“In his journey across the heartlands of the Karoo, Wandile Sihlobo meets with some of the black farmers who are still waiting for title deeds on land currently owned by the state. And he laments the condition of failing municipal infrastructure that he encounters along the way.”
I liked this article because, instead of the usual “ANC has failed at land reform and is ruining everything” refrain I usually hear (true as it is), I don’t usually hear stories from the people who are trying to succeed despite these failures.
Simply exchanging white farm owners for black ones isn’t going to do much to alleviate poverty in rural areas. If arable land is still just going to be treated as privatised fiefdoms and “run like businesses” the predictable outcome will be, at best, a class of rich farm owners (who just happens to be black) lording it over a captive labour force that gets to exist in crushing poverty - which is exactly how we ended up with rural poverty in the first damn place.
