ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on two case studies from the former Ciskei homeland of Eastern Cape Province and uses these to highlight cross-cutting issues in the success and failure of current policy aimed at land reform and the concomitant improvement of rural livelihoods in South Africa. The colonial and apartheid governments of South Africa systematically dispossessed black people of most of their land such that by the time the so-called homelands were consolidated during the 1970s and 80s, the majority of the population occupied just 13 per cent of the country by area. The Department of Land Affairs (DLA) estimates that some 16.5 million people, or about 30 per cent of the total population, still reside in these underdeveloped areas. The post-apartheid government's attempts at resolving the land and rural livelihoods question have, since 1994, been conducted as part of the Land Reform Programme (LRP) and subsequent developments thereof, which have focused on land restitution, land redistribution and tenure reform.
