ABSTRACT
The kind of land occupancy advocated by the state, especially since the 1999 elections, has stood on its head the idea of land as an inalienable right. A central aim of the land reform programme has been to put land into the hands of the country’s black population. In contrast to the custodial model used during apartheid, in which the state owned land and held it in trust for its African occupants, the new approach involves transferring land into private ownership, through the purchase by ‘willing (black) buyers’ of the property of ‘willing (white) sellers’ with the help of state support and finance. It is this purchase of land, and its transfer into private ownership – originally for groups but increasingly now for individuals – that has been the aspect of state policy most fiercely resisted by the LPM, on the grounds that ‘we cannot buy what already belongs to us’.
