ABSTRACT
Failures are generally taken as further indications of the urgent need to accelerate the process, rather than of its perhaps being misconceived in the first place. To many commentators, both inside and outside the country, it has appeared obvious that land must be transferred from white into black ownership. This conviction about the correctness of land reform is deeply felt. It is self-evident; it requires no justification. But why was the fair distribution of land, rather than any other approach, the correct means to install an egalitarian order? Was it assumed that the processes of socio-economic differentiation which attend on so many other forms of ownership and economic enterprise would not be equally prevalent in the case of land?
