ABSTRACT
South Africa’s official programme of land reform has, from the outset, been conceptualised by bureaucrats in terms of discrete categories. Lines were drawn between rights-based and welfare-oriented land demands. According to some critics, this created false distinctions (Levin 1996:390). But the subdivision was probably driven more by the imperatives of state planning than by any intention to be socially divisive, and it did not initially appear to compromise the overarching goal of restoring citizenship to those formerly denied it. The interdependence of land reform’s three branches, aimed at three subcategories, was acknowledged by the government: the goals of each would not readily be achieved without the implementation of the other two (DLA 1997).
