ABSTRACT
Three complementary elements of South African land reform policy are examined through case studies drawn from the eastern Free State province: the restitution of land; the redistribution of land; and the achievement of security of tenure. Firstly, diverse restitution claims are shown to reflect diverse experiences of dispossession of land under apartheid. Secondly, policy dilemmas and political conflicts over the redistribution of state-owned land around the huge relocation town of Botshabelo are investigated. They pose the fundamentally important questions of who represents ‘the community’ and who are the legitimate beneficiaries of state-sponsored land redistribution schemes. Thirdly, two different land regimes in part of an erstwhile African ‘homeland’ — private landownership by individual Africans and ‘communal’ tenure administered by a tribal authority — are analysed in their historical context in order to illustrate dilemmas and conflicts of the mid-1990s over forms of land tenure that will prevail in the future.
