same time exercising right of possession and occupation respectively. It is against these competing interests that this paper postulates that in order to restore the dignity of the dispossessed and forcefully removed Black South Africans from their rightful land, there is need to look at the constitutional imperatives as well as equity and justice based on the post-apartheid frameworks that are available to ensure that the past apartheid land dispossession and injustices are redressed, and the wrongs committed are remedied.